■■r\xf^^  : 


■'^'■// 


LIFE  AND  LETTERS 


>     JAN   3    1924 


OF 


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PHILLIPS  BROOKS 


BY 


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ALEXANDER  V.  G.  ALLEN 

Professor  in  the  Episcopal  Theological  School  in  Cambridge 

Wiit}^  poitratt0  ano  3(lllu0tration0 
VOLUME  II 


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NEW  YORK 
E.  P.  BUTTON  AND   COMPANY 

31  WEST  TWENTY-THIRD  STREET 
1900 


COPYRIGHT,  1900,  BY 

ALEXANDER    V.    G.    ALLEN 

WILLIAM    G.   BROOKS,    ELIZABETH   W.   BROOKS,  JOHN   C.    BROOKS 

ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I. 
1869-1872. 

PAOB 

Trinity  Church,  —  The  Reception  in  Boston. — Contempo- 
raneous Comments  on  Phillips  Brooks's  Preaching.  — 
Record  of  Work  in  the  First  Three  Years 1 

CHAPTER  II. 
1869-1872. 
Extracts  from  Correspondence  and  from  Note-Books. — 
Social  Life.  —  The  Summer  Abroad.  —  Formation  of  the 
Clericus  Club.  —  Destruction  of  Trinity  Church  in  the 
Boston  Fire 35 

CHAPTER  III. 
1873-1874. 
Ecclesiastical  Controversies.  —  Relation  to  the  Evangeli- 
cal School.  —  Extracts  from  Correspondence.  —  The  Sum- 
mer Abroad.  —  Death  of  Frederick  Brooks 72 

CHAPTER  IV. 
1873-1877. 
Services    in    Huntington    Hall.  —  Extracts    from    Note- 
Books.  —  Method  of  preparing  Sermons.  —  Essay  on  Cour- 
age. —  Contemporaneous  Accounts  of  Phillips  Brooks  as 
A  Preacher.  —  Testimony  of  Principal  Tulloch  ....     101 

CHAPTER  V. 

1873-1877. 
The  Building  of  the  New  Trinity  Church.  —  The  Motives 
in  its  Construction.  —  The  Consecration  Services     .    .     .    124 

CHAPTER  VI. 

1877-1879. 
Extracts    from    Correspondence.  —  Invitation    to  preach 
for  Mr.   Moody.  —  Summer   Abroad.  —  Sermon  at  West- 


vi  '  CONTENTS 

MINSTER  Abbey.  —  Harvard  University  confers  the 
Degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity.  —  Comments  on  the  Gen- 
eral Convention.  —  Visit  of  Dean  Stanley  to  America.  — 
Illness  and  Death  of  William  Gray  Brooks 146 

CHAPTER  VII. 

1877-1878. 

Lectures  on  Preaching.  —  First  Volume  of  Sermons.  —  The 
Teaching  of  Religion.  —  The  Pulpit  and  Popular  Skepti- 
cism     174 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

1879. 

The  Bohlen  Lectures  on  the  Influence  of  Jesus    ....    209 

CHAPTER  IX. 

1879-1880. 

Visit  to  Philadelphia.  —  Convention  Sermon.  —  Correspond- 
ence.   Death    of    his    Mother.  —  Sermon    before    the 

Queen  of  England.  —  Westminster  Abbey.  —  The  New 
Rectory     


241 


CHAPTER  X. 

1881. 

The  Call  to  Harvard  University  as  Preacher  and  Profes- 
sor of  Christian  Ethics.  —  Extracts  from  Correspondence    276 

CHAPTER  XL 

1881-1882. 

Memorial  Sermon  on  Dr.  Vinton.  —  Death  of  Dean  Stanley. 

—  Speeches   at   Church    Congress.  —  Second    Volume   of 
Sermons.  —  The  Stanley  Memorial.  —  Death  of  Dr.  Stone. 

—  Request  for  Leave  of  Absence  for  a  Year 305 

CHAPTER  XII. 

1882. 

Plans  for  the  Year  Abroad.  —  Germany.  —  Correspondence. 

—  Religious  Convictions.  —  Extracts  from  Note-Book  and 
from  Journal  of  Travel 329 


CONTENTS  vii 

CHAPTER  XIIL 

December,  1882-March,  1883. 

India.  —  Letters  and  Extracts  from  Journal 383 

CHAPTER  XIV. 
May-Jnly,  1883. 
The  Journey  from  India.  —  The  Visit  to  Spain.  —  Reception 
IN  England.  —  Visit  to  Tennyson.  —  Letters.  —  Extracts 
FROM  Journal 417 

CHAPTER  XV. 

September-December,  1883. 
The  Return  to  Boston.  —  Extracts  from  Sermons. —  Address 
ON  Luther.  —  Correspondence.  —  Extracts  from  Journal    441 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
1869-1892. 
Theology.  —  Tendencies  of  the  Age.  —  Freedom  of  Inquiry. 
—  Authority  and  Conscience.  —  Orthodoxy.  —  Freedom 
through  Dogma.  —  Progress.  —  Tolerance.  —  The  New 
Theology.  —  Dangers  of  Freedom.  —  The  Bible.  —  The 
Prayer  Book.  —  Creeds.  —  Anglicanism.  —  The  Incarna- 
tion. —  The  Trinity.  —  The  New  Theism.  —  Pantheism.  — 
Miracles.  —  Sin.  —  Endless  Punishment.  —  The  Atone- 
ment. —  Emphasis  on  the  Will.  —  Supernatural  Exist- 
ences. —  Mysticism.  —  Morality 481 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

1884^1885. 
Extracts  from  Letters.  —  Visit  to  Washington.  —  The  Old 
House  at  North  Andover.  —  Theatre-Going  —  The  New- 
ton Controversy.  —  Missions.  —  Latin  School  Address.  — 
Degree  of  D.  D.  conferred  by  Oxford  University. — 
Sermon  at  Cambridge  University.  —  Extracts  from  Note- 
Book   ...    546 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 
1886. 
Portraits  of  Phillips  Brooks  at  the  Age  of  Fifty.  —  Mis- 
apprehensions OF  HIS  Position.  —  Essay  on  Biography.  — 


viii  CONTENTS 

Election  as  Assistant  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania. — Visit  to 
California.  —  Abolition  of  Compulsory  Attendance  on 
Religious  Services  at  Harvard.  —  North  Andover.  — 
Chautauqua  Address  on  Literature  and  Life.  —  Death 
of  Richardson.  —  Fourth  Volume  of  Sermons.  —  Protest 
against  changing  the  Name  of  the  Episcopal  Church  .    .    591 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

1887. 
Incidents  in  Parish  Life.  —  Invitation  to  deliver  the 
Bampton  Lectures.  —  Extracts  from  Note-Books.  —  Ser- 
mons AT  Faneuil  Hall.  —  St.  Andrew's  Mission  Church.  — 
Tenth  Anniversary  of  the  Consecration  of  Trinity 
Church.  —  Sermon  at  Andover.  —  Summer  in  Europe.  — 
Illness.  —  Correspondence 644 

CHAPTER  XX. 

1888. 
Railway  Accident  in  Philadelphia.  —  Incidents  of  Parish 
Life.  —  Lenten  Services.  —  Correspondence. — Sentiment 
AND  Sentimentality.  —  Comments  on  "  Robert  Elsmere." 
—  Thanksgiving  Sermon 670 

CHAPTER  XXL 

1889. 
Watch  Night.  —  Occasional  Addresses.  —  Lenten  Services 
at  Trinity  Church.  —  Illness.  —  Summer  in  Japan.  — 
Extracts  from  Note-Books.  —  The  General  Convention.  — 
Social  and  Political  Reforms.  —  The  Evangelical  Alli- 
ance. —  Correspondence 699 

CHAPTER  XXII. 
1890. 
Speech  at  the  Chamber  of  Commerce.  —  Lenten  Addresses 
IN  Trinity  Church,  New  York.  —  Change  in  Manner   of 
Preaching.  —  Correspondence.  —  Address  at  the  Church 
Congress.  —  Thanksgiving  Sermon 729 

CHAPTER  XXIIL 
1859-1893. 
Characteristics.  —  Reminiscences.  —  Anecdotes.  —  Parish 
Ministry. — Estimates 762 


CONTENTS  ix 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 
1891. 
Lent  at  Trinity  Church.  —  Noon  Lectures  at  St.  Paul's.  — 
Election  to  the  Episcopate.  —  The  Controversy  follow- 
ing THE  Election.  —  Extracts  from  Correspondence    .    .    817 

CHAPTER  XXV. 
1891-1892. 
Consecration  as  Bishop.  —  The  Church  Congress  at  Wash- 
ington. —  Administrative  Capacity.  —  Illness.  —  Lenten 
Addresses.  —  Union  Service  on  Good  Friday.  —  Conven- 
tion Address,  —  Correspondence.  —  Su»imer  Abroad.  — 
English  Volume  of  Sermons.  —  Return  to  Boston.  —  St. 
Andrew's  Brotherhood.  —  The  General  Convention  in 
Baltimore.  —  Death  of  Tennyson.  —  Correspondence    .    .    873 

1893. 
Conclusion 930 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


FAGE 


Phillips  Brooks  at  the  Age  of  Fifty,  from  a  photograph  by 

H.  G.  Smith.     Photogravure Frontispiece 

Phillips  Brooks  at  the  Age  of  Thirty-nine,  from  a  photo- 
graph by  F.  Gutekunst.     Photogravure 72 

Facsimile  of  the  Plan  of  a  Sermon 114 

Trinity  Church  Exterior  from  the  North 144 

Trinity  Church  Interior 204 

Rectory  of  Trinity  Church,  233  Clarendon  St.,  Boston    .    274 
Facsimile  of  a  Letter  to  Charles  H.  Parker,  Esq.    .    .    .    298 

Trinity  Church  Exterior  from  the  West       336 

Trinity  Church  Exterior  from  the  East 438 

Phillips  Brooks  at  the  Age  of  Forty-nine,  from   a  photo- 
graph by  the  Notman  Photograph  Co.     Photogravure      ....     500 

House  at  North  Andover,  Exterior 552 

Phillips  Brooks  at  the  Age  of  Fifty,  from  a  photograph  by 

H.  G.  Smith.     Photogravure 596 

Phillips  Brooks    at   the  Age  of  Fifty,  from  the  portrait  by 

Mrs.  Henry  Whitman.     Photogravure 664 

Rev.  Arthur  Brooks 726 

Rectory  of  Trinity  Church  :  The  Study 794 

Phillips  Brooks  at  the  Age  of  Fifty,  photographed  by  H.  G, 

Smith.     Photogravure 848 

Phillips  Brooks   at  the  Age   of   Fifty-five,  from  a  photo- 
graph by  Pach  Brothers.     Photogravure 886 

Phillips  Brooks  at  the  Age  of  Fifty-six,  from  a  photograph 
by  Elliott  &  Fry.     Photogravure 936 


THE  LIFE   AND   LETTERS 

OF 

PHILLIPS   BROOKS 


CHAPTEK  I 

1869-1872 


TKINITT  CHURCH.  THE  RECEPTION  EST  BOSTON.  CONTEMPO- 
RANEOUS COMMENTS  ON  PHILLIPS  BROOKS'S  PREACHING. 
RECORD   OF  WORK   IN  THE   FIRST   THREE   YEARS 

Phillips  Brooks  began  his  ministry  in  Trinity  Church, 
Boston,  on  Sunday,  October  31,  preaching  in  the  morning 
from  the  text,  St.  John  ix.  4,5:  "I  must  work  the  works 
of  him  that  sent  me,  while  it  is  day :  the  night  cometh,  when 
no  man  can  work;  "  and  in  the  afternoon  from  St.  John  iv. 
34 :  "  My  meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  him  that  sent  me,  and  to 
finish  his  work."  From  this  moment  began  the  long  period 
of  twenty -two  years  until  he  resigned  his  rectorship.  During 
these  years  he  knew  himself  and  thought  of  himself  primarily 
and  almost  solely  as  the  rector  of  Trinity  Church.  He  con- 
centrated his  energies  in  making  the  church  united  and 
strong.  He  lavished  upon  it  the  wealth  of  his  affection. 
He  believed  strongly  in  the  corporate  life  of  a  parish,  an 
organism  of  which  he  himself  was  a  vital  part.  Trinity 
Church  he  believed  had  a  great  future  before  it,  as  it  had 
also  a  great  past  behind  it.  To  help  it  to  realize  its  pos- 
sibilities was  the  single  task  to  which  he  devoted  his  powers. 
A  few  words  about  its  situation  and  its  history  will  make 
more  clear  the  picture  of  the  work  he  was  to  do. 

The  church  edifice  then  stood  on  Summer  Street,  near 
VOL.  n 


1  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

Washington  Street,  the  sole  relic  of  an  earlier  Boston  when 
Summer  Street  and  the  adjacent  territory  was  the  scene  of 
fine  residences  with  their  ample  gardens.  The  church  had 
been  built  in  1829,  and  though  robbed  somewhat  of  its  im- 
pressiveness  by  the  change  in  its  surroundings,  it  still  pos- 
sessed an  air  of  distinction  and  solid  majesty.  It  belonged 
to  a  style  of  architecture  which  has  since  passed  away.  It 
was  built  of  granite  with  a  massive  battlemented  tower,  and 
at  the  time  of  its  erection  was  regarded  as  one  of  the  finest 
churches  in  the  city.  Mr.  Brooks  has  thus  described  it 
in  his  historical  sermon  on  Trinity  Church,  published  in 
1877:  — 

It  was  a  noble  building  in  its  day.  It  was  one  of  the  first  of 
the  Gothic  buildings  of  this  country,  which  were  built  after 
church  architecture  had  begun  to  waken  and  aspire,  and  few  that 
followed  it  equalled  its  dignity  and  calm  impressiveness.  The 
lighter  and  more  fantastic  styles  of  building  sprang  up  in  the 
city.  The  timber  spires  that  made  believe  they  were  stone 
leaped  up  with  unnatural  levity  into  the  sky;  the  cheap  stone 
sculpture  covered  and  deformed  great,  feeble  fronts ;  the  reign  of 
imitation  came ;  and  in  the  midst  of  all  of  them  Trinity  stood, 
in  its  exterior,  at  least,  strong,  genuine,  solid,  with  its  great 
rough  stones,  its  broad  bold  bands  of  sculpture,  its  battlemented 
tower,  like  a  great  castle  of  truth,  grim,  no  doubt,  and  profoundly 
serious,  but  yet  able  to  win  from  those  who  worshipped  there  for 
years  an  affectionate  confidence  and  even  tender  yearning  for 
love. 

Trinity  Church  in  Boston  resembles  to  some  extent  Trinity 
Church  in  New  York,  as  being  the  centre  and  home  of  Epis- 
copal traditions  and  prestige.  Its  organization  went  back  to 
the  year  1729.  Like  the  old  North  Church  on  Salem 
Street,  it  was  an  offshoot  from  King's  Chapel,  which  was 
the  first  Episcopal  Church  in  Boston,  and  had  been  founded 
in  1689.  But  King's  Chapel  had  ceased  to  be  an  Episcopal 
Church,  and  the  neighborhood  of  old  Christ  Church  had 
changed  until  it  had  lost  its  ancient  influence,  so  that  Trinity 
Church  was  left  as  the  stronghold  of  Episcopacy  in  Boston. 
During  the  trying  days  of  the  Revolution  it  had  remained 
open  to  its  worshippers  when  most  of  the  Episcopal  churches 


^T.  ss-sSl    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON       3 

were  closed.  When  the  alternatives  had  been  presented  of 
closing  its  doors  or  of  omitting  the  petition,  in  the  Litany,  for 
King  George  and  all  the  royal  family,  it  had  chosen  the  latter 
with  the  hope  that  it  would  be  "more  for  the  interest  and 
cause  of  Episcopacy,  and  the  least  evil  of  the  two,  to  omit  a 
part  of  the  Litany  than  to  shut  up  the  church."  It  shows  the 
tenacity  of  the  corporate  life  of  the  church,  that  many  of  its 
worshippers  were  the  descendants  of  the  families  who  first 
constituted  it.  They  were  conservative,  holding  by  the  tradi- 
tions, cherishing  the  names  of  past  rectors,  among  whom 
Dr.  Parker,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Massachusetts,  and  Dr. 
Gardiner  were  men  prominent  in  the  social  and  civic  life  of 
Boston. 

It  seemed  to  many  incongruous  that  Phillips  Brooks,  the 
heir  of  a  long  line  of  Puritan  ministers  going  back  to  the 
settlement  of  the  colony,  and  of  eminent  Puritan  laymen 
honored  for  their  devotion  to  the  "Standing  Order,"  should 
be  the  rector  of  Trinity  Church,  with  its  reversal  of  these 
traditions,  representing  what  seemed  in  New  England  an 
alien  church,  indifferent  to  the  highest  ideal  of  Christian 
truth.  But  that  question  had  been  settled  for  him  when  his 
mother  made  the  transition  from  Puritanism  to  Episcopacy 
while  he  was  an  infant,  —  a  migration  which  caused  her 
many  searchings  of  heart,  but  which  she  never  lived  to 
regret.  As  for  Phillips  Brooks,  he  did  not  feel  the  situation 
to  be  incongruous.  He  had  been  brought  up  on  the  Church 
Catechism;  he  knew  no  other  church;  he  was  loyal  to  it 
while  yet  admiring  and  applauding  the  history  of  his  ances- 
tors. He  studied  the  records  of  Trinity  Church,  making 
himself  familiar  with  American  history  in  the  eighteenth 
century  and  with  the  process  of  its  religious  thought,  in 
order  to  connect  himself  more  closely  with  the  life  of  the 
church  of  which  he  was  the  minister. 

Trinity  Church  had  again  shown  its  loyalty  and  devotion 
to  the  cause  of  Episcopacy  when,  in  1842,  Dr.  Manton  East- 
burn  had  been  elected  bishop  of  the  diocese  of  Massachusetts. 
The  diocese  being  unable  to  provide  a  salary  for  the  bishop, 
it  had  called  him  to  be  its  rector,  and  thus  relieved  the  situa- 


4  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

tion.  The  endowment  known  as  the  Greene  Foundation  sup- 
ported from  this  time  an  assistant  minister,  who  divided  with 
the  bishop  the  burden  of  preaching  and  other  parochial  min- 
istrations, always  officiating  in  the  bishop's  absence  on  his 
episcopal  ministrations.  Among  these  assistant  ministers 
had  been  the  Kev.  Thomas  M.  Clark,  now  the  Bishop  of 
Khode  Island,  the  late  Rev.  John  Cotton  Smith,  and  Dr. 
Henry  C.  Potter,  the  present  Bishop  of  New  York.  But  this 
arrangement  had  not  worked  well.  It  was  a  case  of  divided 
responsibility.  The  assistant  ministers  were  not  free  to  carry 
out  any  projects  of  church  extension,  while  the  bishop  was 
also  hampered  by  the  double  burden  he  was  carrying.  When 
in  1869  the  bishop  resigned  the  rectorship,  it  was  felt  by 
all  that  a  new  era  had  dawned  in  the  history  of  Trinity 
Church. 

The  new  rector  brought  with  him  to  Boston  the  ways  he 
had  learned  from  Dr.  Vinton,  and  which  he  had  put  into 
successful  practice  in  Philadelphia,  —  the  Wednesday  even- 
ing lecture,  the  Saturday  evening  Bible  class,  and  the  com- 
municants' meeting  in  preparation  for  the  Lord's  Supper. 
These  were  the  methods  of  the  Evangelical  school  in  the 
church.  Things  were  beginning  to  change  at  this  time,  new 
modes  of  parish  activity  were  becoming  popular,  and  a  com- 
plicated machinery  of  what  was  called  "church  work"  was 
coming  into  vogue.  Much  of  it  was  adopted  by  Mr.  Brooks, 
though  without  display  or  ostentation.  He  was  equal  to  any 
one  in  appropriating  methods  of  activity  and  in  administer- 
ing them  wisely.  But  he  preferred  the  Wednesday  evening 
lecture  to  the  observance  of  Saints'  Days,  as  being  a  fixed 
occasion  in  the  week,  while  the  latter  came  irregularly  and 
were  in  danger  of  being  neglected.  Thus  Wednesday  even- 
ing became  a  sacred  occasion.  One  of  the  first  fruits  of 
his  ministry  in  Boston  was  to  find  the  chapel  of  Trinity 
Church  too  small  for  the  purpose,  and  calling  for  an  imme- 
diate enlargement.  But  this  did  not  meet  the  need,  and  the 
service  was  transferred  to  the  church,  where  every  seat  was 
occupied. 

Among  the  arrangements  he  projected  at  once  for  increas- 


^T.  33-36]    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON       5 

ing  the  activity  of  the  parish  and  creating  a  sense  of  respon- 
sibility for  those  without  was  a  mission  on  West  Cedar  Street, 
where  a  Sunday-school  was  gathered,  under  the  charge  of  a 
theological  student  from  the  Cambridge  seminary.  There 
was  at  this  time  an  Episcopal  Church,  St.  Mark's,  on  West 
Newton  Street,  which,  having  fallen  into  weakness  on  account 
of  the  changing  population,  was  no  longer  able  to  maintain  a 
rector.  He  proposed  that  this  church  edifice  should  be  pur- 
chased and  become  a  dependency  of  Trinity  Church,  and  that 
the  income  of  the  Greene  Foimdation  be  devoted  to  the  sup- 
port of  its  minister.  This  project  was  carried  out  after  some 
delay,  and  the  Rev.  Charles  C.  Tiffany,  now  Archdeacon  of 
New  York,  was  called  in  1871  to  be  its  rector,  and  assist- 
ant minister  of  Trinity  Church  on  the  Greene  Foundation. 
These  things  are  mentioned  as  showing  the  energy  of  the  new 
rector,  and  the  large  spirit  of  religious  enterprise  with  which 
he  began  his  parish  ministry  in  Boston.  But  these  yield  in 
importance  to  another  scheme,  which  he  broached  to  the  par- 
ish during  the  first  year  of  his  incumbency,  1870,  that  the 
church  should  be  removed  to  another  part  of  the  city,  where 
it  could  do  a  greater  work  and  better  meet  the  needs  of  its 
parishioners.  There  was  some  opposition  to  the  scheme,  even 
among  his  warmest  friends  and  supporters,  for  it  meant  a 
violent  uprooting  of  sacred  associations.  In  the  vaults  be- 
neath the  church  lay  the  remains  of  relatives  and  friends. 
There  were  other  difficulties  to  be  overcome.  But  Mr.  Brooks 
continued  to  urge  the  removal  as  an  indispensable  condition 
of  progress,  until  the  plan  was  approved  by  the  wardens  and 
vestry.  To  overcome  opposition,  to  create  sympathy  and 
agreement,  and  even  enthusiasm,  to  recommend  himself  to 
the  confidence  of  men  of  affairs  in  so  important  an  undertak- 
ing, is  an  illustration  of  the  many-sided  capacity  of  the  new 
rector. 

It  took  time  to  carry  out  this  large  plan.  All  through 
the  years  1870  and  1871  it  was  the  one  foremost  purpose  in 
Mr.  Brooks's  mind,  on  which  he  concentrated  his  energies 
and  his  interests.  He  was  studying  the  city  of  Boston  and 
the  possible  directions  of  its  growth,  in  order  to  the  most 


6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

available  site.  Before  any  other  steps  could  be  taken,  it 
was  necessary  to  gain  the  permission  of  the  legislature  to 
sell  the  old  edifice.  On  December  3,  1870,  the  first  meeting 
of  the  Proprietors  of  Trinity  Church  was  held  to  consider  the 
question  of  removal.  Early  in  the  next  year  Mr.  Brooks 
appeared  before  a  committee  of  the  legislature  and  stated 
the  reasons  why  the  removal  of  the  church  was  desired :  — 

I  think  there  is  necessity  for  a  removal  of  Trinity  Church  for 
the  best  interests  of  the  parish,  and  a  necessity  which  is  more 
and  more  strong  constantly.  There  has  been  a  growing  convic- 
tion with  me  ever  since  I  have  been  rector  of  the  parish  that  it 
would  be  necessary  to  move.  The  reasons  are  simply  these :  the 
entire  change  of  the  population  in  Boston  which  has  removed  all 
the  residences  from  Trinity  Church,  leaving  literally  no  residences 
within  that  region  round  the  church  which  is  usually  considered 
the  parochial  line.  All  our  congregation  are  therefore  obliged  to 
come  from  a  great  distance,  which  looks  badly  for  us  in  two 
ways;  in  the  first  place  by  rendering  their  attendance  unstable 
and  preventing  the  chm'ch  from  accumulating  any  permanent 
parish;  for  a  family  coming  from  a  great  distance  is  loosely  at- 
tached, and  unless  it  is  in  some  way  geographically  connected  with 
the  parish  it  cannot  be  counted  upon  to  sustain  the  church.  The 
instability  and  lack  of  adhesion  and  difficulty  in  conducting  any 
of  the  educational  and  charitable  work  of  the  parish,  arising  from 
teachers  and  taught  residing  at  very  great  distance,  is  one  reason 
that  has  forced  itself  upon  me.  These  difficulties  are  increasing 
every  day.  Every  removal  that  has  taken  place  —  I  may  say 
almost  every  removal  since  I  have  been  in  the  parish  —  has  been 
a  removal  to  a  greater  distance  from  the  church.  Therefore  look- 
ing forward  a  few  years,  we  can  see  how  much  the  present  diffi- 
culties are  likely  to  be  increased.  Then  there  are  difficulties  that 
attach  to  the  location  of  the  church,  —  the  nearness  of  a  busi- 
ness street,  and  the  extreme  noisiness  during  the  Lent  services. 
These  have  been  much  greater  this  season  than  last  season.  Then 
in  addition  to  these  two  reasons  there  are  the  very  serious  ones 
attaching  to  the  accommodations  of  Trinity  Church,  which  are 
entirely  incapable  of  remedy  in  our  present  location.  The 
church  originally  was  simply  a  structure  for  the  church  proper 
and  since  then  there  has  been  added  a  Sunday-school  or  lecture 
room,  and  this  is  the  only  room  we  have  at  present.  We  have 
no  rooms  for  class  instruction  and  for  carrying  on  the  work  of  the 
parish.     Our  lecture  room  is  inadequate  for  our  lecture-room  pur- 


^T.  33-36]    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON       7 

poses.  For  this  reason  I  think  almost  any  one  who  is  associated 
with  the  work  of  the  church,  who  is  engaged  in  the  actual  chari- 
table and  educational  work  of  the  church,  feels  the  necessity  of 
a  change  of  location ;  and  without  knowing  personally  the  opinion 
of  each  one  of  those  who  are  so  engaged,  I  should  say  that  with 
three  or  four  exceptions  they  all  favor  the  removal. 

The  permission  to  sell  having  been  granted  by  the  legisla- 
ture, it  was  accepted  by  the  Proprietors  of  Trinity  Church. 
The  question  of  the  new  site  was  not  an  easy  one,  and  delib- 
erations proceeded  slowly.  Not  until  the  end  of  the  year 
1871  was  the  lot  purchased  on  which  the  present  Trinity 
Church  now  stands.  Mr.  Brooks  was  at  first  strongly  at- 
tracted by  the  lot  on  the  corner  of  Beacon  and  Charles  streets 
facing  the  Common.  But  the  wisdom  of  the  final  choice 
needs  no  justification.  On  March  6,  1872,  the  building 
committee  was  created,  consisting  of  George  M.  Dexter, 
Charles  Henry  Parker,  Eobert  C.  Winthrop,  Martin  Brim- 
mer, Charles  R.  Codman,  John  C.  Ropes,  John  G.  Cushing, 
Charles  G.  Morrill,  Robert  Treat  Paine,  Jr.,  Stephen  G. 
Deblois,  and  William  P.  Blake.  The  committee  voted  at 
once  to  notify  Mr.  Brooks  of  all  meetings  and  their  readi- 
ness to  receive  any  suggestions  from  him.  Six  competitors 
were  invited  to  furnish  plans,  and  in  June  the  late  H.  H. 
Richardson,  of  the  firm  of  Gambrill  &  Richardson,  was 
chosen  as  the  architect.  "The  building  committee  were  at 
once  impressed,"  writes  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine,  in  his  final 
report,  "with  the  importance  of  purchasing  the  triangle  of 
land  which  now  forms  the  whole  Huntington  Avenue  front 
of  our  estate.  An  appeal  was  made  to  the  parish  for  gifts 
of  money,  and  a  generous  response  enabled  the  committee  to 
make  the  purchase."  The  additional  amount  thus  called  for 
was  $75,000,  but  the  contribution  reached  1100,000.  "The 
church,"  continues  Mr.  Paine,  "thus  completed  its  title  to 
the  whole  domain  of  over  an  acre,  enclosed  by  four  public 
streets,  and  making  the  church  visible  in  all  directions.  So 
far  as  the  committee  know,  this  is  the  only  site  of  the  Back 
Bay  where  these  advantages  could  have  been  secured." 

Plans  for  the  new  church  had  already  been  drawn  by  Mr. 


8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

Kichardson,  when  the  enlargement  of  the  estate  by  the  pur- 
chase of  the  triangle  called  for  their  entire  remodelling. 
It  was  while  the  building  committee  were  engaged  in  this 
study  for  a  new  design  that  the  great  Boston  fire,  on  Novem- 
ber 10,  1872,  swept  away  the  old  Trinity  Church  on  Sum- 
mer Street.  Whatever  indifference  or  opposition  there  had 
been  to  the  removal  of  the  church  could  now  exist  no  longer. 
A  new  interest  and  enthusiasm  united  the  parish  in  the 
determination  to  make  the  new  edifice  a  grander  one  than 
the  old  had  been.  The  building  committee  appointed  an 
executive  committee  out  of  its  numbers,  Messrs.  Robert 
Treat  Paine,  C.  H.  Parker,  and  C.  W.  Galloupe,  "with 
full  powers  to  prosecute  with  all  despatch  the  erection  of 
the  new  church."  Mr.  Kichardson  encouraged  them  to 
think  that  in  two  years  the  new  edifice  would  be  completed. 
In  this  hope  and  expectation  the  large  hall  in  the  Institute 
of  Technology  on  Boylston  Street  was  hired  for  the  Sunday 
services.  The  expectation  was  not  fulfilled;  it  was  more 
than  twice  two  years  before  they  saw  the  consummation  of 
their  desires.  But  meantime  in  this  secular  hall,  with  no 
accessories  or  associations  of  sacred  worship,  Mr.  Brooks 
entered  upon  a  still  more  powerful  phase  of  his  ministry, 
under  the  influence  of  which  Trinity  Church  not  only  re- 
mained united,  but  received  large  additions  to  its  member- 
ship. 

When  Phillips  Brooks  came  to  Boston  it  was  his  study  to 
be  the  rector  of  Trinity  Church,  to  carry  out  the  ideal  of  a 
parish  minister  as  he  conceived  it  in  all  its  scope  and  in  all 
the  detail  of  its  relationships.  To  give  himself  up  to  the 
work  of  preaching  the  gospel  of  Christ  to  the  congregation 
over  whom  he  was  set  to  minister  was  his  single  purpose.  To 
this  end  he  sought  to  know  the  people  to  whom  he  preached, 
to  study  their  needs,  to  share  their  joys  and  sorrows,  to  lead 
them  into  larger  conceptions  of  the  mission  of  a  parish  to 
the  church  and  to  the  world.  No  one  could  have  written  the 
"Lectures  on  Preaching"  who  was  not  first  and  foremost 
and  always  the  parish  minister,  devoted  to  his  people,  giving 
them  of  his  best,  and  in  the  relationship  of  mutual  love  and 


^T.  SS-sS]    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON       9 

service  finding  his  satisfaction  and  reward.  He  does  not 
indeed  record  any  vow  of  exclusive  faithfulness  to  this  special 
purjDOse,  but  that  it  was  his  purpose,  his  single  aim,  is  writ- 
ten on  all  his  work  after  coming  to  Boston,  and  finds  expres- 
sion in  unmistakable  manner.  During  the  year  before  he 
came  to  Boston,  while  the  call  was  under  his  consideration, 
he  must  have  been  solemnly  deliberating  with  himself  and 
reaching  a  determination  as  to  his  line  and  method  of  work. 
We  must  therefore  note  at  this  point  a  significant  change 
and  epoch  in  his  ministry.  In  Philadelphia  he  had  appeared 
almost  as  a  reformer  and  agitator,  with  a  work  to  do  outside 
the  pulpit,  which  rivalled  in  importance  and  popular  interest 
his  work  as  a  preacher.  He  had  thrown  himself  into  the 
cause  of  the  abolition  of  slavery  with  an  intensity  and  rare 
eloquence  which  was  not  surpassed  by  any  one.  He  had 
espoused  the  cause  of  the  emancipated  slaves,  pleading  in 
most  impassioned  manner  for  their  right  to  suffrage  in  order 
to  their  complete  manhood.  In  the  interest  of  the  Freed- 
men's  Aid  Society  he  had  made  stirring  platform  addresses 
in  the  greater  cities  of  Pennsylvania  and  in  New  York. 
He  was  more  prominently  identified  than  any  other  citizen  in 
Philadelphia  with  the  local  issue  whether  the  negroes  should 
be  allowed  to  ride  in  the  street  cars.  From  his  activity  in 
these  moral  causes  he  had  become  as  widely  known  as  by  his 
eloquence  in  the  pulpit. 

But  from  the  time  when  he  came  to  Boston  he  ceased  to 
be  identified  with  any  special  reform.  There  were  others, 
who,  as  soon  as  the  war  was  over,  had  addressed  themselves  to 
the  cause  of  the  working  people,  seeking  the  redress  of  social 
evils,  enlightening  the  popular  mind,  and  securing  the  needed 
legislation  for  the  amelioration  of  social  burdens.  Phillips 
Brooks  might  easily  have  followed  in  the  same  direction.  It 
was  in  him  to  have  become  a  reformer,  and  to  have  used  the 
pulpit  and  the  platform  as  his  levers  of  influence.  But  he 
did  not  take  this  role.  He  gave  himself  to  his  parish,  and 
exclusively  to  the  preacher's  task,  and  for  seven  years  he 
was  supremely  interested  in  the  work  of  building  the  new 
Trinity  Church  as  if  that  should  be  the  crown  of  his  labors. 


lo  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-72 

We  have  seen  that  his  father  was  dismayed  when  his  son 
devoted  his  strength  to  what  seemed  like  preaching  politics; 
how  he  earnestly  dissuaded  him  from  carrying  politics  into 
the  pulpit.  The  advice  may  not  have  been  without  its  in- 
fluence. But  apart  from  this  a  man  like  Phillips  Brooks  could 
not  have  had  his  Philadelphia  experience  without  studying 
its  bearing  upon  his  work  as  a  preacher.  As  he  studied  it, 
he  saw  that  the  two  functions  were  incompatible,  and  that 
of  the  two  the  mission  of  the  preacher  of  the  gospel  of  Christ 
was  the  higher,  the  more  important,  the  more  far  reaching 
and  fundamental  in  its  influence,  —  the  primary  condition  of 
all  successful  enduring  reforms.  It  must  not  be  supposed  for 
a  moment  that  he  was  not  interested  in  every  social  or  moral 
issue  which  aimed  at  the  improvement  of  man.  His  interest 
was  recognized  and  presupposed.  He  never  failed  when  he 
was  called  upon  to  advocate  any  good  cause.  He  sympa- 
thized with  those  who  devoted  their  lives  to  such  ends.  On 
occasions  in  his  own  pulpit,  and  especially  on  Thanksgiving 
Day,  he  uttered  himself  freely  on  the  questions  of  the  hour. 
But  he  did  not  identify  himself  exclusively  with  any  of  them, 
nor  work  for  them  in  direct  manner,  but  always  indirectly 
through  the  power  of  Christian  truth,  brought  home  to  the 
heart  by  the  preaching  of  the  gospel.  Of  all  the  cities  in  the 
land,  Boston,  more  than  any  other,  was  associated  with  ideal 
issues  and  moral  reforms.  It  might  be  almost  called  the 
home  of  reformers  since  the  days  when  the  preparation  began 
for  the  American  Revolution.  It  puzzled  Boston  people, 
therefore,  when  Phillips  Brooks  came  among  them  and  began 
at  once  to  exert  his  magic  influence.  They  found  it  impos- 
sible to  label  or  classify  him.  He  was  neither  a  moral,  a 
social,  nor  a  religious  reformer.  It  is  amusing  now  to  look 
back  at  the  efforts  made  to  define  his  position  by  critical 
analysis,  or  by  comparison  with  other  men.  Boston  at  last 
accepted  him  for  himself  without  attempt  at  analysis  or 
criticism.     But  in  the  earlier  years  it  was  not  so. 

One  cannot  think  of  Boston  without  thinking  of  Unita- 
rianism.  When  the  schism  took  place,  in  the  first  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  which   divided   the  Congregational 


JS.T.  23-3^1    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     ii 

churches  into  Orthodox  and  Liberal,  the  latter  body  carried 
with  it  the  social  prestige,  the  wealth,  the  intellectual  culture 
of  Boston.  It  was  represented  by  Harvard  College  also,  and 
by  a  line  of  men  eminent  in  literature,  —  Emerson  and  Haw- 
thorne, Longfellow  and  Holmes  and  Lowell,  and  many  others. 
It  had  given  birth  to  two  great  preachers  and  reformers, 
Channing  and  Theodore  Parker,  who  had  added  to  the  fame 
of  Boston  by  their  eloquence,  their  high  character,  and  their 
large  influence.  Phillips  Brooks  had  now  come  to  take  his 
position  by  divine  right  among  the  greatest  and  best  of  her 
children.  Her  literary  men  recognized  him  at  once  as  enti- 
tled to  an  equal  place.  There  could  be  no  doubt  of  his  great- 
ness, but  what  was  he,  and  how  should  he  be  described  ? 

At  first  there  was  an  inclination  on  the  part  of  the  Uni- 
tarians to  claim  him  as  their  own.  Such  power,  such  genius, 
marked  him  as  of  necessity  one  who,  though  he  might  not  be 
conscious  of  it,  must  be  at  heart  a  Unitarian.  They  were  un- 
familiar with  the  breadth  of  the  national  Church  of  England ; 
they  were  indifferent  to  Maurice  and  Stanley  and  Arnold, 
Kingsley,  F.  W.  Robertson,  Thirlwall  and  Tait  and  Temple, 
who  represented  liberal  theology  in  the  English  Church,  with 
whom  Phillips  Brooks  was  affiliated  in  spirit,  and  at  whose 
feet  he  had  sat  as  a  pupil.  Archbishop  Tillotson  and  the 
liberal  theologians  of  the  English  Church  in  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  they  had  long  since  forgotten. 
They  could  not  believe  that  such  things  were  indigenous  in 
the  Anglican  Church,  having  their  roots  in  the  Reformation 
and  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  However  it  was,  the 
Unitarians  flocked  to  the  new  preacher,  —  the  man  with  a 
message  to  which  they  responded  as  divine.  Against  this 
disposition  on  the  part  of  Unitarians  to  "attend  the  earnest 
and  attractive  ministry  of  Phillips  Brooks,"  the  "Liberal 
Christian,"  a  Unitarian  organ  in  Boston,  gave  a  most  em- 
phatic protest : — 

We  hold  the  earnestness  and  sincerity  of  those  Unitarians  who 
desert  their  own  worship  and  their  own  laborious  pastors  to  swell 
the  tide  of  hearers  of  Orthodox  Liberals  at  a  very  cheap  value. 
There   is   a  certain    meanness,  and   time-serving,    and   cowardly 


12  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

spirit,  and  a  carelessness  about  intellectual  and  moral  distinctions 
which  is  discouraging  and  deserves  strong  rebuke.      (1870.) 

The  "Liberal  Christian  "  was  indeed  very  much  in  earnest 
in  its  protest,  refusing  to  admit  a  communication  in  reply, 
which  extenuated  the  fault  of  the  culprits. 

The  editor  of  the  "Christian  Register"  (Unitarian)  went 
with  the  crowd  to  listen  and  to  know  for  himself  what  these 
things  meant.  He  was  inclined  to  be  severe  and  prej)ared  to 
notice  flaws,  yet  he  was  also  determined  to  be  fair  and  to  get 
at  the  truth.  "While  he  admired  the  noble  presence  of  the 
preacher,  he  found  defects  in  the  voice,  and  thought  the 
rapidity  with  which  he  read  the  service  somewhat  irreverent. 
He  was  on  the  watch  for  any  "omissions  "  in  the  service,  but 
could  not  detect  them.     This  was  his  report  to  his  readers:  — 

The  text  of  the  sermon  was  "She  hath  done  what  she  could." 
The  first  half  of  the  sermon  was  satisfactory  and  impressive,  that 
human  responsibility  was  limited  by  human  power  and  oppor- 
tunity. Every  man,  however  weak  and  humble,  has  some  thing 
especially  appointed  for  him  to  do,  and  the  harmony  of  the  uni- 
verse is  incomplete  so  long  as  he  neglects  his  task.    .    .    . 

All  this  was  exceedingly  impressive.  He  spoke  with  such 
fervor  and  unaffected  earnestness  that  we  felt  quickened  and  up- 
lifted by  his  appeals  in  behalf  of  our  doing  our  best,  and  making 
the  most  of  our  chances  in  life.  Then  came  the  only  unsatisfac- 
tory passage  of  the  discourse.  It  seemed  to  be  assumed  that  as 
sinners  we  must  not  only  repent,  but  rely  upon  Christ's  atoning 
blood.  No  particular  theory  of  the  atonement  was  insisted  upon, 
but  in  some  way  we  must  feel  that  we  are  ransomed  and  bought 
with  a  price. 

The  room  was  growing  darker,  and  we  became  less  and  less 
sure  that  we  understood  Mr.  Brooks  perfectly.  But  we  were 
quite  convinced  that  while  he  was  only  mildly  "  Evangelical  "  and 
used,  mainly.  Scriptural  expressions  that  admit  of  a  Unitarian 
interpretation,  he  left  the  plain  path  in  which  he  had  been  walk- 
ing for  the  devious  ways  of  theological  subtleties.  Still  the 
general  effect  of  the  sermon  was  excellent,  and  we  came  away 
deeply  grateful  for  the  most  that  we  had  heard,  with  a  new  un- 
derstanding of  Mr.  Brooks's  deserved  popularity;  and  fully 
believing  that  he  is  as  rational  and  independent  as  an  honest  man 
can  possibly  be  while  remaining  within  the  Episcopal  Church. 
The  whole  atmosphere  about  him  was  far  superior  in  simplicity 


^T.  33-36]    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     13 

and    manliness    to    anything    that    we    had    ever    known   in    his 
denomination. 

"If  the  Kev.  Mr.  Phillips  Brooks,"  remarked  the  "Con- 
gregationalist, "  an  Orthodox  paper,  commenting  on  this 
report,  "has  trembled  and  felt  weakened  as  to  the  security 
of  his  position  in  this  city,  he  must  now  take  heart  and  dis- 
miss his  fears.  The  editor  of  the  '  Christian  Register  '  hav- 
ing been  to  hear  him  has  come  away  '  fully  believing  that  he  is 
as  rational  and  independent  as  an  honest  man  can  possibly 
be  while  remaining  within  the  Episcopal  Church.'"  These 
things  are  not  recovered  from  the  forgotten  years  for  the 
purpose  of  illustrating  the  amenities  of  religious  controversy, 
but  in  order  to  reproduce  the  moment  when  Phillips  Brooks 
came  to  Boston.  It  recalls  the  picture  of  Boston,  or  of  any 
Massachusetts  town,  in  the  colonial  days,  when  a  stranger 
entered  its  precincts.  Before  he  could  be  accepted,  he  must 
be  questioned  and  made  to  give  an  account  of  himself.  The 
inquiring  looks  now  directed  upon  the  new  preacher,  the 
sharp  criticism  to  which  he  was  subjected,  were  simply  the 
inevitable  Boston  greeting.  It  was  Boston's  way,  —  that 
was  all.  Philadelphia  had  a  different  way.  It  had  not  the 
suspicion  of  the  stranger  as  such.  It  knew  a  good  thing 
when  it  saw  it,  and  did  not  spoil  its  enjoyment  by  overanx- 
ious questioning.  It  was  not  perhaps  so  easy  a  thing  for 
Boston  to  bow  before  Phillips  Brooks  as  it  had  been  for 
Philadelphia.  Boston  is  a  city  with  peculiarities  of  its  own, 
and  they  are  marked  and  strong.  But  on  this  point  let 
another  speak,  one  whom  Boston  loved  and  revered :  — 

Shall  I  say  [writes  Dr.  Channing]  a  word  of  evil  of  this  good 
city  of  Boston?  Among  all  its  virtues  it  does  not  abound  in  a 
tolerant  spirit.  The  yoke  of  opinion  is  a  heavy  one,  often  crush- 
ing individuality  of  judgment  and  action.  A  censorship,  un- 
friendly to  free  exertion,  is  exercised  over  the  pulpit  as  well  as 
over  concerns.  No  city  in  the  world  is  governed  so  little  by  a 
police,  and  no  city  so  much  by  mutual  inspection  and  what  is 
called  public  sentiment.  We  stand  more  in  awe  of  one  another 
than  most  people.  Opinion  is  less  individual  or  runs  more  into 
masses,  and  often  rules  with  a  rod  of  iron.^ 

1  Works,  vol.  ii.  p.  265,  ed.  1845. 


14  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

It  was  not  only  the  Unitarians  that  had  questions  to  ask. 
The  Orthodox  or  Trinitarian  Congregationalists  were  piizzled. 
The  Unitarians  watched  him  to  see  whether  he  were  Ortho- 
dox, and  the  Orthodox  were  curious  to  see  whether  he  were 
a  Unitarian  in  disguise.  At  this  time  the  antagonism  be- 
tween these  two  parties  was  strenuous  and  even  bitter,  for 
the  painful  associations  of  the  schism  which  Channing  had 
led  were  still  fresh  in  the  memory  of  many  then  living.  The 
influence  of  Theodore  Parker  had  only  intensified  these  reli- 
gious antipathies.  Parker  had  divided  the  Unitarians  into 
two  wings,  the  conservative  and  the  progressive ;  but  he  had 
also  aggravated  the  prejudices  of  the  Orthodox  against  the 
whole  body  of  Unitarians  by  his  denial  of  miracles  and  the 
supernatural,  by  his  criticism  of  Scripture  and  rejection  of 
its  external  authority.  But  his  was  on  the  whole  the  grow- 
ing tendency  in  Boston.  He  was  a  transcendentalist,  build- 
ing on  the  authority  of  an  inner  light,  finding  God  and  im- 
mortality and  religion  in  the  natural  instinct  of  the  human 
soul,  and  needing  no  external  authority,  whether  of  Scrip- 
ture or  prophet  or  person  of  Christ,  as  the  sanction  of  reli- 
gious truth.  But  there  was  also  something  better  in  Parker 
which  would  be  apparent  when  the  storm  of  controversy  had 
died  away.  It  was  then  with  dark  suspicions  in  their  minds 
that  Orthodox  critics  approached  the  new  preacher.  They, 
too,  were  not  quite  satisfied.  The  trouble  with  both  these 
classes  of  critics  was  that  they  went  to  their  inquiry  with 
formal  tests  of  doctrines  or  dogmas  uppermost  in  their  minds, 
while  the  preacher  was  in  another  atmosphere,  thinking  not 
of  doctrines  but  of  life. 

The  Episcopalians  [says  the  Boston  correspondent  of  the  Chris- 
tian Intelligencer]  have  a  new  light  and  popular  preacher,  Rev. 
Phillips  Brooks,  late  of  Philadelphia.  Before  coming  here  he 
had  achieved  a  high  reputation  in  the  pulpit,  and  as  a  liberal  in 
doctrine  and  churchly  rites.  However  true  it  may  be  we  know 
not,  but  he  is  said  to  occupy  about  the  same  theological  position 
as  Robertson  of  England.  We  heard  him  on  Sunday  evening, 
and  he  did  what  too  many  Orthodox  ministers  do  in  this  region, 
threw  out  a  "sop"  to  the  Unitarians.  His  sermon  was  unex- 
ceptionable in  almost  every  particular.      It  was,  in  fact,  the  best 


^T.  33-36]    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     15 

sermon  on  the  whole  we  have  heard  here  for  some  time.  It  was 
practical,  written  in  a  clear  and  forcible  style,  with  passages  of 
wonderful  beauty  and  eloquence.  It  was  delivered  with  that 
impetuous  earnestness  that  distinguishes  certain  nervous  natures. 
No  one  could  listen  to  it  without  being  moved  to  live  for  God. 
But  a  fly  was  in  the  ointment,  needlessly  there.  He  went  out  of 
his  way  to  say,  "I  don't  believe  in  total  depravity,"  and  then 
added  that  he  believed  there  was  something  good  in  all  men, 
giving  the  impression  to  those  who  did  not  know  better  that  the 
doctrine  known  as  "total  depravity"  embraced  the  view  that 
every  man  is  as  had  as  he  can  be,  or  is  utterly  destitute  of  what  is 
good.  But  still  he  intimated  that  there  is  no  recuperative  ele- 
ment in  the  soul,  an  important  feature,  however,  of  the  discarded 
doctrine.  Of  course  all  liberals  delight  in  such  statements  or 
caricatures,  and  then  quote  them  as  proof  of  the  effect  of  their 
liberalism  in  modifying  evangelical  doctrines.  Mr.  Brooks  ought 
to  know  just  what  total  depravity  as  a  theological  doctrine 
involves,  and  while  the  term  is  confessedly  objectionable  as  now 
interpreted,  yet,  like  many  legal  and  medical  terms,  can  be 
explained. 

The  popular  verdict  on  the  preaching  of  Phillips  Brooks 
was  more  important  than  the  judgment  of  the  critics.  There 
had  been  no  similar  event  in  the  history  of  Boston  which 
created  such  excitement,  such  widespread  interest,  such  a 
veritable  sensation.  He  stepped  at  once  into  the  same  rela- 
tive position  as  he  held  in  Philadelphia.  Trinity  Church  on 
Summer  Street  was  crowded  with  eager  hearers.  It  was 
almost  unseemly  the  way  in  which  the  people  claimed  him 
for  their  own,  regardless  of  the  privileges  of  those  whose 
special  minister  he  was.  They  came  from  every  direction, 
feeling  that  they  must  be  there.  Precedents  and  vested 
rights,  distinctions  of  pewholders,  the  authority  of  the  sex- 
ton, these  seemed  like  an  impertinence  when  Phillips  Brooks 
was  to  preach.  The  true  gospel  of  Christ,  the  word  of  life, 
must  in  the  nature  of  the  case  be  offered  alike  to  all,  without 
distinction.  It  was  a  trying  situation  for  the  stately,  deco- 
rous parishioners,  who  had  associated  worship  with  calmness 
and  dignity,  and  with  ample  accommodation  in  the  high- 
backed,  luxurious  pews.  It  was  no  slight  inconvenience  and 
annoyance  when  they  sought  access  to  their  pews  to  find  them 


1 6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

occupied  by  strangers,  whose  apologies  did  not  relieve  but 
only  magnified  the  grievance.  Mr.  Dillon,  the  sexton,  to 
whom  it  fell  to  manage  these  things,  strove  to  rise  to  the 
occasion  and  struggled  to  meet  an  emergency  so  wholly 
unlike  anything  he  had  hitherto  known  in  his  long  adminis- 
tration. He  tried  to  sort  the  people  who  presented  themselves 
for  admission,  sending  some  to  the  galleries,  and  allowing 
others,  whom  he  judged  more  fit,  to  occupy  the  waste  spaces 
in  the  pews  on  the  floor,  but  his  expedients  were  futile.^ 
There  were  too  many  seeking  to  be  admitted,  that  was 
the  simple  difficulty.  There  was  room  perhaps  for  a  thou- 
sand people,  and  the  demands  were  for  more  than  double  the 
accommodation.  The  people  became  indignant  and  vented 
their  anger  on  Mr.  Dillon,  "the  grim  and  truculent  sexton, 
who  acted  as  if  he  owned  the  church."  Complaints  found 
their  way  to  the  newspapers,  with  accounts  of  the  "most 
disgraceful  scenes  ever  enacted  within  the  walls  of  a  Protest- 
ant church."  Many  who  came  were  unfamiliar  with  the 
ways  of  the  Episcopal  Church;  they  regarded  the  morning 
and  evening  prayer  as  something  to  be  tolerated,  —  "  intro- 
ductory exercises  "  before  the  sermon  could  be  reached.  They 
rejoiced  at  least  that  "Mr.  Brooks  ran  it  off  so  rapidly." 
Mr.  Brooks  did  what  he  could  to  facilitate  matters.  The 
pews  in  the  galleries  were  declared  free,  and  after  pew- 
holders  had  taken  their  seats  the  church  was  thrown  open  to 
all.  But  this  was  no  temporary  evil  to  be  cured  by  any 
expedient.  It  lasted  as  long  as  Phillips  Brooks  remained 
the  rector  of  Trinity  Church.  Bishop  Eastburn  continued 
for  a  while  to  attend  the  services  at  Trinity,  But  he  was 
not  accustomed  to  such  excitement,  or  to  see  people  flocking 
in  crowds  to  the  proclamation  of  the  gospel.  He  was  not 
altogether  sure  that  the  new  preacher  could  be  "sound  in  his 
views."  He  betook  himself  to  the  roomier  spaces  of  St. 
Paul's. 

1  In  Mr.  Dillon' s  view  of  the  situation,  the  end  to  be  aimed  at  was  to  reduce 
the  numbers  who  sought  admittance  to  the  church.  "  He  once  came  to  me  in 
the  vestry  room,"  said  Mr.  Brooks,  "  to  teU  me  of  a  method  he  had  devised  for 
this  purpose,  '  When  a  young  man  and  a  young  woman  come  together,  I  sepa- 
rate them ; '  and  he  expected  me  to  approve  the  fiendish  plan." 


^T.  33-36]    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     17 

Many  of  those  who  went  to  hear  Mr.  Brooks  for  the  first 
time  were  so  impressed  that  they  must  needs  give  utterance, 
in  newspaper  articles,  to  the  emotions  which  stirred  them. 
Some  went  prepared  to  watch  closely  and  see  vividly  in  order 
to  get  the  material  for  a  striking  literary  report.  There  are 
in  these  early  years  at  Trinity  many  of  these  pen-and-ink 
sketches  of  the  preacher  and  the  wonderful  effect  of  his 
preaching,  descriptions  of  the  church  and  the  congi-egations, 
and  the  accessories  which  made  the  scene  impressive.  All 
agree  in  being  compelled  to  describe  the  preacher  himself  as 
though  that  were  a  part  of  the  message. 

The  door  of  the  anteroom  opens,  and  Mr.  Brooks  appears  in 
his  white  flowing  robes.  There  is  something  almost  boyish,  yet 
beautifully  sweet  and  earnest  as  well,  in  his  face  and  manner. 
He  is  emphatically  a  manly  man,  with  no  sentimental,  morbid, 
sickly  notions  of  life.  He  is  a  "muscular  Christian  "  and  believes 
in  work  and  stout-hearted  endeavor.  And  he  walks  through  the 
earthly  and  tangible  as  beholding  the  things  that  are  invisible  and 
heavenly.  All  this  and  more  we  find  in  his  strong  spiritual 
countenance. 

The  old  building  [according  to  another  report]  seems  the  fit- 
ting place  of  worship  for  the  solid  men  of  Boston.  There  is  an 
air  of  ancient  respectability  about  it.  .  .  .  The  deep  roomy  pews, 
and  thoughtfully  padded,  seem  adjusted  for  sleeping,  and  though 
seven  can  sit  comfortably  in  them,  if  you  humbly  ask  for  the  fifth 
seat  in  some  of  them,  beware  of  the  lofty  look  and  high-bred 
scorn  which  seems  to  say,  Are  not  the  galleries  free  for  negroes, 
servants,  and  strangers  ?  .  .  .  I  shall  have  to  let  you  in,  I  sup- 
pose. Take  that  Prayer  Book,  and  keep  quiet ;  service  has  begun. 
Don't  you  see  Mr.  Brooks? 

Yes,  we  do  see  the  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks,  a  tall,  stout,  power- 
fully built  man,  with  a  smooth  boyish  face,  and  very  near-sighted 
eyes,  which  nevertheless,  by  the  help  of  glasses,  seem  to  search  you 
out  in  whatever  dark  corner  you  may  be  hidden.  He  is  reading 
the  service  with  a  thin  voice  and  rapid,  breathless,  almost  stutter- 
ing delivery,  and  yet  with  a  certain  impulsive  and  pleading  ear- 
nestness that  carries  even  Congregationalists  on  their  knees  and 
takes  them  with  him  to  the  throne  of  grace. 

To   reproduce   here   the    many  comments   upon   Phillips 

Brooks  when  he  first  made  his  appearance  in  Boston  would 
VOL.  n 


1 8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

be  impossible,  and  yet  to  neglect  them  altogether  would  be 
a  loss  to  his  biography.  The  time  never  came  when  people 
tired  of  portraying  him  or  of  writing  their  impressions. 
Those  who  wrote  were  not  more  eager  to  rehearse  than  were 
the  thousands,  who  had  not  heard  or  seen  for  themselves, 
eager  to  read  what  was  written.  It  is  part  of  the  story  of  his 
life  to  give  him  in  his  relations  with  the  great  body  of  people 
who  heard  him  gladly,  who  were  sure  that  something  unknown 
before  in  the  history  of  the  pulpit  was  now  enacting,  and  that 
it  behooved  them  to  catch  and  preserve  each  slightest  accent, 
as  an  almost  sacred  responsibility.  Thus  they  loved  to  de- 
scribe his  appearance  as  though  in  this  case  the  symmetry  of 
form  and  beauty  of  countenance  were  in  some  mysterious  way 
the  counterpart  of  the  spirit  within,  and  nature  had  for  once 
succeeded  in  making  the  body  the  transparent  revelation,  the 
harmonious  accompaniment,  of  the  immortal  soul.  Such  was 
the  opinion  of  the  many,  but  others  dissented :  — 
i 
'^J  He  is  exceedingly  portly  and  also  very  tall ;  in  bearing  one  of 

the  most  commanding  men  of  his  day.  He  has  a  fine,  well-pro- 
portioned head,  covered  with  a  short  growth  of  thick  dark  hair, 
which  he  wears  easily  without  careless  indifference  and  also  with- 
out dainty  niceness.  ...  A  certain  throwing  of  his  head  up  and 
a  little  to  one  side  is  his  most  prominent  gesture ;  and  it  is  all  the 
more  effective  that  it  is  not  strictly  elegant.  There  is  nothing  in 
his  voice,  bearing,  or  look  which  can  explain  his  almost  unexampled 
popularity.      For  popular  he  is  almost  beyond  precedent. 

He  stands  in  the  pulpit  [says  another  writer]  smooth-faced, 
full-voiced,  as  self-reliant  a  man  as  ever  occupied  such  a  station. 
V  He  indulges  in  few  gestures;  he  has  no  mannerisms.  If,  under 
any  circumstances,  he  might  realize  the  popular  conception  of  an 
orator,  he  does  not  betray  the  possibilities  here.  He  provokes 
no  attention  to  predominant  spirituality  by  inferior  vitality. 
There  is  a  splendid  harmony  of  strength,  bodily  and  mental, 
which  prevents  the  measurement  of  either.  It  is  only  when  he  is 
out  of  his  desk  and  level  with  his  audience  that  you  realize  his 
stature.  In  the  lecture  room  or  crowded  street  he  stands  like 
Saul  among  the  people.  The  •  well-balanced  head  and  strong 
shoulders  draw  your  eyes  at  once.  He  dresses  well,  lives  well, 
and  holds  his  own  decidedly  in  social  circles.   .   .   .  His  power 


^T.  33-36']    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     19 

is  not  limited  to  his  church  ministrations,  nor  is  he  making  him- 
self known  by  some  brilliant  special  development.  It  is  the 
whole  man  —  mentally,  morally,  and  spiritually,  leader,  helper, 
friend  —  which  is  attaining  such  preeminence.  But  when  he 
preaches,  you  are  carried  away  to  the  need  of  men  and  of  your 
own  shortcomings,  and  have  no  present  consciousness  of  the  per- 
sonality of  the  speaker.  A  transparent  medium  is  the  purest. 
You  do  not  think  of  Phillips  Brooks  till  Phillips  Brooks  gets 
through  with  his  subject. 

His  manner  of  entering  the  church  [says  another  observer]  was 
quite  peculiar.  He  hurried  in,  sweeping  his  left  arm  in  long 
circuits  and  glancing  quickly  about  and  abruptly  kneeling  at  the 
altar.  In  selecting  his  places  in  the  Prayer  Book  he  continued 
to  glance  nervously  about.  .  .  .  And  yet  there  was  something 
even  then  that  interested  one  in  him  and  gave  assurances  of  his 
sincerity.  His  complexion  is  dark,  his  forehead  low,  his  face 
full,  and  his  figure  and  motions  those  of  an  overgrown  lad;  and 
yet  in  spite  of  all  and  through  all  there  is  a  struggling  for  good- 
ness and  culture.  .  .  .  The  sermon  was  a  model,  rapidly  de- 
livered and  yet  effectively,  when  the  preacher  had  advanced  far 
enough  to  lose  himself  in  it,  and  thrilling  the  hearer  by  every 
word.  .  .  .  There  was  apparently  as  little  aim  at  effect  in  the 
preparation  as  in  the  pronouncing  of  the  discourse,  but  it  was 
exquisitely  written  and  every  sentence  was  a  blade,  though  wreathed 
in  flowers.  The  hearer  was  both  transported  and  cut  down, 
delighted  with  the  rhetoric  that  saluted  his  ear  and  regaled  his 
taste,  and  penetrated  and  solemnized  by  the  truth  with  which  he 
was  addressed. 

Another  listener  goes  to  hear  him  at  St.  Mark's,  West 
Newton  Street,  one  Sunday  evening  in  midsummer,  allowing 
an  ample  half  hour  before  the  appointed  time,  only  to  find 
the  edifice  already  nearly  filled,  and  the  silent,  steady  stream 
of  worshippers  appropriating  every  available  spot  with  an 
earnestness  noticeable  to  the  merest  stranger,  and  this  al- 
though the  heat  is  intense  and  the  atmosphere  almost  stifling. 

A  stranger  [he  continues]  cannot  be  long  in  doubt  of  the  just- 
ness of  his  popularity,  as  he  enters  in  that  unpretending  manner 
and  goes  instantly  to  his  work,  without  a  seeming  thought  of  any- 
thing but  his  duty  as  a  worshipper.  Look  at  the  man !  Would 
you  not  look  at  him  twice  in  any  surroundings  ?  All  our  previous 
ideas  of  a  pale,  formal  stereotyped  Episcopal  minister  .   .   .  are 


/ 


20  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-72 

put  to  flight  at  once  and  forever,  as  we  are  instantly  magnetized 
with  the  man's  polished  energy  and  the  spirit  he  infuses  into 
every  part  of  the  service.  With  a  physique  the  embodiment  of 
perfect  health,  you  look  in  vain  for  any  symptom  of  the  spirit- 
ualized consumptive  symptoms  that  old-time  people  were  wont  to 
regard  as  a  sure  advance  towards  saintship.  A  round,  full, 
smooth  face,  shadowed  with  massive  eyebrows  and  lighted  with 
eyes  of  richest  black,  not  flashing  but  deep,  his  whole  expression 
so  free  from  guile  and  affectation,  and  every  movement  so  full  of 
inexhaustible  vitality,  that  he  seems  to  retain  all  the  wealth  of  a 
pure,  boyish  nature,  crystallized  into  perfect  manhood. 

Here  are  a  few  more  descriptions  of  Phillips  Brooks  in  the 
pulpit  and  of  his  manner  of  preaching :  — 

At  last  the  order  of  evening  prayer  is  concluded  and  the 
preacher  mounts  the  turret-like  pulpit.  He  is  clad  in  the  plain 
black  gown,  with  a  collar,  vest,  and  necktie  such  as  ordinary 
mortals  may  wear;  and  carries  a  manuscript  which  his  eyes, 
intently  following,  scarcely  leave  from  the  smoothing  out  of  the 
first  page  to  the  turning  of  the  last.  While  the  choir  are  singing 
the  final  verse  of  the  preliminary  hymn,  he  somewhat  nervously 
adjusts  the  tablet  before  him  to  his  height  and  the  lights  at  his 
side  to  his  eyes,  and  then  stands  motionless,  gazing  forth  for  a 
moment  with  a  pleasant  and  rather  inquiring  cast  of  countenance 
over  the  congregation.  .  .  .  His  sermon  to-night  is  from  Romans 
vii.  22:  "For  I  delight  in  the  law  of  God  after  the  inward 
man."  .  .  .  The  sermon  is  scarcely  over  thirty  minutes  long, 
but  is  preached  with  so  rapid  an  utterance  that  from  the  lips  of 
another  it  might  take  a  third  longer.  It  is  founded  upon  an 
exegesis  which  is  novel,  but  its  proposition  commands  assent,  its 
argument  is  strong,  its  tone  is  exhilarating,  and  one  goes  from  it 
pondering  the  oft-repeated  question,  What  is  the  secret  of  Phillips 
Brooks's  preaching?     Where  is  the  hiding  of  his  power? 

When  he  reaches  his  sermon  [says  another  observer]  and 
plunges  into  his  subject,  as  if  it  were  a  message  from  heaven, 
delivered  for  the  first  time  to  mortals,  so  fresh  and  earnest  it  is, 
then  the  real  height  of  the  man's  power  is  reached.  .  .  .  He 
avoids  all  the  old,  worn  grooves  of  reasoning,  and  leads  you  by  his 
own  routine  of  thought  into  the  clearest  and  simplest  comprehen- 
sion of  life's  duties  and  God's  demands.  And  as  he  is  lifted  by 
his  theme  into  a  rarefied  atmosphere,  and  with  a  marvellous  faith 
catches  a  glimpse  of  still  higher  summits  to  be  reached,  like  a 
mountain  climber,    scaling  from  crag  to   crag,   you  are  rapidly 


^T.  33-36']    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     21 

borne  along  with  him,  till  the  worries  of  earth  look  very  trifling 
from  the  crest  where  he  pauses. 

After  this  [according  to  another  report]  he  entered  the  pulpit  in 
a  black  gown  and  announced  his  text,  Hebrews  ix.  22 :  "  Wherein 
was  the  golden  pot  that  had  manna  and  Aaron's  rod  that  budded, 
and  the  table  of  the  covenant."  .  .  .  This  meagre  outline  can 
convey  no  idea  of  the  richness  of  the  sermon.  .  .  .  His  style 
was  simplicity  itself.  Illustration  and  imagery  are  not  profuse 
but  perfect.  His  power,  however,  is  what  no  one  less  gifted  than 
he  can  describe  to  another  who  has  not  felt  it.  It  seems  to  come 
from  a  deep,  personal  experience  which  gives  his  message  author- 
ity. .  .  .  He  has  a  certain  great-heartedness,  and  a  passionate, 
irrepressible  desire  to  bring  others  to  the  Saviour  whom  he  finds 
so  precious,  that  people  of  all  shades  of  belief,  and  no  belief,  are 
carried  along,  for  the  time  at  least,  by  the  same  enthusiasm  that 
seems  to  possess  him.  Out  of  twenty  or  more  of  his  sermons 
which  we  have  heard,  there  has  not  been  one  which  would  have 
been  unsuitable  for  a  revival  meeting.  Whatever  the  subject,  the 
central  thought  is  always  the  cross  of  Christ  —  the  goodness  of 
the  gospel  to  a  sinful  soul. 

A  stranger's  earliest  impressions  on  listening  for  the  first  time 
to  the  young  preacher,  whose  name  is  already  famous  far  beyond 
the  limits  of  his  own  denomination,  is  doubtless  amazement  at  the 
rapidity  with  which  words  and  sentences  follow  each  other  from 
his  lips.  Utterly  devoid  of  those  pulpit  mannerisms  and  affecta- 
tions of  which  the  world  is  weary,  his  first  utterance  seems  to 
fling  him  body  and  soul  into  his  subject.  .  .  .  It  is  the  earnest 
wrestling  of  a  brilliant  intellect  with  great  and  yet  simple  truths, 
evolving  new  and  startling  conceptions,  or  clothing  familiar 
thoughts  with  rare  and  subtle  beauty.  No  written  words  can  do 
justice  to  the  varied  powers  of  this  great  pulpit  orator.  He  has 
the  keenest  analytic  skill,  the  most  charming  purity  of  style,  a 
wonderful  grasp  of  glowing  imagery,  the  most  evident  sincerity, 
the  most  touching  pathos,  and  the  broadest  catholicity.  .  .  . 
There  are  none  of  our  so-called  popular  preachers  who  at  all 
resemble  Mr.  Brooks,  either  in  manner  and  style  of  delivery  or 
in  peculiarities  of  thought. 

We  have  seen  that  Mr.  Brooks  puzzled  the  inquiring  minds 
bent  on  detecting  his  theological  bias.  But  according  to  the 
majority  of  the  best  opinion,  his  teaching  was  in  the  strict 
sense  Evangelical.     An  Old  School  Presbyterian  says :  — 


22  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

Writing  from  an  "  Orthodox  "  standpoint,  your  correspondent 
may  be  pardoned  for  expressing  the  joy  he  felt  that  Puritan  truth 
is  the  doctrine  of  the  preacher  now  most  admired  and  sought 
after  in  degenerate  Boston.  It  was  most  refreshing  and  hope- 
inspiring  to  hear  him. 

It  is  this  compound  [says  another  writer]  of  Broad  Church  lib- 
erality and  absolute  fixedness  and  certainty  as  to  points  of  belief 
and  faith  that  accounts  for  Mr.  Brooks's  wide  influence  in  the 
community. 

Here  and  there  [says  a  writer  in  the  Congregationalist]  you 
will  find  one  who  thinks  that  the  Unitarians  get  a  little  more 
comfort  out  of  his  preaching  than  he  ought  to  give  them.  But 
there  is  reason  for  the  remark  that  such  suspicions  are  mostly 
confined  to  those  who  seldom  hear  his  sermons,  if  in  some 
instances  they  are  not  unaccompanied  with  what  is  very  near  akin 
to  a  professional  jealousy.  I  have  never  heard  but  one  opinion 
from  those  qualified  by  knowledge  and  impartiality  to  judge,  and 
that  is  that  the  current  of  his  preaching  is  strongly  and  warmly 
Evangelical. 

One  other  testimony  to  his  power  as  a  preacher  comes 
from  New  York,  when  he  preached  at  Grace  Church  in  the 
year  1870.  The  occasion  rose  at  once  to  dignity  and  signi- 
ficance, calling  for  description  and  comment  which  found 
expression  in  the  "Evening  Post:"  — 

The  preacher  was  a  man  of  mark  in  every  sense,  and  the 
moment  you  set  eye  upon  him  you  asked  who  he  was,  if  you  did 
not  know  him  before.  .  .  .  There  was  no  look  or  tone  of  assump- 
tion in  him,  and  in  fact,  until  he  warmed  in  his  sermon,  there 
was  nothing  in  his  manner  to  impress  you  with  remarkable  power. 
.  .  .  His  subject  was  positive  religion,  viewed  especially  in  its 
superiority  over  merely  negative  or  repressive  religion.  It  was  a 
strong  and  telling  and  glowing  argument  for  the  brave  virtue  that 
follows  the  "  Spirit "  above  the  petulant  asceticism  that  is  always 
fighting  with  the  "flesh."  The  preacher  held  his  congregation 
fixed  on  his  words  for  forty  minutes.  We  listened  to  him  with 
the  more  attention  from  the  fact  that  he  is  a  memorable  sign  of 
the  times.  He  seems  to  be  run  after  more  by  young  people, 
especially  of  the  more  cultivated  class,  than  any  other  preacher, 
and  he  is  the  most  conspicuous  man  now  in  the  pulpit  of  Boston, 
—  that   city   so    renowned    for   its    theologians.    ...   It  is  not 


^T.  33-36']    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     23 

difficult  to  discover  the  secret  of  his  power,  although  he  has  not 
all  of  the  conditions  which  have  been  regarded  as  essentials  of 
success  among  his  associates.  He  has  no  remarkable  qualities  of 
voice,  or  elocution,  or  gesture.  He  speaks  and  reads  very  rapidly 
and  has  no  dramatic  touches  of  pathos  or  humor.  He  does  not 
abound  in  original  metaphors  or  epigrammatic  points,  in  rare 
classic  allusions  or  profound  philosophic  distinctions.  He  has 
none  of  the  tragedian's  startling  tones  and  attitudes,  and  nothing 
of  the  buffoon's  grimace  and  merriment,  which  are  now  not  un- 
known in  the  pulpit.  But  the  power  of  the  man  lies  in  the  ful- 
ness of  his  nature,  his  thought,  his  affections,  his  purpose,  and  his 
speech.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  him,  and  he  lets  himself  out 
without  reserve,  without  affectation,  without  conceit,  without 
meanness.  His  sermon  flows  from  its  large  fountain  head  in  full, 
continuous  course,  now  in  easy  talk,  and  now  in  swelling  volume, 
and  now  in  dashing  force,  until  it  pours  into  the  open  sea  under 
the  eternal  heaven,  and  carries  you  on  its  grand  tide  to  its  glorious 
vision.  ...  It  is  a  significant  fact  that  Harvard,  which  has 
been  so  eminent  for  the  cautious  accuracy,  careful  elegance,  and 
dainty  reserve  of  its  orators,  should  have  sent  such  an  unusual 
representative  into  the  pulpit,  and  that  her  representative  preacher 
now  is  this  stalwart  Broad  Churchman,  who  preaches  the  human- 
ity of  Channing  with  the  creed  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  strikes  at 
the  shirks  and  shams  of  our  day  with  the  dashing  pluck  and  the 
full  blood  of  Martin  Luther. 

Space  must  be  found  for  another  calm,  intelligent  estimate 
of  Phillips  Brooks  as  a  preacher.  It  was  written  by  a 
Bostonian,  as  the  extract  just  given  was  from  the  pen  of  a 
New  Yorker,  by  a  Unitarian  who  abandoned  his  fold  to  listen 
to  him.     No  better  statement  than  this  was  ever  made :  — 

One  word  remains  to  be  said  in  regard  to  the  ministry  which  it 
has  been  our  privilege  to  attend  during  the  last  winter  (1869-70), 
listening  to  those  impressive  utterances :  — 

Where  all  is  calm  and  deep  and  grave, 
With  a  full  soul's  mature  sedateness ; 

where  the  overflow  of  vital  power,  and  wealth  of  poetic  imagina- 
tion, and  the  nameless  enchantment  of  genius  are  all  made  tribu- 
tary to  an  awful  earnestness  of  soul,  a  solemn  and  tender  sense  of 
responsibility  in  preacher  and  hearer,  which  sends  the  latter  away 
with  very  different  emotions  from  those  awakened  by  the  rhe- 
torical brilliancy,  or  dazzling  oratory,  or  mere  theatrical  perform- 


24  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

ance  of  whatever  kind.  Of  three  points  which  make  this  ministry 
especially  attractive  we  notice,  first,  an  extraordinary  mental 
clearness  and  precision,  which  make  every  word  aid  in  guiding 
the  hearer  straight  to  the  point  intended;  which  admits  no  re- 
dundance in  its  beautiful  and  finished  expression,  and,  in  its  most 
glowing  imagery  and  felicitous  illustration,  never  gives  the  idea  of 
external  ornamentation,  but  rather  deepens  the  impression  of  the 
truth  to  be  conveyed  as  by  the  exposition  of  a  purely  natural 
analogy  or  preexisting  correspondence  between  things  divine  and 
human.  And  secondly,  we  are  impressed  by  its  rare  2>&fsuasive- 
ness,  —  a  j)ower  of  taking  for  granted  assent,  which  almost  com- 
pels it,  an  emphasis  laid  on  points  of  agreement,  rather  than  on 
those  of  difference,  —  so  that  we  find  ourselves  addressed  from 
the  broad  ground  of  a  common  humanity  rather  than  from  the 
narrow  platform  of  doctrinal  distinctions,  and  are  led  to  recognize 
the  central  truths  which  underlie  and  comprehend  all  our  diversi- 
ties of  opinion.  But  once  more  and  including  all  the  rest,  we 
find  in  this  preaching  a  depth  of  thought  and  purpose,  a  scorch- 
ing analysis  of  character  and  motive,  that  cuts  clean  through  the 
crust  of  conventionalism  (whether  of  worldliness  or  religion),  and 
takes  us  to  those  depths  (shall  we  say?)  or  lifts  us  to  those 
heights  where  we  are  set  face  to  face  with  eternal  realities,  in 
whose  sight  the  poor  routine  of  our  daily  life  is  transfigured  with 
new  hope,  made  quick  with  grateful  impulse  and  weighty  with 
sacred  meaning. 

These  testimonies  all  belong  to  the  first  years  of  Phillips 
Brooks's  ministry  in  Old  Trinity  on  Summer  Street,  while 
he  was  making  the  conquest  of  Boston.  They  may  suffice  to 
show  how  the  city  was  moved  at  his  coming.  There  were 
those  of  course  who  doubted  whether  it  was  more  than  a 
passing  fashion,  some  of  whom  went  to  analyze  or  criticise 
but  for  the  most  part  remained  to  pray.  Those  were  wisest 
who  accepted  the  situation  as  inevitable,  recognizing  that 
some  strange  phenomenal  power  was  in  evidence  ;  that  this 
was  no  case  of  the  ordinary  sensational  preacher,  but  some- 
thing that  was  real  and  abiding,  and  as  deep  and  mysterious 
as  the  mystery  of  life  in  this  world.  If  it  may  have  been 
hard  at  first  for  the  Boston  clergy  to  bend  before  such  royal 
presence  in  the  pulpit,  they  did  not  show  it  ;  they  demon- 
strated their  own  greatness  by  admitting  that  a  greater  had 
come  among  them.     Still,  it  was  a  disturbing  experience  in 


^T.  ss-sS]    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     25 

all  the  churches.  It  was  a  source  of  further  disquiet  that  it 
was  impossible  to  classify  the  preacher  according  to  received 
canons  of  criticism.  Those  who  listened  in  order  to  sit  in 
judgment  sometimes  thought  they  had  discovered  the  secret 
of  his  strength  and  again  frankly  admitted  their  failure. 
"His  power  consists  in  his  simplicity,"  said  one,  "in  his 
earnestness  and  strength,  exhibited  in  the  expression  of  a 
theology  free  from  the  narrowness  and  technicalities  of  those 
dogmatic  schemes  which  make  religion  ridiculous  and  weigh 
it  down."  Another  said,  "Of  course  he  has  a  fine  intellect, 
but  it  is  the  warm,  earnest  heart  guiding  the  intellect  that 
gives  him  such  influence  over  his  hearers."  Still  another: 
"He  knows  what  is  in  us  all.  He  speaks  out  of  the  common 
experience  and  comes  right  to  the  heart  of  men."  And 
again  thought  another :  — 

His  secret  does  not  lie  in  his  thought  or  his  style ;  not  in  his 
utterance,  which  is  rapid  almost  to  incoherency,  and  marred  by  'an 
awkward  habit  of  misreading  his  writing,  a  delivery  unrelieved  by 
the  charm  of  a  musical  or  even  a  pleasant  voice ;  but  in  his  evi- 
dent honesty  of  conviction,  sincerity  of  purpose,  and  earnestness 
of  desire,  —  he  does  not  think  of  himself  or  of  the  impression  he  is 
making;  also,  in  that  he  approaches  men  on  the  side  of  their 
hopefulness.  He  is  a  man  of  exceptionally  intellectual  abilities, 
but  the  moral  qualities  are  so  obvious  and  forceful  as  to  make 
the  other  seem  secondary. 

Those  who  made  no  attempt  to  penetrate  the  secret  were 
on  the  safer  side.  The  preacher  had  the  "vision  and  the 
faculty  divine,"  beyond  which  it  was  impossible  to  go;  of 
which  Plotinus  had  said,  as  quoted  by  Coleridge:  "It  is  not 
lawful  to  inquire  from  whence  it  sprang,  as  if  it  were  a  thing 
subject  to  place  and  motion,  for  it  neither  appears  hither  nor 
again  departs  from  hence  to  another  place;  but  it  either 
appears  to  us  or  it  does  not  appear.  So  that  we  ought  not 
to  pursue  it  with  a  view  to  detecting  its  secret  source,  but  to 
watch  in  quiet  till  it  suddenly  shines  upon  us;  preparing 
ourselves  for  the  blessed  spectacle  as  the  eye  waits  patiently 
for  the  rising  sun."  Somewhat  in  this  mood  he  was  waited 
upon   by   the   people.     And   the  people   in   this  case  were 


/ 


26  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-72 

worthy  of  study,  as  was  the  preacher  to  whom  they  listened 
with  rapt  attention  and  in  a  wonderful  stillness.  They,  too, 
have  been  described  in  these  reports  from  which  extracts 
have  been  made.  It  seemed  to  some  as  though  the  congre- 
gations were  made  up  mostly  of  young  men,  to  others  as  if 
young  ladies  under  thirty  predominated. 

The  packed  congregations  of  old  Trinity  [says  one]  represent 
the  best  intellect,  the  most  cultivated  minds,  as  well  as  the  rich- 
est families  in  Boston. 

It  is  pleasant  [says  another]  to  see  Phillips  Brooks's  audience 
and  to  analyze  it.  I  had  expected  that  it  was  exclusively  of  the 
more  educated  classes,  but  it  is  not ;  from  the  place  where  I  sat 
last  Sunday  evening  I  could  pick  out  easily  enough  the  sewing 
girls,  the  Boston  clerks,  the  men  of  leisure  and  of  study,  the  poor 
old  women  with  their  worn  and  pinched  and  faded,  but  thoughtful, 
earnest  faces;  and  it  was  a  dear  sight,  all  those  classes  and  con- 
ditions of  men  riveted  to  the  countenance  of  Phillips  Brooks  and 
hanging  on  his  lips. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  popular  verdict  was  rendered : 
"Phillips  Brooks's  reputation  is  not  to  be  church  or  city 
limited.  So  thoroughly  genial,  strong-brained,  and  strong- 
hearted  a  man  will  of  necessity  find  a  wider  arena  than  can 
be  shut  in  by  any  lines  which  local  whim  or  habit  may 
draw." 

Somehow  [says  one  observer]  there  is  a  feeling  that  he  belongs 
to  the  Church  and  not  to  the  Episcopal  Church;  that  he  is  too 
large  a  man  for  the  enclosure  of  any  denomination;  and  that 
a  sketch  of  him  in  the  "  Congregationalist "  is  just  as  pertinent 
as  in  the  "Churchman." 

And  another  writer  sums  up  the  situation  with  an  air  of 
finality :  — 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  Phillips  Brooks  has  found  his  true  sphere 
in  Boston,  and  those  fond  souls  that  dream  of  his  return  to  Phila- 
delphia, disappointed  with  his  success  here,  may  safely  put  away 
that  delusive  hope.  He  has  not  been  long  in  Boston,  but  Boston 
knows  how  to  improve  her  own  advantages,  and  Phillips  Brooks  is 
already  a  household  deity  in  her  complacent  pantheon.  Harvard 
has  taken  him  under  her  wing,  and  he  is  already  one  of  her  mag- 
nates.    Boston,  secular  Boston,  quotes  him  familiarly  and  scarcely 


^T.  33-36}    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     27 

remembers  that  he  ever  lived  out  of  sight  of  Bunker  Hill.  Phila- 
delphia appreciated  and  valued  him.  Boston  appropriates  and 
canonizes  him  with  all  the  unapproachable  honors  of  the  "Cam- 
bridge set, "  and  there  is  only  one  thing  that  Boston  will  never  do 
with  him,  and  that  is  to  spoil  him  as  an  honest,  earnest,  fearless 
minister  and  man. 

From  Boston  and  the  city  churches  the  influence  of 
Phillips  Brooks  went  forth  at  once  into  the  suburban  towns. 
It  soon  became  evident  that  he  must  belong  to  all  the  people 
and  occupy  an  interdenominational  position,  so  far  as  was 
consistent  with  his  duties  as  the  rector  of  Trinity  Church. 
Thus  during  the  first  years  of  his  ministry  in  Boston  we 
find  him  preaching  in  Tremont  Temple  (Baptist),  in  the 
Hollis  Street  Church  (Unitarian),  in  Music  Hall  before  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association  and  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Union,  in  the  Shawmut  Church  (Congregational) ; 
also  in  the  large  Methodist  Church  in  Charlestown,  in  the 
Congregational  Church  in  Salem,  in  the  Harvard  Church 
(Congregational),  Brookline,  and  in  the  Baptist  Church  in 
Old  Cambridge.  But  we  find  him  also  in  Episcopal  churches 
in  every  suburb  of  Boston.  Three  times  on  every  Sunday 
he  now  preached  as  a  rule,  and  as  there  were  not  Sundays 
enough  to  go  around  he  preached  on  week-day  evenings,  and 
whenever  he  preached  it  was  the  event  of  the  moment.  All 
this  was  not  the  manifestation  only  of  ecclesiastical  courtesy, 
it  was  a  personal  tribute  to  the  preacher.  No  other  Epis- 
copal clergyman  was  ever  given  a  similar  opportunity. 

Among  the  manifestations  of  his  larger  ministry,  a  special 
place  must  be  given  to  the  St.  John's  Memorial  Chapel  in 
Cambridge.  It  had  been  one  of  the  inducements  held  out  to 
him  as  a  reason  for  coming  to  Boston,  that  this  new  and 
beautiful  chapel,  built  by  the  munificence  of  the  late  Robert 
Means  Mason  of  Boston,  for  the  use  of  the  Episcopal  The- 
ological School  and  for  Harvard  students,  would  be  put  at 
his  disposal.  It  had  also  been  urged  upon  him  by  Dr. 
Stone,  its  dean,  and  by  Dr.  Francis  Wharton,  one  of  its 
professors,  that  he  should  have  some  official  connection  with 
the   school;    but   this    proposition    he   does   not   appear   to 


28  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

have  considered.  On  the  third  Sunday  evening  in  January, 
1870,  he  preached  for  the  first  time  in  St.  John's  Chapel, 
a  memorable  occasion  to  the  residents  of  Cambridge,  for  it 
was  the  beginning  of  a  practice  to  be  continued  full  seven 
years  before  it  came  to  an  end.  On  the  third  Sunday  even- 
ing in  every  month,  during  all  this  time,  he  was  to  be  found 
in  the  pulpit  of  the  chapel,  till  his  regular  appearance 
became  a  prominent  feature  of  Cambridge  life.  From  the 
first  Sunday  that  he  preached  till  the  last  the  chapel  was 
densely  packed,  and  with  such  an  audience  as  Old  Cambridge 
can  furnish.  The  seating  capacity  was  estimated  at  about 
four  hundred,  but  a  hundred  camp  stools  were  provided  in 
the  aisles  and  vacant  spaces;  the  congregation,  regardless 
of  ecclesiastical  etiquette,  accommodated  themselves  in  the 
spaces  allotted  to  the  clergy,  around  and  beneath  the  pulpit, 
and  during  the  sermon  the  doorways  were  thronged  with 
eager  hearers.  Long  before  the  service  began  people  were 
to  be  seen  rapidly  wending  their  way  toward  Brattle  Street, 
and  were  willing  and  glad  to  wait  an  hour  in  the  church 
in  order  to  secure  their  seats.  It  was  not  an  Episcopal  con- 
gregation, rather  it  was  composed  of  those  who  profess  and 
call  themselves  Christians  and  of  those  who  do  not.  Profes- 
sors and  students  of  Harvard  College  availed  themselves  of 
the  opportunity  in  large  and  increasing  numbers.  The  spec- 
tacle was  an  inspiring  one  at  Trinity  Church  in  Boston,  but 
hardly  more  inspiring  or  significant  than  that  which  the  seat 
of  Harvard  University  afforded.  If  Cambridge  had  any 
intellectual  prestige  or  superiority  to  other  academic  centres, 
it  was  represented  fully  in  those  audiences,  who  during  these 
years  came  to  hear  Phillips  Brooks  in  the  chapel  of  the 
Episcopal  Theological  School. 

This  was  the  first  approach  of  Phillips  Brooks  to  the  stu- 
dents of  Harvard  College.  He  did  not  preach  in  Appleton 
Chapel  until  1873.  In  the  meantime,  from  1870,  he  took  a 
Bible  class  in  the  college,  composed  mostly  of  members  of 
the  St.  Paul's  Society.  Among  his  pupils  who  hold  this 
early  relationship  in  grateful  remembrance  were  William 
Lawrence,  now  Bishop  of  Massachusetts,  F.  W.  Tompkins, 


^T,  33-36']    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     29 

rector  of  Holy  Trinity  Church,  Philadelphia,  and  the  young- 
est brother,  John  Cotton  Brooks,  rector  of  Christ  Church, 
Springfield. 

Quite  as  striking  as  this  extension  of  his  influence  in 
ecclesiastical  or  religious  ways  was  his  recognition  in  secular 
Boston.  He  rose  quickly  to  the  place  of  a  foremost  citizen 
of  his  native  town,  whose  presence  at  every  civic  solemnity 
or  function  seemed  indispensable  to  its  completeness.  On 
such  occasions  he  took  his  part  with  dignity  and  gravity,  yet 
never  without  the  sense  of  amusing  incongruity  in  the  formal 
association  with  great  men  and  distinguished  citizens  to  whom 
as  a  boy  in  Boston  he  had  been  accustomed  to  look  up  with 
reverence.  The  child  in  him  was  perpetuated  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  manhood's  obligations.  Thus  in  February, 
1871,  he  was  present  at  a  meeting  in  Music  Hall  whose  aim 
was  to  awaken  public  interest  in  a  scheme  for  the  erection  of 
a  museum  of  fine  arts,  "when  a  distinguished  array  of  lead- 
ing citizens  occupied  seats  upon  the  platform."  Among  the 
speakers  were  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  and  Edward  Everett 
Hale. 

Mr.  Brooks  in  his  remarks  maintained  that  this  was  a  thing  of 
the  people  and  for  the  people.  He  pictured  clearly  the  state  of 
the  popular  mind  with  regard  to  an  art  museum.  There  was  a 
certain  hardness  and  want  of  development  in  American  character 
on  its  aesthetic  side;  an  art  museum  would  awaken  those  large 
ideas  of  life  and  nature  which  nothing  but  the  art  feeling  can 
awake,  —  a  boundless  good,  the  new  feeling  of  unworldliness,  and 
the  artistic  sense  it  would  create.  The  passion  of  our  people  to 
go  abroad,  when  we  have  so  much  natural  beauty  at  home,  was 
not  strange;  man  needs  man's  as  well  as  nature's  work,  and  hence 
Americans  flock  to  the  galleries  of  the  Old  World.  He  spoke  of 
what  he  gained  as  a  Boston  boy  in  the  Latin  School  out  of  the  old 
room  which  contained  the  wonderful  casts  of  Laocoon  and  Apollo. 
He  thought  that  an  art  museum  would  help  every  minister  in 
Boston  in  the  effort  to  lift  the  people  crushed  by  the  dead  weight 
of  worldliness  to  higher  things.  He  spoke  [^says  the  reporter] 
with  more  than  his  usual  earnestness  and  eloquence,  and  was 
frequently  applauded. 

He  was  present  as  chaplain  at  the  third  reunion  of  the 


30  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

Army  of  the  Potomac  in  1871,  an  occasion  which  brought 
together  Generals  Meade,  Hooker,  Fairchild,  Burnside, 
Logan,  Sheridan,  and  Pleasanton.  In  introducing  Mr. 
Brooks,  General  Meade  spoke  of  the  eminent  services  he  had 
rendered  during  the  war,  not  only  by  his  eloquence  in  the 
pulpit,  but  by  his  ministrations  in  the  hospitals  to  the  sick 
and  dying.  He  attended  a  large  meeting  at  Music  Hall  in 
commemoration  of  Italian  unity,  and  spoke,  together  with 
Dr.  Hedge  and  Mr.  E.  P.  Whipple.  He  was  the  chaplain 
of  the  Bunker  Hill  Monument  Association  at  its  meeting  on 
June  17,  1871,  and  in  the  fall  of  this  year  he  officiated  in 
the  same  capacity,  making  the  prayer  at  the  laying  of  the 
corner  stone  of  Memorial  Hall  of  Harvard  University. 
When  the  Grand  Duke  Alexis  visited  Boston  in  1872,  the 
festivities  were  concluded  with  a  banquet  at  the  Revere 
House,  at  which  Hon.  Robert  C.  Winthrop  presided,  and 
speeches  were  made  by  the  governor  and  mayor,  by  Presi- 
dent Eliot,  and  by  Messrs.  Lowell,  Dana,  and  Hillard.  Mr. 
Winthrop,  who  introduced  Mr.  Brooks,  spoke  of  him  as 
already  a  power  in  the  community,  as  welcome  to  social  and 
public  occasions  as  he  is  valued  as  a  pastor.  Mr.  Brooks, 
in  his  remarks,  dwelt  on  this  feature  in  Russian  history,  how 
all  Russian  life  and  government  were  everywhere  pervaded 
with  religion,  —  a  religion  different  from  ours,  which  had 
yet  a  great  work  to  do  in  the  world.  He  described  the 
growth  of  the  Grseco-Russian  Church,  claiming  that  the  great 
work  it  had  done  for  civilization  should  be  recognized. 
America  and  Russia  were  the  two  young  nations  of  the  world 
with  none  of  the  taint  or  stain  of  age.  "  The  youth  of  the 
guest  was  the  fit  expression  of  the  hopefulness,  the  large 
mysterious  future  which  was  before  his  country  and  his 
dynasty." 

In  1872  he  preached  the  sermon  before  the  Ancient  and 
Honorable  Artillery  Company  at  its  two  hundred  and  thirty- 
fourth  anniversary.  The  sermon,  afterwards  published,  was 
a  notable  one,  from  the  text  in  Revelation  xii.  7:  "And  there 
was  war  in  heaven."  It  was  characteristic  of  Mr.  Brooks 
that  though  he  hated  war  as  an  evil,  and  denounced  its  cm- 


■^r- 33-3^1    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     31 

elty  and  inhumanity,  yet  when  it  came  to  representative 
occasions,  he  took  a  different  view  and  subordinated  personal 
feeling :  — 

Force  has  a  divine  mission.  It  was  not  to  be  invoked  save 
for  divine  tasks,  never  for  the  mere  brutalities  of  selfishness,  or 
ambition,  or  jealousy,  or  worldly  rage,  or  for  the  mere  punctilios 
of  national  dignity.  So  far  as  war  had  justification  in  a  princi- 
ple it  was  this,  —  that  what  men  think  and  what  men  feel  should 
incorporate  itself  in  action.  The  late  civil  war  was  not  the  man- 
ifestation of  the  military  passion,  but  the  passion  of  civil  life, 
the  passion  of  home,  the  passion  of  education,  the  passion  of  reli- 
gion. It  was  not  war  but  peace  that  fought,  strange  as  the  para- 
dox may  seem.  This  was  the  claim  by  which  our  republic  may, 
with  no  imreasonable  pride,  boast  to  stand  among  nations  as 
Washington  among  men,  First  in  war,  first  in  peace ;  first  in  war 
becaitse  first  in  peace. 

One  other  remarkable  occasion  at  which  he  officiated  was 
known  as  the  Peace  Jubilee,  when  Boston  commemorated  in 
1872  the  reign  of  universal  peace  by  erecting  a  vast  tem- 
porary edifice  known  as  the  Coliseum.  Although  the  music 
to  be  furnished  by  a  choir  consisting  of  several  thousands  of 
voices,  with  a  correspondingly  large  orchestra,  was  the  prin- 
cipal attraction,  yet  it  was  thought  becoming  at  the  formal 
opening  to  have  a  religious  service,  and  Phillips  Brooks  was 
invited  to  make  the  prayer. 

There  were  opportunities,  however,  to  take  part  in  civic 
solemnities  which  he  declined.  Such  was  the  invitation  by 
the  city  of  Boston  to  deliver  the  oration  on  the  Fourth  of 
July  in  1871.  He  drew  a  distinction  between  the  pulpit  and 
the  rostrum,  between  the  sermon  and  the  oration  or  lecture, 
invariably  declining  to  lecture,  in  spite  of  the  inducements 
pressing  and  attractive  which  were  offered  him.  The  familiar 
New  England  Lyceum  still  existed,  and  Mr.  Redpath,  its  once 
famous  manager,  knew  well  the  value  of  Phillips  Brooks. 
There  had  been  a  time  when  Mr.  Brooks  would  have  welcomed 
such  an  opportunity.  It  was  one  of  his  boyhood's  ideals.  That 
he  had  come  to  some  resolution  to  abide  by  the  limitations  of 
the  pulpit,  if  limitations  they  were,  is  most  evident ;  in  this 
he  was  wise,  and  here  lay  also  one  source  of  his  power,  that 


32  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-72 

he  confined  and  concentrated  his  energies  in  one  direction. 
For  the  ministry  is  the  most  jealous  of  all  professions,  and 
the  pulpit  tolerates  no  rival.  It  would  have  been  very  easy 
at  this  moment  for  him  to  have  been  distracted  from  his 
profession,  drawn  off  into  lines  of  literary  activity  where 
he  must  have  excelled,  because  he  had  for  them  a  native 
aptitude.  Thus  he  was  received  into  literary  circles  in 
Boston  as  a  peer  among  men  who  had  won  world  distinc- 
tion. But  when  he  was  urged  to  domesticate  himself  in 
Boston  as  a  man  of  literature,  as  by  the  editor  of  "  The  Atlan- 
tic Monthly,"  the  invitation  was  declined  and  the  temptation 
put  behind  him.  Whatever  he  did  must  have  its  close  rela- 
tion to  preaching;  it  was  the  preacher  who  was  speaking  at 
the  civil  functions  which  have  been  described;  he  could  not 
talk  or  write  without  preaching. 

The  services  of  Mr.  Brooks  were  immediately  demanded 
in  behalf  of  philanthropic  institutions  and  charitable  occa- 
sions. Every  movement  for  reform  requested  his  assistance. 
Without  identifying  himself  with  any  special  cause  he  gave 
his  support  to  every  effort  which  aimed  to  secure  the  greatest 
good  of  humanity.  The  list  is  a  long  one  of  organizations  to 
which  he  lent  his  presence  and  sympathy  in  these  earlier 
years,  —  the  Boston  Fatherless  and  Widows'  Society,  the 
Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Animals,  the  Bos- 
ton Humane  Society,  the  Children's  Friend  Society,  the  Bald- 
win Place  Home  for  Little  Wanderers,  the  Society  for  Dis- 
charged Female  Prisoners,  the  Idiots'  School  Corporation, 
the  Consumptives'  Home,  General  Armstrong's  Hampton 
School  in  the  South  for  the  education  of  negroes.  At  reli- 
gious anniversaries  he  was  wanted,  even  the  Free  Religious 
Society  feeling  that  his  presence  would  not  be  amiss  in  their 
gatherings.  Equally  on  special  occasions  in  his  own  church 
was  he  called  to  speak,  —  before  the  Margaret  Coffin  Prayer 
Book  Society,  the  Episcopal  Church  Association,  the  Ameri- 
can Church  Missionary  Society.  It  was  with  a  peculiar  felici- 
tousness  and  distinctive  freshness  and  power  that  he  met 
these  situations,  as  shown  in  the  reports  of  his  remarks  which 
invariably  followed  in  the  press. 


^T.  33-36]    TRINITY  CHURCH,  BOSTON     33 

Amidst  these  many  appeals  to  his  sympathy  the  cause  of 
children  and  of  young  people  was  most  near  his  heart,  or 
seemed  to  be.  The  two  organizations  of  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Union  and  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 
possessed  him  as  if  he  were  exclusively  their  own.  And  these 
are  included  in  the  great  scheme  of  educational  institutions 
with  which  from  the  first,  and  through  all  his  later  years,  he 
allowed  himself  to  be  identified  as  he  did  with  no  other  cause, 
his  relations  with  schools  and  colleges  and  theological  semi- 
naries constantly  increasing,  and  growing  always  more  influen- 
tial, tender,  and  intimate.  One  might  think  that  this  was  a 
compensation  to  him  for  his  own  exclusion  from  the  work  of 
a  teacher,  which  in  his  early  life  he  had  chosen  for  a  profes- 
sion. There  was  something  extraordinary  in  the  way  in 
which  schools  and  seminaries  and  colleges  looked  to  him  as 
the  one  man  to  give  the  fitting  word  for  both  scholars  and 
teachers.  He  knew  how  to  address  them  from  within  their 
own  sphere.  This  could  not  have  been  unless  he  had  shown 
some  special  enthusiasm  for  the  cause  of  education  or  in- 
sight into  its  methods,  and  above  aU  a  sacred  reverence  for 
the  work  it  was  doing.  In  great  measure  it  was  his  by  in- 
heritance and  by  no  effort  of  his  own.  But  so  it  was  that 
from  the  time  he  came  to  Boston  he  proved  the  teachers' 
ally  and  friend,  and  there  was  a  spontaneity  in  the  action  of 
educational  institutions  and  agencies  who  sought  his  aid  as 
by  infallible  instinct.  Thus  in  1870  he  was  elected  an  over- 
seer of  Harvard  College.  In  1871  he  was  appointed  on  the 
State  Board  of  Education,  in  which  capacity  he  visited  annu- 
ally the  normal  schools  of  Massachusetts.  He  went  to  Vassar 
College  where  he  made  an  address;  to  Andover  where  he 
spoke  to  the  pupils  of  the  Abbott  Academy  on  "Methods 
of  Instruction  Human  and  Divine,"  "and  the  address  was 
like  the  author,  noble,  affectionate,  and  winning;"  he  was 
chosen  to  make  the  address  at  the  dedication  of  the  new 
building  of  the  Bradford  Academy,  and  his  subject  was  "The 
Personal  Character  of  Force  and  Truth."  He  gave  another 
address  at  Mr.  Gannett's  School  in  Boston  at  its  closing 

exercises.     As  an  overseer  at  Harvard,  he  was  one  of  the 
VOL.  n 


34  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-72 

Board  of  Visitors  at  the  Harvard  Divinity  School,  and  he 
soon  came  into  close  relations  with  the  Episcopal  Theological 
School  in  Cambridge.  He  still  retained  his  position  as  a 
trustee  of  the  Philadelphia  Divinity  School,  giving  to  it  his 
most  loyal  affection  and  support.  In  1870  he  went  to  Phila- 
delphia to  preach  before  its  alumni.  To  these  many  ad- 
dresses he  brought  the  same  careful  and  elaborate  prepara- 
tion. He  was  maturing  his  distinctive  principle,  which  was 
afterwards  to  appear  in  books  in  more  impressive  and  final 
form.  He  could  not  visit  school  or  college,  or  come  in  con- 
tact with  the  educational  process  in  any  of  its  stages,  without 
asking  himself  the  fundamental  question  of  his  own  youthful 
preparation.  How  is  the  power  of  ideas  to  be  brought  to 
bear  upon  the  will?  The  question  of  education  was  only  in 
another  form  the  problem  of  the  pulpit.  Thus  in  one  of  his 
note-books  he  gives  hints  of  the  thoughts  passing  through  his 
mind :  — 

The  whole  educational  idea  needs  revision  and  is  getting  it. 
All  these  years  there  have  been  a  few  influences  called  education, 
but  others  have  been  doing  a  large  part  of  the  work.  The  man 
at  thirty,  what  has  made  him  what  he  is?  Now  these  are 
things  claiming  recognition.  The  question  is  how  far  they  can 
be  brought  into  the  methods  of  a  school,  and  how  far  a  general 
basis  can  be  found  common  to  all  trades.  There  is  hope  of  this 
to  some  extent. 


CHAPTER  II 

1869-1872 

EXTRACTS  FROM  CORRESPONDENCE  AND  FROM  NOTE-BOOKS. 
SOCIAL  LIFE.  THE  SUMMER  ABROAD.  FORMATION  OF 
THE  CLERICUS  CLUB.  DESTRUCTION  OF  TRINITY  CHURCH 
IN   THE  BOSTON  FIRE 

We  have  seen  how  Phillips  Brooks  was  received  in  Boston, 
what  impression  was  made  by  his  preaching,  and  how  diver- 
sified was  his  activity  during  the  first  three  years  of  his  min- 
istry at  Trinity  Church.  W*e  now  turn  to  the  more  personal 
side  of  his  life,  to  the  impression  Boston  made  upon  him. 
What  hints  may  be  gathered  about  the  man  himself,  who, 
while  he  threw  a  flood  of  light  upon  the  souls  of  others,  still 
always  remained  in  and  with  himself  alone,  guarding,  as  it 
seemed,  the  shrine  of  his  personality  from  the  gaze  of  those 
who  fain  would  know  him  in  conventional  ways. 

His  manner  at  this  time  was  marked  by  the  signs  of  ex- 
uberant vitality ;  he  appeared  to  have  a  larger  degree  of  life 
and  of  health  than  other  men  possess,  and  a  boundless  hope- 
fulness. He  went  up  and  down  on  his  missions  or  in  his 
social  relations  with  a  certain  power  of  arousing  or  of  excit- 
ing all  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  His  capacity  for 
trifling,  his  talent  for  nonsense,  had  not  diminished  by  the 
change  from  Philadelphia  to  Boston.  In  the  photograph 
which  best  represents  him  at  this  period  there  is  a  look  of 
profound  inward  peace  and  contentment,  but  withal  an 
amused  smile,  as  the  commentary  on  what  he  was  observing. 
It  is  the  eye  of  one  who,  reading  others  and  studying  the 
secrets  of  their  hearts,  does  not  impart  the  secret  of  his  own 
life  in  casual  conversation.  In  this  respect  he  could  be 
almost  exasperating.      Those  who    felt    disposed   to    hold 


26  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

serious  discourse  with  him,  such  as  they  deemed  becoming 
to  his  office,  were  disappointed  when  a  question  called  for 
an  answer  revealing  the  inner  life.  He  met  them  frankly 
and  with  the  utmost  kindness,  with  so  great  charm  of  manner 
that  they  felt  drawn  to  him  by  an  irresistible  impulse ;  but 
when  they  undertook  to  sound  him  upon  opinions  which 
would  betray  his  inward  nature,  he  was  like  a  young  colt 
watching  for  the  first  sign  of  harness  or  halter;  in  a  moment 
he  had  vanished  in  quick  flight  to  the  remotest  corner  of  the 
field,  and  to  follow  him,  to  come  near  him  again,  was  impos- 
sible. The  passion  for  freedom,  the  refusal  to  be  entangled 
or  betrayed  until  he  knew  his  ground  and  was  sure  of  abso- 
lute sincerity,  was  his  marked  characteristic.  But  if  one 
would  be  content  with  an  hilarity  which  played  upon  life  and 
shook  together  its  various  elements  as  in  the  pictures  of  a 
kaleidoscope,  then  he  would  meet  him  upon  more  than  equal 
terms.  His  bearing  seemed  to  indicate  a  man  who  had 
never  known  sorrow  or  disappointment  in  cherished  hojjes, 
to  whom  life  appeared  as  enchanted  ground,  who  wore  the 
crown  of  the  victor,  and  possessed  some  subtle  power  of 
transforming  all  situations  into  victories.  And  yet  it  had 
been  no  slight  experience  which  had  transplanted  him  from 
Philadelphia  to  Boston.  Though  he  loved  Boston  with  all  his 
heart,  and  had  done  so  from  his  childhood,  yet  it  was  like 
the  love  of  a  child  for  its  home,  to  whom  other  homes  may 
appear  more  attractive,  richer  in  the  fascinations  of  life.  It 
took  him  several  years  before  he  ceased  to  hunger  for  Phila- 
delphia. Intensely  tenacious  as  he  was  of  old  friendships, 
and  slow  in  forming  new  ones,  there  was  something  almost 
unnatural  in  severing  the  sacred  ties  which  bound  him  to  a 
hundred  homes  in  the  city  he  had  left  behind.  It  looked 
almost  like  disloyalty  or  treachery  to  the  hearts  which  loved 
him  and  sorrowed  for  his  departure  that  he  should  begin  at 
once  to  create  new  ties  in  Boston  homes,  in  a  perfunctory, 
ministerial  manner.  It  was  long  before  he  entirely  outlived 
this  feeling.  Indeed  he  never  quite  outgrew  it.  Phila- 
delphia remained  the  city  of  joy  and  beauty ;  it  stood  for  the 
romance  of  life,  the  home  of  his  immortal  youth. 


^T.  33-36']    EARLY  YEARS  IN  BOSTON       37 

Thus  hardly  had  he  reached  Boston  in  the  fall  of  1869, 
when  he  returned  to  Philadelphia  for  a  flying  visit.  He 
writes  to  Miss  Mitchell,  November  7,  1869 :  — 

I  am  afraid  I  shall  be  dreadfully  jealous  of  any  one  who  steps 
into  my  place  at  Holy  Trinity  in  spite  of  my  great  desire  to  see 
it  filled,  which  is  very  unreasonable  and  womanly  in  me  of  course, 
but  natural.  I  am  seeing  my  people  and  like  them  very  much 
indeed.  There  are  many  more  young  people  among  them  than  I 
had  supposed.  I  do  not  feel  as  much  as  I  expected  the  embarrass- 
ment of  old  associations. 

Before  Christmas  he  made  a  brief  visit  to  Philadelphia, 
and  on  his  return  he  writes  to  Miss  Mitchell,  December  24, 
1869:  — 

My  visit  was  very  bright  and  pleasant.  I  cannot  tell  you  how 
pleasant  it  is  to  sink  out  of  the  strain  and  tension  of  this  new 
life  into  the  long-tried  friendship  of  my  few  kind  friends.  Two 
weeks  from  to-night  I  shall  be  at  your  board  again.  Till  then  I 
am  impatient.  We  have  had  a  Christmas  Tree  at  Trinity  this 
afternoon,  which  went  off  very  nicely.  Christmas  has  been  as 
pleasant  as  strangers  could  make  it. 

To  his  brother  Arthur,  who  asked  him  as  the  year  1869 
was  closing  whether  he  was  satisfied  that  he  had  done  right 
in  coming  to  Boston,  he  answered  that  he  would  prefer  to 
wait  and  tell  him  at  the  end  of  another  year. 

His  correspondence  with  Miss  Mitchell,  which  runs  through 
the  first  five  years  after  his  coming  to  Boston,  enables  us  to 
trace  the  external  events  of  his  life  with  the  advantage  of 
his  own  comment.  But  he  rarely  goes  much  beneath  the 
surface  of  things,  and  the  extracts  from  this  correspondence 
which  follow  need  to  be  supplemented  from  other  sources,  in 
order  to  a  completer  knowledge  of  the  man. 

Oh,  that  they  would  get  a  rector !  The  sight  of  the  parish  the 
other  day  convinced  me  how  much  they  needed  one  to  step  in  just 
now  and  take  the  loose  reins.  All  is  ready  to  run  as  steadily  and 
vigorously  as  ever,  but  with  a  little  longer  delay  there  will  be 
degeneracy  and  dropping  to  pieces,  which  will  be  hard  to  repair. 
McVickar  cannot  come,  and  they  will  not  settle  on  him;  why 
can't  they  call  Willie  Huntington?     (December  31,  1869.) 


38  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

Trinity  is  doing  beautifully,  the  church  is  full,  the  lecture  on 
Wednesday  evenings  is  crowded,  we  are  just  starting  a  mission, 
our  collections  have  doubled  what  they  were,  the  people  have  a 
mind  to  work.  There  is  no  opposition  worth  speaking  of  to  the 
idea  of  a  new  church,  and  we  shall  get  it  very  soon.  If  anybody 
says  that  I  am  disappointed  in  Boston,  tell  them  from  me  it  is 
not  so.  I  knew  just  what  to  expect,  and  I  have  found  just  Avhat 
I  expected.  Last  Sunday  evening  I  preached  for  the  first  time  at 
Cambridge  at  the  new  chapel.  It  was  crowded  mostly  with  stu- 
dents, and  all  went  off  very  well.  I  am  to  go  there  once  a  month. 
(January  20,  1870.) 

The  thing  that  dissatisfies  me  most  this  winter  is  the  way  I 
have  had  to  live  and  work.  I  have  read  nothing  for  three  months, 
and  though  I  have  had  a  very  pleasant  time  indeed,  yet  three 
months  is  a  big  slice  to  take  clean  out  of  one's  life  and  give  away. 
But  things  will  be  better  in  this  respect  by  and  by,  and  mean- 
while I  am  getting  a  whole  shelf  full  of  books  that  I  mean  to  read 
in  that  golden  day  which  is  always  just  ahead  when  I  have  leisure 
enough.      (January  24,  1870.) 

The  dreadful  certainty  of  some  people  grows  terrible  to  me,  and 
the  more  sure  I  grow  of  what  we  ought  to  do  and  of  what  we  are 
in  the  world  for,  the  more  dreadful  it  seems  to  have  dropped 
anchor  in  the  midstream  and  fancy  we  are  at  our  journey's  end. 
As  to  "where  they  will  bring  up  "  I  'm  sure  I  don't  know,  but  I 
fancy  somebody  does.  ...  "I  see  my  way  as  birds  their  trackless 
way.  I  shall  arrive.  What  time,  what  circuit  ^irs^,  I  ask  not. 
In  some  time,  His  good  time,  I  shall  arrive.  He  guides  me  and 
the  bird.      In  His  good  time."     (January  27,  1870.) 

I  have  been  dining  at  Mr.  Charles  Perkins's.  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Brimmer,  Longfellow,  and  Tom  Appleton  were  there.  It  was 
pleasant  and  easy.  The  Perkinses  have  endless  pictures  and  art 
things  of  all  sorts.  Mr.  Appleton  I  like  exceedingly,  for  he  is 
not  merely  bright,  but  generous  and  kind  and  simple.  (February 
10,  1870.) 

I  find  my  winter's  record  runs  into  a  dreadful  statement  of 
whom  I  have  seen,  not  what  I  have  read  or  what  I  have  done. 
It  has  been  a  winter  of  acquaintance-making.  I  know  some  five 
hundred  people  that  I  did  n't  know  in  October,  and  that  is  all. 
Except  as  a  very  general  sort  of  basis  for  future  work  it  is  not 
very  satisfactory.  Lent  is  just  upon  us,  and  while  it  is  a  time 
that  one  would  like  to  spend  with  a  people  that  I  know  better 
than  I  yet  know  these  Trinity  folks,  yet  I  shall  enjoy  it  with 


^T.  33-36']     EARLY  YEARS  IN  BOSTON      39 

them.  We  are  to  have  our  usual  services,  just  as  we  used  to  at 
Holy  Trinity,  and  besides,  I  have  undertaken  what  I  expect  to 
be  very  much  interested  in,  a  Bible  class  for  Lent  in  college  at 
Cambridge,  where  there  are  a  good  many  young  men  who  desire 
it,  and  who  came  and  asked  me  for  it.  ...  I  can't  tell  you 
how  much  I  am  depending  on  my  next  visit  to  Philadelphia.  .  .  . 
I  am  writing  on  Monday  morning,  when  I  am  giving  myself  a 
little  indulgence  after  a  hard  day  yesterday.  (February  28, 
1870.) 

Have  you  read  Emerson's  new  volume  [Letters  and  Social 
Aims]  ?  How  delightful  it  is !  I  speak  not  from  the  point  of 
a  Bostonian,  but  with  the  mouth  of  absolute  humanity.  Is  n't 
it  delightful  to  have  a  creature  so  far  outside  of  all  our  ordinary 
toss  and  tumble,  describing  life  as  if  it  were  a  smooth,  intelligi- 
ble, well-oiled  machine,  running  along  without  noise  on  the 
planet  Jupiter,  and  seen  by  him  with  a  special  telescope  and  then 
described  to  us,  instead  of  being  this  jarring,  jolting,  rattling  old 
coach,  which  almost  drives  us  crazy  with  its  din,  and  won't  be 
greased  into  silence?  It 's  a  capital  calm  book  to  read  at  night 
before  you  go  to  bed,  but  I  don't  think  it  would  go  in  the  morn- 
ing right  after  breakfast,  with  the  day's  work  before  you. 
(March  9,  1870.) 

This  is  Tuesday.  Do  you  remember  the  old  Tuesdays  ?  For 
five  years  I  think  we  hardly  missed  once,  when  we  were  all  in 
town,  of  going  to  Race  Street,  and  eating  our  dinner  together, 
with  a  long  talk  afterwards.  How  completely  that  is  over  now. 
Mrs.  Cooper  gone,  and  Cooper  in  Palestine;  and  Strong  and 
Richards,  who  were  part  of  us  for  a  while,  in  Kenyon  and  Provi- 
dence ;  and  I  here.  You  hold  the  field  alone.  Now  and  then  of 
a  Tuesday  it  all  comes  over  me  with  a  little  swash  of  blue. 
(March  22,  1870.) 

Last  night  I  had  my  Cambridge  class  again.  There  were  fifty 
young  men  there.  I  am  intensely  interested  in  it.  It  is  the 
most  inspiring  and  satisfactory  teaching  in  the  world.  (March 
29,  1870.) 

Have  you  read  Disraeli's  new  novel?  I  like  it  ever  so  much. 
It  is  full  of  such  swell  people.  One  lives  with  dukes  and 
duchesses  in  a  way  that  delights  me  with  mild  snobbishness. 
(May  26,  1870.) 

Have  you  read  Kent  Stone's  story  [The  Invitation  Heeded]  of 
his  conversion  ?  As  an  appeal  it  seems  to  me  powerful,  as  an 
argument  weak.     It  may  touch  some  people  strongly.     Poor  fel- 


40  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-72 

low!  there  is  something  dreadfully  sad  in  a  man  telling  himself 
and  the  world  over  and  over  again  that  he  is  happy,  as  he  does 
for  so  many  hundred  pages.      (June  8,  1870.) 

On  June  28  he  sailed  for  Europe,  where  he  had  planned 
to  spend  the  summer  in  a  pedestrian  trip  through  Switzer- 
land and  the  Tyrol.  He  landed  at  Cherbourg,  and  after  a 
few  days  at  Paris  went  to  Geneva,  to  be  joined  there  by  his 
friend  Cooper.  They  were  disturbed  by  rumors  of  war  be- 
tween France  and  Germany,  but  were  soon  out  of  reach  of 
telegraph,  and  for  some  days  knew  nothing  of  the  truth. 
They  first  realized  the  existence  of  war  by  its  interference 
with  the  Miracle  Play  at  Ober-Ammergau,  which  Brooks  had 
counted  upon  seeing,  the  one  great  human  interest  for  which 
he  sighed  in  the  midst  of  the  wonders  of  nature.  As  to  the 
war,  he  regarded  it  as  wicked  and  unnecessary.  His  sym- 
pathies were  with  Germany,  while  France  seemed  to  him  in- 
solent and  arrogant  beyond  herself.  After  some  four  weeks 
of  tramping  in  Switzerland,  face  to  face  with  Mont  Blanc, 
Monte  Eosa,  the  Matterhorn,  the  Jungfrau,  he  went  down 
into  Italy  and  thence  into  the  Tyrol,  which  was  new  to  him. 
Almost  every  day  saw  a  good  many  miles  of  walking  accom- 
plished. He  was  a  restless  traveller,  uneasy  unless  at  work 
and  seeing  something  new.  His  interest  and  enthusiasm  in 
natural  scenery  were  excited  to  the  highest  degree,  but  he 
never  failed  to  be  touched  by  the  contact  of  nature  with 
humanity.  The  scenery  he  describes  as  gorgeous,  the  towns 
as  picturesque.  Ischl  "is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  spots  on 
the  face  of  the  earth."  "We  drove  through  the  valley  of 
Salza,  till  far  up  among  the  hills  we  came  to  the  very  beau- 
tiful watering  place  of  the  Austrians,  Bad  Gastein.  It  is 
lovely  as  a  dream,  just  a  deep  mountain  gorge,  with  a  wild 
cataract  playing  down  through  it  and  splendid  mountains 
towering  above."  Here  stray  rumors  reached  him  of  the 
terrible  war,  with  the  unexpected  defeat  of  the  French,  which 
had  thrown  all  Europe  into  confusion.  Of  Meran  he  writes 
to  his  brother  Frederick :  "  Cleveland  is  pretty,  but  this  is 
prettier.  A  lovely  old  valley  with  vineyards  at  its  bottom, 
and  running  up  to  the  tops  of  the  high  hills  that  shut  it  in. 


^T.  33-36]     EARLY  YEARS  IN  BOSTON      41 

Old  castles  and  modern  chateaux  looking  down  from  every 
side,  and  in  the  midst  this  queer  old  town,  with  peasants  in 
their  picturesque  Sunday  clothes  strolling  back  and  forth 
over  the  ridge  that  crosses  the  little  Adige,  and  an  Italian 
sky  and  sunlight  over  everything."  From  Meran  to  Inns- 
bruck, then  over  the  Stelvio  Pass,  "the  grandest  in  Europe," 
till  they  came  to  Bormio,  "as  pretty  a  little  spot  as  there  is 
to  be  found  anywhere." 

One  of  the  chief  drawbacks  he  experienced  in  travelling 
was  the  shortness  of  the  beds.  He  writes  to  Frederick,  "You 
and  I  are  too  long;  you  wiU  have  an  awful  time  with  the 
beds  when  you  come  into  these  parts."  He  speaks  of  having 
escaped  from  bed  at  an  untimely  hour,  "because  I  could  not 
stretch  out  straight  or  make  the  narrow  bedclothes  come 
over  me."  He  was  in  Paris  on  the  28th  of  August,  having 
met  with  no  obstacles  in  getting  there,  though  under  constant 
apprehension.  The  city  was  still  gay,  even  when  the  Prus- 
sians were  believed  to  be  only  two  or  three  days  distant  and 
the  memorable  siege  was  impending.  Again  he  was  in  Paris 
on  the  5th  of  September,  "too  busy  and  exciting  a  day  to 
write ;  there  was  a  bloodless  revolution,  and  we  went  to  bed 
last  night  under  a  republic.  I  saw  the  whole  thing,  and 
was  much  interested  in  seeing  how  they  make  a  government 
here." 

Mekan,  Tyrol,  August  14, 1870. 
My  dear  Weir,  —  Cooper  and  I  have  been  spending  a  week 
among  the  Dolomite  Mountains  in  the  very  heart  of  Tyrol,  and 
we  have  wished  so  often  that  you  were  with  us  that  I  have  been 
much  put  in  mind  of  you  all  the  week,  and  now  that  we  have 
climbed  up  into  this  nest  of  vineyards  for  Sunday,  I  am  going  to 
do  what  I  have  meant  to  do  ever  since  we  got  among  the  hills, 
and  write  a  report  of  myself.  The  hills  have  been  too  many  for 
me.  They  have  piled  in  by  the  hundreds  and  buried  my  best 
intentions  of  letter-writing,  —  hills  of  all  sorts,  big  and  little, 
Swiss  and  Tyi'olean,  grassy  and  snowy,  with  glaciers  and  without 
glaciers,  each  sort  always  fiercer  than  the  sort  before  it,  and  last 
of  all  these  wonderful  Dolomites,  perhaps  the  most  wonderful 
thing  in  the  way  of  mountains  that  I  have  ever  seen.  They  lie 
in  a  vast  group  to  the  east  of  the  Great  Brenner  road  and  to  the 
south  of  the  Puster,  that  which  runs  through  Tyrol  from  west  to 


42  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-72 

east.  The  great  Ampezzo  road  into  Italy  runs  right  through  their 
midst.  They  shoot  up  singly  or  in  vast  groups  and  ranges,  sheer 
masses  of  rock,  black,  red,  or  dazzling  white,  three,  four,  five  thou- 
sand feet  into  the  sky,  vpith  tops  indescribably  broken  into  spires 
and  towers  and  castles,  with  great  buttresses  against  their  sides  and 
acres  of  snow  upon  their  sloping  roofs.  Between  the  groups,  right 
from  their  very  feet,  start  down  the  most  exquisite  steep,  green 
valleys  overrunning  with  luxuriant  cultivation,  with  picturesque 
villages  clinging  to  their  sides,  and  wild  brooks  brawling  along 
their  bottoms.  From  valley  to  valley  you  climb  over  steep  mead- 
owy passes  standing  between  two  of  the  giants  at  the  top. 
Ever3rwhere  grand  views  are  opening  of  the  great  Marmolata, 
which  is  the  King  of  all  these  mountains  with  his  miles  of  snow. 
The  constant  contrast  of  wild,  rugged  majesty  with  the  jierfect 
softness  and  beauty  of  the  valleys  is  very  fascinating.  The  moun- 
tains get  their  name,  oddly  enough,  from  a  certain  M.  Dolomieu. 
He  didn't  make  them,  but  some  years  ago  he  first  discovered 
what  they  were  made  of.  I  believe  it  is  some  peculiar  prepara- 
tion of  magnesia.  I  wonder  if  some  day  a  metaphysician,  or,  if 
the  materialist  people  are  right,  a  physician,  of  the  future  finds  out 
at  last  what  this  human  nature  of  ours  is  made  of,  whether  the 
whole  race  will  be  named  over  again  for  him  and  we  shall  all 
have  to  be  called  by  his  name  forever  and  ever.  How  the  moun- 
tains must  have  laughed,  or  frowned,  at  the  poor  little  Frenchman 
who  said,  "I  have  found  out  that  you  are  magnesia,  and  so  you 
must  be  called  Dolomites  eternally." 

These  southern  Tyroleans  are  very  interesting  people.  There 
is  a  pleasant  mixture  of  German  and  Italian  in  their  character, 
as  there  is  in  their  dress  and  language  and  look.  They  are  very 
cheerful  and  very  industrious,  the  men  handsome  and  many  of  the 
young  women  pretty.  Their  beds  are  short  and  the  bread  is 
awful,  but  they  always  give  you  your  candle  with  a  "May  you 
sleep  well,"  and  tell  you  that  dinner  is  ready  with  a  "May  you 
dine  well, "  that  makes  the  footboard  seem  a  little  softer  and  the 
bread  not  quite  so  musty.  If  you  are  unfortunate  enough  to 
sneeze,  the  whole  country  takes  off  its  hat  and  "  God  bless  you  " 
resounds  from  every  Dolomite  in  the  land.  Here  on  Sunday  they 
are  sunning  themselves  in  the  pleasant  gardens  of  the  Meran, 
looking  as  picturesque  as  possible  with  their  tall  hats  and  red 
jackets  and  big  green  suspenders  and  great  embroidered  belts  and 
bare  knees  and  black  breeches.  They  are  thoroughly  hospitable, 
and  help  a  fellow  out  with  his  imperfect  vocabulary  by  generally 
knowing  just  what  he  wants,  or  at  any  rate  what  it  is  best  for  him 
to  have.     If  you  could  see  the  route  that  Cooper  and  I  have  come 


^T.  33-361     EARLY  YEARS  IN  BOSTON      43 

over,  you  would  know  that  a  very  little  German  can  go  a  great 
way  in  Tyrol. 

Meanwhile  this  disheartening  war  goes  on,  and  we  hear  of  it  at 
intervals  in  the  mountains.  These  Austrians  hate  both  sides  so 
thoroughly  that  any  news  of  battle  is  welcome  to  them  because 
one  side  is  beaten  and  some  of  their  enemies  are  killed.  The 
great  battle  of  last  week  and  the  unexpected  rout  of  the  French 
has  changed  the  look  of  things.  With  Paris  in  his  rear  already 
sizzling  with  revolution  and  the  Prussian  cavalry  afront  of  Metz, 
it  does  seem  possible  that  this  war  may  be  the  suicide  of  the 
wretch  who  has  brought  it  on  with  all  its  horrors  so  needlessly 
and  wickedly.  It  seems  to  me  that  nothing  could  make  one  so 
despondent  about  human  nature  and  the  world  who  was  inclined 
that  way  as  just  such  a  war  as  this  coming  at  this  time  of  the 
day  in  history. 

Cooper  sends  you  his  love  and  wishes  you  had  been  with  us 
among  these  Dolomites.  The  poor  fellow  is  groaning  over  a 
letter  in  the  next  room.  He  and  I  are  alone  now.  Newton  was 
with  us  for  ten  days,  and  I  liked  him  exceedingly.  We  go  hence 
by  Innsbruck,  then  by  the  Finstermiinz  and  Stelvio  passes  into 
Italy.  Then  through  the  Engadine  north  again,  and  I  go  to 
Paris  if  I  can  get  there.  I  sail  on  the  10th  of  September.  I 
hope  to  find  at  Innsbruck  the  letter  you  promised  me  from  the 
Pictured  Rocks.  I  hope  you  have  had  a  good  summer.  God 
bless  you  always. '^  P.   B. 

The  following  extracts  are  from  Mr.  Brooks's  letters  to  Miss 
Mitchell  after  his  return  from  Europe :  — 

I  got  in  New  York  Stanley's  new  volume  of  Essays,  some  of 
which  I  have  seen  before,  but  all  of  which  are  interesting. 
There  is  an  essay  on  the  "  Religion  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  " 
which  is  the  best  statement  I  have  seen  of  the  characteristics  and 
prospects  of  what  we  call  the  "Broad  Church"  movement.  Do 
read  it.  His  views  about  Church  and  State  I  can't  agree  with, 
but  it  is  the  only  strong  ground  on  which  an  Englishman  can  put 
the  question,  and  for  all  Englishmen  must  have  weight.  What 
capital  English  he  always  writes  ?  I  send  you  a  number  of  the 
Harvard  boys'  paper  with  an  account  of  Mr.  Hughes's  visit  to 
them,  which  was  very  pleasantly  done.  I  missed  seeing  him  at 
Mr.  Fields's  by  my  Pennsylvania  visit.      (October  17,  1870.) 

^  Cf .  Letters  of  Travel,  by  Phillips  Brooks,  for  fuller  details  of  this  and  other 
journeys  abroad. 


44  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

I  am  reading  Huxley's  new  "Lay  Sermons."  How  clever  it 
is,  how  much  the  man  knows,  and  how  brilliantly  he  writes.  But 
it  is  like  most  Small  Books  on  Great  Subjects,  most  books  for  the 
people  that  popularize  science.  It  is  patronizing  and  mince- 
meaty,  and  he  is  particularly  belligerent  about  the  theologians  in 
a  way  that  does  not  do  credit  to  his  discrimination  or  temper. 
...  It  does  not  seem  as  if  it  could  be  only  a  year  ago  that  I 
preached  my  last  sermon  in  Holy  Trinity,  and  we  all  travelled 
together  to  New  York  the  next  morning.  It  seems  a  half  dozen 
years  at  least.  My  first  year  here  in  Boston  has  been  on  the 
whole  successful.  I  have  done  as  much  with  Trinity  as  I  had  any 
right  to  expect  to  do,  and  we  are  on  a  footing  now  to  do  more. 
But  it  has  not  been  the  pleasant  life  that  the  old  one  was,  and 
while  there  has  been  much  to  enjoy,  there  has  been  more  anxiety 
and  worry  than  ever  was  of  old.  But  I  dare  say  I  shall  like 
it  better.  Meanwhile  don't  think  I  am  blue.  (November  10, 
1870.) 

I  don't  feel  theological  this  morning.  It  is  too  near  Christ- 
mas, which  always  upsets  theology  entirely.  I  have  never  been 
able  to  write  a  Christmas  sermon  yet  that  was  in  the  least  a 
theological  satisfaction  to  me  or  anybody  else.  So  we  '11  put  the 
questions  on  the  shelf  till  next  week.  I  am  so  glad  that  Christ- 
mas is  coming,  and  yet  I  hardly  know  why.  This  is  the  only 
day  whose  associations  have  much  power  over  me.  I  don't  care 
a  great  deal  about  Anniversaries,  but  Christmas,  with  its  whole 
spirit,  into  which  we  all  seem  to  slip  so  easily  year  after  year,  is 
exceedingly  beautiful  to  me,  and,  as  I  go  about  the  streets,  the 
details  in  these  few  days  beforehand,  which  are  vulgar  enough  in 
themselves,  — men  mounting  up  spruce  boughs  in  churches  and 
men  carrying  home  turkeys  by  the  legs,  —  all  give  me  ever  so 
much  pleasure.  And  I  like  it  more  and  more  as  I  get  older. 
(December  23,  1870.) 

The  smallpox  was  prevailing  in  Philadelphia,  and  Mr. 
Brooks  writes  to  Miss  Mitchell,  inviting  her  to  Boston:  — 

We  will  take  good  care  of  you  in  our  cold-blooded  sort  of  way, 
and  when  the  pestilence  is  over,  you  shall  return  to  your  home 
with  an  increased  measure  of  that  respectable  dislike  with  which 
Bostonians  are  always  gratified  to  think  that  the  rest  of  the  coun- 
try regards  them.  Have  you  read  Dickens's  "Life,"  and  isn't 
he  a  disagreeable  person  and  isn't  it  an  ill-written  book?  (Jan- 
uary 6,  1871.) 


^T.  33-36']     EARLY  YEARS  IN  BOSTON      45 

The  Lecture  (Wednesday  evening)  did  n't  go  very  well.  The 
night  is  stormy,  and  though  I  don't  care  much  for  a  full  audience 
for  the  name  of  the  thing,  I  need  it  for  inspiration,  and  when  I 
see  a  small  audience  I  lose  the  impersonalness  of  the  thing.  I 
think  of  individuals  and  that  always  puts  me  out.  I  was  talking 
about  the^sit  of  Zebedee's  children  and  their  mother  to  Jesus, 
and  am  much  interested  in  the  subject.  But  it  never  is  yet  the 
same  thing  talking  in  Trinity  that  it  used  to  be  in  the  old  time 
speaking  from  the  dear  old  platform.      (January  11,  1871.) 

I  have  been  quite  stirred  upon  the  subject  of  prophecy  in  writ- 
ing a  sermon  for  last  Sunday  on  Cephas.  I  am  quite  convinced 
that  there  were  two  Isaiahs.  .  .  .  Queer  people  come  to  consult 
me  here.  To-day  there  was  a  man  who  had  been  to  England  and 
got  into  some  set  of  fanatics  there  and  come  home  calling  himself 
a  Christadelphian.  To-morrow,  like  as  not  it  will  be  a  skeptic 
of  the  widest  incredulity.      (January  18,  1871.) 

One  evening  this  week  I  had  my  Cambridge  boys,  the  fifteen 
senior  members  of  the  St.  Paul's  Society,  in  at  my  room  to  spend 
the  evening  with  me,  a  noble  set  of  fellows,  manly  and  true,  and 
helped  instead  of  hurt  by  their  religion.  I  take  gi'eat  pleasure  in 
them.      (February  3,  1871.) 

Aren't  you  glad  that  Paris  is  taken?  I  was  reading  last 
night  one  of  Robertson's  Lectures  on  Poetry,  with  its  extravagant 
glorification  of  war,  which  is  so  amazing  in  a  right-minded  man 
like  him.  It  seems  to  have  been  the  last  remnant  of  brutality 
in  a  nature  which  had  been  almost  everywhere  cultured  and  refined 
far  above  it.  But  who  can  look  at  the  last  ten  years  on  both 
continents  and  not  call  war  horrible?  Let  us  trust  this  one  is 
over.  Good  must  come  of  it,  horrible  as  the  process  is.  Who- 
ever was  to  blame  for  it,  we  surely  can't  help  being  thankful  that 
Prussia  and  not  France  is  to  be  the  master  in  Europe.  (February 
13,  1871.) 

This  is  one  of  the  evenings  when  I  wish  myself  in  Philadelphia ; 
not  that  anything  particular  is  the  matter  with  Boston,  but  I 
have  an  evening  to  myself  and  I  am  tired  of  reading,  and  there  is 
nobody  in  particular  that  I  can  go  and  see  without  its  being  a  visit, 
which  I  don't  feel  up  to.  Nobody's  house  where  I  can  go  and 
smoke  and  be  pleasantly  talked  to,  and  answer  or  not,  as  I  please. 
I  know  one  such  house  in  another  town  where  I  don't  live  any 
longer.  But  I  am  not  there,  and  I  must  make  the  best  of  it. 
(March  7,  1871.) 


46  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

As  to  English  Church  matters,  I  am  thoroughly  content  with 
the  Voysey  decision,  and  I  think  the  Convocation  debate  about 
(Vance)  Smith  disgraceful.  It  is  published  in  full  in  the  "Guard- 
ian." Bishop  Wilberforce  is  worse  in  his  way  than  any  .  .  . 
can  be.  The  American  bishops  too,  it  seems,  went  with  them. 
(March  15,1871.) 

I  am  having  a  very  good  time,  with  plenty  of  loose  reading  and 
the  days  only  half  long  enough  for  what  I  find  to  do.  This  even- 
ing I  have  been  reading  Tyndale's  new  book  of  Alpine  stories, 
which  is  very  charming,  bringing  back  the  fascination  of  that 
wonderful  country  and  exciting  one  as  all  such  accounts  of  ven- 
turesome climbing  unaccountably  do.  The  style  is  charming,  and 
the  man,  with  his  splendid  health  and  enjoyment  of  nature  and 
his  current  of  sentiment,  is  delightful.      (July  25,  1871). 

Are  all  Hutton's  Essays  like  the  one  which  I  have  just  been 
reading,  republished  by  Dr.  Osgood  in  New  York?  It  is  on  the 
"Incarnation  and  the  Laws  of  Evidence,"  and  shows  a  breadth 
and  purity  and  devoutness  of  mind  which  gives  one  great  delight. 
I  would  rather  have  a  Unitarian  read  it  than  any  book  I  know; 
and  if  one  thinks  that  Broad  Churchmanship  is  necessarily  hard 

or   indifferent   of    the   Whately  or  the style,  nothing  could 

better  convince  him  otherwise  than  the  warmth  and  earnestness 
of  this  little  book,  which  has  so  evidently  come  out  of  a  man's 
soul.      (August  10,  1871.) 

The  summer  of  1871  was  spent  in  Boston.  He  seems  to 
have  adopted  the  rule,  though  it  was  not  invariable,  of  taking 
tlie  alternate  summers  abroad.  Throughout  the  summer  he 
preached  regularly  at  Trinity  Church  in  the  morning,  and  at 
St.  Mark's,  West  Newton  Street,  in  the  evening.  Both 
churches  were  free  to  strangers,  and  it  is  needless  to  say  were 
filled. 

The  summer  still  continues  very  beautiful,  cool  and  pleasant, 
and  I  have  enjoyed  the  leisure  of  the  town  exceedingly.  But  I 
am  already  looking  forward  and  counting  on  my  visit  to  you  in 
the  fall.  I  shall  enjoy  it  immensely,  and  you  will  be  obliging 
and  talk  to  me  as  much  as  I  want  to  know.  From  that  I  shall 
take  the  fresh  start  into  another  winter  which  everybody  needs, 
and  which  is  mainly  what  one  loses  by  keeping  at  work  all  sum- 
mer. "All  life  is  tidal,"  as  Tom  Appleton  said  to  me  on  the 
street  just  now,  and  went  on  to  tell  me  how  the  other  creatures  as 


^T.^S-S^]     EARLY   YEARS   IN   BOSTON    47 

well  as  we  needed  ebb  and  flow  and  got  it  somehow  at  regular 
periods  of  their  life.  So  I  shall  be  high  tide  about  the  last  of 
October.      (August  13,  1871.) 

I  have  been  reading  Browning's  new  poem,  and  I  couldn't  help 
feeling  vaguely  all  the  while  that  there  was  a  sort  of  story  in  it 
of  the  way  that  other  men  lose  their  wives  nowadays,  only  not 
always  with  the  better  fruit  of  widowhood.  The  poem  seems  to 
me,  by  the  way,  very  fine  and  beautiful,  more  tender  and  human, 
than  almost  anything  that  Browning  has  ever  given  us  before. 
(August  22,  1871.) 

Miss was  staying  at  the  Vintons'  (at  Pomfret),  and  when 

I  was  coming  up,  as  I  had  to  do  on  Wednesday,  to  attend  a  funeral, 
I  had  the  privilege  of  her  company  all  the  way  to  town.  She 
was  delightful,  full  of  brightness  and  information  and  fun,  not 
in  the  least  formidable  to  people  of  imperfect  cultivation,  with 
all  that  is  best  and  apparently  nothing  of  what  is  worst  in 
women.    .    .    . 

On  Thursday  I  had  an  hour  with  Mrs. ,  which  was  as  good 

as  a  walk  in  the  Alps  for  freshness  and  healthfulness.  There  is 
nothing  like  her  in  Boston,  and  remember  we  are  to  have  an 
evening  there  when  I  am  with  you  in  Philadelphia  whatever  else 
may  fail.      (September  7,  1871.) 

Have  you  read  Joaquin  Miller  which  is  brilliant  in  color  and 
very  picturesque  sometimes,  and  not  by  any  means  our  great  poet 
yet.     (September  16,  1871.) 

The  old  round  of  parish  duties,  which  I  have  gone  to  afresh 
every  autumn  for  twelve  years,  has  opened  again,  and  I  have  been 
rather  surprised  at  myself  to  find  that  I  take  it  up  with  just  as 
much  interest  as  ever.  I  suppose  that  other  men  feel  it  of  their 
occupations,  but  I  can  hardly  imagine  that  any  other  profession 
can  be  as  interesting  as  mine.  I  am  more  and  more  glad  that  I 
am  a  parson. 

I  wonder  if  the  autumn  is  as  splendid  with  you  as  it  is  here. 
I  spent  last  night  at  Waltham  (at  the  country  house  of  Mr.  R.  T. 
Paine),  and  this  morning  got  an  hour's  walk  before  I  came  into 
town.  I  never  saw  anything  lovelier  than  the  woods,  just  touched 
with  autumn  color.  The  whole  of  September  has  been  a  perfect 
month,  and  next  month  when  the  glory  of  it  is  beginning  to  fade 
I  shall  get  over  it  again  with  you  in  Philadelphia.  (September 
25,  1871.) 

It  is  very  good  of  you  to  think  so  kindly  of  my  visit.  It  was 
a  very  delightful  time  to  me,  and  if  you  really  enjoyed  it  all  I  am 


48  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-72 

truly  glad.  How  delightfully  lazy  it  was,  and  Boston  seems  so 
driven  and  hurried.  People  here  seem  possessed  to  do  something 
without  much  care  for  what  they  do.  The  mere  passion  of  rest- 
lessness is  in  the  Yankee  blood  and  partly  in  the  East  winds. 
(November  11,  1871.) 

I  have  two  of  your  letters  to  one  of  mine,  which  is  a  good  deal 
more  than  it  was  worth,  but  is  very  pleasant  to  me.  I  do  not  find 
that  people  ever  are  troubled  at  getting  more  than  their  deserts. 

It  is  my  birthday  and  I  am  thirty-six  years  old.  It  seems  a 
little  strange  but  not  unpleasant,  and  although  I  have  had  a  pretty 
time  indeed  so  far  and  would  be  glad  to  go  back  and  do  it  all 
over  again,  yet  I  am  not  miserable  that  I  cannot,  and  I  am  still 
rather  absurdly  hopeful  about  the  future.  To  have  passed  out  of 
young  manhood  altogether  and  find  myself  a  middle-aged  man  is 
a  little  sobering,  but  I  only  hope  that  all  the  young  fellows  who 
come  after  me  will  have  as  good  a  time  as  I  have  had.  .  .  .  We 
have  been  seeing  the  Russian  Grand  Duke,  who  appears  to  be  a 
fine,  manly,  sensible  fellow.      (December  13,  1871.) 

It  is  rather  strange  how  freshly  and  delightfully  the  Christmas 
feelings  come  back  year  after  year.  And  yet  it  is  ten  years  ago 
the  first  Sunday  in  Januaiy,  1872,  since  I  became  your  minister 
at  Holy  Trinity.  I  have  had  an  awfully  uneventful  life.  Things 
happen  to  other  people,  but  not  to  me. 

I  am  ashamed  to  look  back  over  any  day,  though  I  was  never 
busier  in  my  life.  It  seems  made  up  of  such  wretched  little 
details,  and  yet  I  would  n't  be  anything  else  but  a  parson  for  the 
world.  I  wonder  often  that  the  work  keeps  up  such  a  perpetual 
freshness  when  the  days  are  so  monotonous. 

I  know  nothing  of  the  grace  of  sickness.  It  seems  to  me  ter- 
rible, the  whole  idea  of  suffering,  but  even  more  of  weakness  and 
weariness.      (January  16,  1872.) 

Last  Sunday  I  spent  at  New  Haven,  and  enjoyed  it  exceed- 
ingly. Stayed  with  Dr.  Harwood,  who  is  a  fine,  studious  Broad 
Churchman ;  preached  for  him  in  the  morning,  and  in  the  evening 
preached  in  his  church  for  the  Berkeley  Association  of  Yale  Col- 
lege. The  church  was  crowded,  and  Congregational  professors 
sat  in  the  chancel.  I  had  never  seen  Yale  College  before,  and 
was  interested  in  its  size  and  life.  It  is  not  equal  to  Cambridge, 
but  it  is  a  great  college  still.  .  .  .  Have  you  read  Lightfoot's 
"Commentary  on  Philippians"  ?  Do  get  it  and  read  the  "Essay 
on  the  Christian  Ministry."  It  does  seem  to  me  to  finish  the 
Apostolic  Succession  Theory  completely.      (January  19,  1872.) 


^T.  33-36']     EARLY   YEARS   IN   BOSTON    49 

The  California  plan  is  not  settled  yet,  but  I  think  I  shall  go. 
.  .  .  Though  it  would  be  folly  to  talk  about  being  run  down,  I 
am  conscious  of  having  been  on  the  strain  rather  too  long.  I 
have  preached  twice  every  Sunday,  and  generally  three  times,  since 
I  got  home  from  Europe,  a  year  ago  last  September.  I  am  preach- 
ing badly,  and  the  trip  will  do  me  more  good  now  than  at  any 
other  time.      (February  7,  1872.) 

I  don't  think  that  parsons  really  are  so  bad.  I  suspect  that 
they  are  human,  and  I  see  but  little  evidence  practically  of  Apos- 
tolic Succession,  but  I  think  there  are  not  many  who  woxxld 
refuse  to  see  a  smallpox  patient,  or  who  would  give  up  parish 
visiting  because  the  smallpox  was  in  town.  .  .  .  McVickar  was 
here  on  Sunday  and  preached  a  good  hearty  sort  of  sermon  for  me 
in  the  afternoon.  They  are  talking  about  him  for  St.  Paul's 
here.  I  went  out  on  Sunday  evening  to  preach  the  first  of  a 
course  of  sermons  for  the  St.  Paul's  Society  at  Cambridge. 
Going  there  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  things  I  have  to  do. 
(February  21,  1872.) 

I  get  so  tired  of  talking  with  tongue  and  pen  that  I  don't  feel 
equal  to  hearing  myself  in  one  unnecessary  word.  To-day,  for 
instance,  I  have  preached  a  Price  Lecture,  and  attended  two 
funerals,  and  carried  on  a  Mission  meeting  among  our  poor  folk, 
and  had  a  regular  Wednesday  Evening  meeting  (lecture).  I  am 
sure  that  I  shall  hear  my  own  dreary  voice  reading  the  service  in 
my  dreams.  Do  go  and  hear  Miss  Smith  and  tell  me  about  her. 
The  old  Methodist  idea  of  perfection,  which  I  fancy  has  always 
more  or  less  believers,  is  just  now  quite  a  favorite  notion.  There 
are  several  meetings  held  here  in  its  interest.  I  have  just  got  a 
note  from  Rev.  Copley  Greene,  who  wants  me  to  dine  to-morrow 
with  Rev.  John  Hubbard,  who  is  a  great  believer  in  it;  and  Mr. 
Boardman  of  the  "Higher  Christian  Life,"  Bishop  Eastburn,  and 
Dr.  Vinton,  and  Willie  Newton  are  to  be  there,  —  a  jolly  dinner 
party.  ...  I  have  been  looking  through  Hawthorne's  "Italian 
Diary, "  —  an  interesting  book  that  it  would  have  been  wicked  to 
publish,  if  it  had  not  been  the  work  of  a  man  who  took  delight  in 
dissecting  himself  in  public.      (March  6,  1872.) 

I  am  very  busy.  My  Confirmation  class  is  to  be  large,  and 
gives  me  much  thought,  but  it  is  very  interesting.  Last  Sunday 
Dr.  Harwood  preached  for  me  in  the  morning,  and  preached  well. 
He  gave  a  noble  sermon  to  the  College  boys  at  Cambridge  in  the 
evening.      (March  22,  1872.) 

I  have  been  reading  a  new  book,  which  is  a  rare  thing  with  me 

VOL.  II. 


so  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-72 

nowadays.  This  one  delights  me  exceedingly.  It  is  Dr.  Sears' 
book  on  St.  John  (The  Fourth  Gospel,  the  Heart  of  Christ). 
Do  get  it  and  enjoy  it.  It  is  so  rich  and  true  and  wise.  All 
that  he  has  written  before  is  excellent,  but  this  is  best  of  all.  I 
have  a  copy  of  his  "Regeneration,"  which  you  gave  me  once.  .  .  . 
Have  you  read  the  "  Life  of  Hookham  Frere  ?  "  It  is  very  in- 
teresting. Some  of  his  translations  are  wonderfully  well  done. 
(March  28,  1872.) 

I  have  perfected  my  plans  for  Europe  now.  The  27th  of  June 
is  the  day,  and  Denmark,  Sweden,  and  Norway  are  the  places, 
with  possibly  a  little  of  Scotland  thrown  in.  Judge  Gray  goes 
with  me.  We  shall  represent  to  Norwegians  that  we  are  insig- 
nificant specimens  of  the  American  size,  and  I  shall  tell  them  that 

they  ought  to  see  two  giants  we  have  at  home,  called and 

,  if  they  want  to  see  the  true  grandeur  of  the  American  pul- 
pit.    (April  6,  1872.) 

I  was  very  much  disappointed  that  Weir  refused  to  go.  I 
had  dared  to  hope  that  he  might  look  favorably  upon  our  plan. 
...  I  suppose  it  is  one  of  the  small  compensations  that  my 
lonely  life  brings  with  it,  that  having  nobody  but  myself  to  pro- 
vide for,  I  can  now  and  then  get  a  chance  like  this.  A  few 
of  the  folks  of  Trinity  surprised  and  embarrassed  me  a  little 
the  other  day  with  a  check  for  $3300  to  go  with.  A  week  ago 
my  friend  Edward  Dalton  died  in  California.  Did  you  ever  see 
him?  He  married  a  cousin  of  Mary  McBurney's.  He  was  one 
of  the  noblest  and  best  and  bravest  men  I  have  ever  known,  and 
death  has  not  often  come  nearer  me  than  in  his  loss.  His  life 
for  the  last  three  or  four  years  has  been  one  of  the  saddest  things 
I  ever  knew  of.  Wife,  child,  and  health  all  went  at  once,  and 
it  has  been  a  mere  fight  for  life,  as  brave  and  cheerful  as  possible, 
ever  since.     (May  25,  1872.) 

Somehow  my  visits  to  Philadelphia,  delightful  as  they  are, 
always  go  off  in  such  a  rush  and  whirl  and  hurry  that  when  I 
come  away  I  have  a  sort  of  feeling  that  with  all  the  pleasant  time 
I  haven't  got  exactly  what  I  went  for,  — the  quiet,  placid  time  I 
used  to  have,  especially  of  evenings  when  I  dropped  into  your 
house  on  my  way  home.  I  suppose  it  is  necessary  that  one  should 
feel  that  his  time  is  not  limited  before  he  can  enjoy  it  thoroughly. 
At  least  it  is  so  with  me.  I  hate  to  be  hurried.  That  will  be 
one  great  advantage  of  heaven.  .  .  .  We  shall  have  plenty  of 
time  for  all  that  our  hands  find  to  do.  I  sometimes  have  suspi- 
cions that  if  I  could  live  for  five  hundred  years  I  might  come  to 
something  and  do  something  here.     All  is  going  on  beautifully 


^T.  33-36]     EARLY   YEARS   IN   BOSTON     51 

about  the  new  church.  Some  of  the  people  of  their  own  notion 
got  up  a  subscription  to  buy  an  extra  piece  of  land,  and  in  a  few 
days  raised  $75,000,  and  are  going  on  now  to  make  it  a  hundred 
thousand,  so  that  the  church  will  be  really  something  very  fine. 
We  shall  have  in  all  something  pretty  near  half  a  million  to  put 
into  it.  ...  I  am  getting  up  a  sermon  for  the  Ancient  and  Honor- 
able Artillery  Company,  one  of  the  queer  old  Puritan  organizations 
before  which  every  Boston  minister  preaches  some  time  in  his 
career,  and  is  not  thoroughly  initiated  without.    (May  30,  1872.) 

It  is  a  terrible  week  in  Boston.  The  Jubilee  is  going  on  with 
flash  and  bang  all  the  time.  ...  It  is  wonderful  what  a  row 
this  jubilee  is  making.  There  is  not  a  corner  to  be  had  in  any 
hotel,  and  the  Enormous  Barn  which  I  see  from  my  window  is 
thronged  all  day  with  folks  curious  to  see  what  the  big  noise  is  to 
be.  I  like  to  see  a  crowd  and  expect  to  enjoy  this  very  much, 
but  it  is  all  very  funny  and  sensational,  and  the  primness  and 
classicism  of  Boston  turns  up  its  stiff  nose  at  it.  .  .  .  We  have 
chosen  Richardson  of  New  York  for  our  church  architect,  —  the 
best  of  all  competitors  by  all  means.  He  will  give  us  something 
strong  and  good.      (June  11,  1872.) 

The  summer  of  1872  was  spent  abroad  in  northern 
Europe.  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine  accompanied  him  and 
was  with  him  for  a  month;  after  that  he  was  alone,  de- 
pendent on  acquaintances  made  in  travelling.  His  brother 
Frederick  was  in  Europe  at  the  time,  but  naturally  preferred, 
as  he  was  making  his  first  visit  to  the  Old  World,  to  see  it  in 
his  own  way.  They  met  in  London,  and  then  separated. 
Mr.  Brooks's  summer  included  several  weeks  in  Norway, 
where  he  was  enchanted  with  the  scenery  and  impressed  with 
the  broad  daylight,  which  enabled  him  to  read  a  letter  on 
the  street  at  eleven  o'clock  at  night.  From  Norway  he 
passed  to  Sweden,  where  he  speaks  of  seeing  Prince  Oscar. 
He  was  delighted  with  Stockholm ;  he  went  to  Upsala  for  its 
university  and  cathedral,  and  to  meditate  upon  Scandina- 
vian mythology.  From  Sweden  he  went  to  Finland  and 
thence  to  St.  Petersburg,  Warsaw,  and  Moscow,  recalling 
historical  associations,  commenting  on  ways  and  customs, 
drawing  his  own  inferences,  but  especially  interested  in  the 
churches,  which  he  made  it  a  rule  to  attend  on  every  possible 
occasion.      He  returned  from  Russia  to  Berlin,  stopped  at 


52  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-72 

Copenhagen  and  Hamburg,  then  went  to  Paris,  where  he  met 
his  brother,  and  together  they  sailed  for  home. 

An  incident  occurred  while  Mr.  Brooks  was  in  Sweden, 
to  which  he  makes  only  the  briefest  allusion  in  his  "  Letters 
of  Travel,"  —  his  meeting  with  Prince  Oscar,  brother  of  the 
reigning  king,  and  who  soon  after  acceded  to  the  throne  as 
King  Oscar  II.  A  fuller  account  of  this  meeting  is  given 
by  Rev.  Percy  Browne,  from  a  conversation  with  Mr. 
Brooks : — 

When  Brooks  was  approaching  Christiania  he  heard  that  Prince 
Oscar  was  to  come  on  board  the  steamer  on  which  he  was  travel- 
ling. As  the  ship  anchored,  the  royal  barge  drew  near  amidst  a 
thunder  of  salutes  from  the  forts.  When  the  Prince  reached  the 
deck  he  stood  for  a  moment  between  the  sailors  drawn  up  on  either 
side  of  the  gangway,  and  noticing  Brooks,  who  modestly  stood 
behind  the  sailors,  said  in  excellent  English,  waving  his  hand 
toward  the  city,  "  Is  it  not  a  loyal  people  ?  "  The  Prince  then 
retired  to  the  end  of  the  ship  roped  off  for  his  exclusive  use. 
At  midnight,  Brooks  was  smoking  a  last  cigar  before  turning  in, 
sitting  on  a  part  of  the  deck  far  removed  from  the  royal  en- 
closure, when  a  tall  man  wrapped  in  a  cloak  drew  near.  It  was 
the  Prince.  He  said  in  English,  "Will  you  oblige  me  with  a 
light  ?  "  When  he  had  lit  his  cigar  he  sat  down  and  entered  into 
a  long  conversation,  asking  many  intelligent  questions  about 
America,  especially  about  the  Judiciary,  the  method  of  adminis- 
tering justice  in  the  Courts,  etc.  Brooks  said  he  spoke  like  a 
man  conscious  that  he  had  come  to  a  position  of  great  responsi- 
bility, and  anxious  to  learn  all  that  might  be  of  use  to  him.  The 
next  day  the  Prince  disembarked.  Before  leaving  the  ship,  as  he 
stood  at  the  gangAvay,  he  reached  over  the  line  of  sailors  behind 
which  Brooks  was  standing,  and  shaking  hands  with  him,  said, 
"Au  revoir.      The  earth  is  round  and  we  '11  meet  again." 

A  few  extracts  from  his  note-book  give  us  an  idea  of  the 
deeper  moods  of  the  traveller,  in  this  summer  of  1872 :  — 

As  we  travel,  it  seems  sometimes  as  if  ninety-nine  hundredths 
of  the  people  in  this  world  had  so  hard  a  time,  could  find  so  little 
in  their  lot  to  enjoy.  The  reassurance  must  come  from  consider- 
ing that  joy  in  mere  life,  often  dumb,  brutish,  and  unconscious, 
but  very  real,  which  every  creature  has,  the  luxury  of  mere  exist- 
ence to  which  we  cling,  for  which  we  slave,  and  which  we  really 
do  enjoy. 


^T.  33-36]    EARLY   YEARS   IN   BOSTON     S3 

As  we  travel,  this  impresses  us  much,  I  think,  —  the  uniform- 
ity of  nature  under  all  the  endlessly  various  changes  of  men  and 
their  ways  and  customs,  always  the  same  sky  and  ground  and 
grass.  It  is  a  striking  picture  of  the  universality  of  the  primary 
and  simple  emotions  and  affections,  beneath  the  changing  aspects 
of  men's  more  complicated  life,  — this  sight  everywhere  of  the 
simplest  signs  of  the  simplest  emotions.  The  child's  smile, 
curiosity,  love,  rage,  give  us  the  same  idea. 

This  terrible  longing  to  fasten  and  confine  sacredness  to  local- 
ity; this  passion  of  holy  places.  We  refine  it  and  elevate  it,  but 
it  is  to  be  feared  that  many  of  its  worst  effects  are  latent  in  the 
most  beautiful  features  of  our  Anglican  religion.  (Moscow, 
August  18,  1872.) 

After  all,  it  is  the  deepest  and  not  the  superficial  interest  of  life 
in  which  men  sympathize  most  and  come  together;  in  religion 
above  all  other  things,  and  as  regards  religion  in  those  things 
which  are  deepest,  not  in  forms  and  ordinations,  but  in  the  sense 
of  sin,  the  sense  of  God,  the  hope  of  perfectness.  I  was  struck 
with  it  as  I  travelled  in  Norway,  where  those  whom  I  had  not 
understood,  who  had  lived  a  different  life  all  the  week,  seemed  as 
I  saw  them  in  church  on  Sunday  to  be  so  perfectly  intelligible. 
The  value  of  Sunday  as  thus  the  common  day,  the  day  of  worship. 

Out  of  these  reflections  was  born  a  sermon  on  the  text, 
"Until  I  went  into  the  sanctuary  of  God."  He  wrote  down 
the  leading  ideas  of  the  sermon  in  the  note-book,  following 
the  extracts  just  given. 

The  Sanctuary  of  God  the  place  of  solved  problems.  The  Holy 
Place  of  God.  His  Presence.  The  contact  of  the  soul  with 
His  soul.  How  it  shames  our  ordinary  talk  about  churchgoing. 
How  it  convicts  most  of  our  preaching.  How  it  shows  the  unim- 
paired fitness  of  the  custom.  The  solution  comes  with  the  thought 
of  God  and  of  the  soul  and  of  eternity  and  of  redemption. 

I  think  one  cannot  go  into  any  temple  which  men  have  built  to 
worship  God  in,  in  however  false  a  way,  cannot  enter  a  mosque 
or  the  most  superstitious  of  cathedrals  in  a  right  spirit,  without 
seeming  to  feel  the  influence  of  some  such  spiritual  illumination 
on  the  problems  that  he  has  left  outside  in  the  hot  street.  I  dare 
not  despise  the  poor  Russian  crossing  himself,  etc. 

I  went  yesterday  into  a  bookstore  to  find  something  to  read 
on  my  journey  hither,  and  the  only  legible  thing  that  I  could  hit 
on  —  strange  company  for  an  orthodox  travelling  parson  —  was  a 


54  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

cheap  copy  of  Kenan's  "Les  Apotres."  I  read  it  through  yester- 
day, and  it  was  dreadful ;  the  studious  putting  of  the  supernatural 
and  the  spiritual  out  of  our  knowledge,  and  almost  out  of  our 
existence,  the  making  of  life  its  own  complete  solution.  I  pitied 
him  for  his  flippant  satisfaction,  every  page  I  read.  What  can 
such  an  one  do  with  death?     (Copenhagen,  August  28,  1872.) 

The  summer  was  a  thoroughly  successful  one.  So  he 
speaks  of  it  in  letters  on  his  return.  To  his  friend  Mrs. 
Lapsley  of  New  York  he  writes :  — 

I  have  had  a  superb  journey,  .  .  .  that  was  quite  unlike  any- 
thing I  have  ever  had  of  Europe  before  and  exceedingly  interest- 
ing. We  went  so  far  north  as  to  get  beyond  the  reach  of  dark- 
ness, and  lived  in  broad  daylight  all  night  long.  The  scenery  of 
Norway  is  wonderfully  picturesque,  especially  the  coast  scenery, 
and  the  people  are  the  oddest,  quaintest,  poorest,  honestest,  dirt- 
iest, ugliest  folk  in  all  the  world.  I  found  Russia,  too,  intensely 
interesting,  and  altogether  have  had  a  rare  summer.  (October 
13,  1872.) 

It  is  important  to  chronicle  these  journeys  of  Phillips 
Brooks  because  they  constitute  the  breaks  in  a  somewhat 
monotonous  round  of  triumph  and  honors,  of  numberless 
engagements,  of  constantly  recurring  social  functions  where 
his  presence  was  indispensable.  They  were  indeed  his  only 
recreation,  his  only  mode  of  escape  from  the  burdens  of  the 
life  that  now  began  to  press  ever  more  heavily  upon  him. 
What  strikes  one  forcibly  in  his  way  of  living  at  this  time 
and  afterwards  is  the  absence  of  any  form  of  exercise  or 
recreation.  He  has  ceased  riding  horseback;  his  walking 
is  mainly  confined  to  his  round  of  parish  visiting.  Occa- 
sionally he  walks  when  he  goes  to  Cambridge  to  preach. 
Now  and  then  he  mentions  bathing,  fishing,  and  sailing,  as 
when  he  visits  his  parishioner,  Mr.  C.  R.  Codman,  at  Cotuit; 
or  goes  on  some  yachting  excursion  along  the  coast.  He 
speaks  sometimes  of  playing  billiards  at  Mr.  Morrill's,  or  of 
bowling  at  Mr.  Thayer's  at  Lancaster.  He  appeared  so  well, 
however,  so  exceptionally  vigorous,  that  one  would  hardly 
suppose  that  he  was  the  worse  for  neglect  of  exercise.  Yet 
even  in  this  exceptional  moment  of  apparently  luxurious 
vitality  and  abounding  spirits  there  were  hints  which  were 


^T.  33-36]     EARLY   YEARS   IN   BOSTON    SS 

suggestive  of  danger.  In  1871  he  was  hindered  from  work  for 
several  days  and  confined  to  the  house  with  a  bad  throat. 
He  wrote  describing  his  illness  to  Dr.  Mitchell  of  Phila- 
delphia, admitting  that  he  had  been  alarmed.  Here  was  his 
vulnerable  point.  He  was  putting  a  burden  upon  his  voice 
to  which  it  was  not  equal.  Those  who  were  experts  in  the 
use  of  the  voice  were  convinced  that  he  did  not  understand 
the  right  use  of  the  vocal  organs.  When  he  was  fairly 
launched  in  his  sermon,  in  the  storm  and  stress  of  his  great 
effort,  one  seemed  to  hear  the  voice  creaking  and  groaning, 
as  if  overstrained,  and  the  result  was  sometimes  harsh  and 
unmusical.  There  were  fears  that  his  voice  might  fail  him, 
—  fears  in  which  he  shared,  and  which  sometimes  depressed 
him  as  he  thought  of  the  future.  But  the  immediate  danger 
passed  away,  and  the  voice  recovered  from  its  ill  usage, 
though  somewhat  impaired. 

This  was  the  time  when  he  should  have  married  and 
formed  a  home  of  his  own.  His  friends  introduced  reminders 
of  the  subject  in  their  letters,  but  his  reply  was  only  that  the 
coming  woman  had  not  yet  appeared.  When  he  first  came 
to  Boston  he  took  rooms  at  34  Mount  Vernon  Street,  but 
complained  of  the  want  of  sunlight,  and  soon  transferred 
himself  to  the  Hotel  Kempton  on  Berkeley  Street.  Here  he 
was  happy  in  his  surroundings,  exercising  his  rare  gifts  as  a 
host.  If  he  suffered  at  all  seriously  in  the  separation  from 
Philadelphia,  it  was  not  evident.  He  gave  the  impression 
of  being  the  happiest  of  men,  —  a  happiness  whose  fountain 
was  deep  and  inexhaustible,  as  though  he  drank  from  sources 
more  rich  and  full  than  others,  and  to  most  men  inaccessible. 
He  was  now  possessing  or  creating  a  rich  new  life  in  the 
hosts  of  friends  who  gathered  about  him. 

In  the  first  place  his  father  and  mother  were  near  him. 
He  made  it  a  rule  to  dine  with  them  every  Sunday,  after 
morning  service,  as  in  Philadelphia  he  had  dined  with  Mr. 
Lemuel  Coffin.  That  was  a  fixed  engagement.  At  his 
brother's  house,  he  found  another  home.  He  was  greatly 
interested  in  the  birth  of  his  first  niece  as  the  starting  of  a 
new  generation  in  the  Brooks  family.    His  youngest  brother, 


^6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

John,  he  attended  on  his  way  through  Harvard,  as  he  had 
done  with  Frederick  and  Arthur.  John  graduated  in  1872, 
and  then  the  family  succession  closed  at  Harvard.  "Since  I 
entered  college,"  he  writes,  "in  1851,  twenty  years  ago,  we 
have  had  one  there  all  the  time." 

It  was  a  family  event  of  rare  interest,  such  as  few  family 
records  can  boast,  when  at  the  ordination  of  Arthur  Brooks 
to  the  deaconate,  his  two  elder  brothers  in  the  ministry  were 
present,  Frederick  Brooks  presenting  the  candidate,  and 
Phillips  Brooks  preaching  the  sermon.  The  event  took 
place  in  Trinity  Church,  June  25,  1870,  Bishop  Eastburn 
officiating.  A  brilliant  career  opened  at  once  to  the  younger 
brother.  He  possessed  the  same  family  characteristics  which 
lent  power  to  his  older  brothers ;  he  had  dignity  and  gravity, 
and  effectiveness  as  a  preacher,  joined  with  soundness  of 
judgment  which  made  him  even  while  still  young  a  valuable 
counsellor.  He  had  energy  and  administrative  gifts,  hal- 
lowed by  a  spirit  of  consecration  to  his  work.  His  first 
parish  was  at  Williamsport,  Pennsylvania,  where  in  a  short 
time  he  witnessed  as  a  result  of  his  labors  the  erection  of 
a  new  church.  In  1872  he  accepted  a  call  to  the  important 
parish  of  St.  James  in  Chicago.  The  following  letter  was 
written  to  him  by  Phillips  Brooks  on  the  occasion  of  his 
engagement  to  be  married :  — 

Boston,  March  23,  1872. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  I  write  at  once  .to  say  how  sincerely  and 
with  all  my  heart  I  congratulate  you  upon  your  great  happiness. 
Of  course  you  are  very  happy,  and  you  have  the  best  right  to  be, 
for  a  life  is  a  poor,  imperfect  sort  of  thing  unless  a  man  is  mar- 
ried, and  engagement  is  about  the  same  thing,  I  hope  it  won't  be 
a  long  engagement.  Do  be  married  and  be  wholly  happy  very 
soon.  Life  isn't  long  enough  to  waste  any  of  it.  ...  I  can 
rejoice  with  you  not  only  on  the  abstract  bliss  of  an  engagement, 
but  on  your  own  peculiar  good  fortune  and  special  prospects  of 
being  happy.  A  good  many  of  my  friends  I  have  lost  when  they 
got  married,  but  I  look  forward  to  knowing  and  liking  you  better 
than  ever,  and  when  it  comes  to  the  snug  little  cottage  or  the 
gorgeous  parsonage  in  Chicago,  I  speak  to  be  your  first  visitor 
and  to  have  my  place  always  in  your  home,  as. you  shall  always 
have  yours  in  my  disconsolate  and  empty  rooms. 


^T'SS-S^li     EARLY   YEARS   IN   BOSTON     57 

So,  Arthur,  you  are  wise  and  good,  as  you  always  are,  and  may 
God  bless  you  and  life  be  always  only  brighter  and  brighter  than 
it  seems  to-day. 

I  send  by  you  my  kindest  regards  to  Miss  Willard,  which  I 
shall  hope  to  dispatch  more  directly  very  soon.  We  are  counting 
on  your  visit.  Yours  always,  P. 

None  were  quicker  than  his  old  college  friends  and  class- 
mates to  discern  and  rejoice  in  the  signs  of  his  greatness, 
many  of  them  living  in  or  near  Boston,  some  of  them  his 
parishioners  at  Trinity,  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine,  Mr.  John 
C.  Ropes,  Col.  Theodore  Lyman.  He  felt  at  first  some 
embarrassment  at  the  revelation  of  his  new  and  greater  self 
to  these  associates  of  earlier  years.  Hardly  had  he  become 
fixed  in  Boston  when  it  seemed  as  if  he  were  transferring 
to  it  his  clerical  friends  of  Philadelphia  and  rebuilding  his 
old  environment.  Dr.  Stone  had  preceded  him  in  coming 
to  the  Episcopal  Theological  School  in  Cambridge.  In  1870 
Dr.  Vinton  came  to  be  the  rector  of  Emmanuel  Church. 
Soon  after  followed  Rev.  William  Wilberforce  Newton  to 
be  the  rector  of  St.  Paul's,  Brookline,  Rev.  Percy  Browne 
to  St.  James's,  Roxbury,  and  Rev.  Tread  well  Walden  to 
St.  Paul's,  Boston.  Rev.  C.  A.  L.  Richards  was  almost 
within  calling  distance  at  Providence  ;  Rev.  James  P. 
Franks,  at  one  time  his  pupil  and  now  his  kinsman  by- 
marriage,  was  called  to  the  rectorship  of  Grace  Church, 
Salem.  In  1870  these  clerical  friends  were  associated  in  a 
club  called  the  "Clericus,"  which  met  on  the  first  Monday 
evening  in  every  month.  To  Mr.  Newton  belongs  the 
honor  of  being  its  founder,  who  organized  it  after  the  plan 
of  the  Clericus  in  Philadelphia,  already  mentioned,  if  it 
could  be  called  an  organization  which  had  no  constitution 
or  by-laws.  It  possessed  a  clerk  in  Mr.  Newton,  who  notified 
the  members  of  the  monthly  meetings.  In  the  course  of 
years  it  developed  a  president  in  the  person  of  Phillips 
Brooks,  but  no  one  ever  knew  exactly  when  or  by  what  pro- 
cess he  assumed  the  office.  His  right  to  it,  however,  was 
unquestioned.  The  meetings  were  held  informally  for  a  few 
years  in  the  houses  of  the  members,  until  finally  Mr.  Brooks 


58  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

insisted  that  they  should  meet  regularly  at  his  rooms.  The 
social  element  on  the  whole  was  the  most  prominent  feature 
of  these  evenings,  though  the  inevitable  essay  was  always 
read.  There  were  some  who  thought  that  the  meetings 
would  be  more  profitable  if  the  members  were  all  required 
to  comment  in  turn  on  the  essay,  but  to  this  arrangement 
the  president  positively  refused  to  listen.  The  talk  should 
be  spontaneous  or  not  at  all.  If  a  member  had  anything  to 
say  let  him  wait  his  chance  and  then  hold  the  floor  if  he 
could  get  it  against  some  one  else  more  anxious  to  be  heard. 
It  was  practically  Phillips  Brooks's  Club,  and  so  it  came  to 
be  generally  known.  It  formed  a  prominent  feature  in  his 
life,  as  it  surely  did  in  the  lives  of  all  its  other  members. 
Those  who  had  the  privilege  of  meeting  him  there  saw  him 
and  heard  him  in  familiar  and  yet  impressive  ways  which  will 
never  be  forgotten.* 

It  was  characteristic,  too,  of  Mr.  Brooks  that  he  seemed  to 
give  himself  exclusively  to  whatever  occasion  claimed  his 
interest.  Thus  he  seemed  almost  to  live  for  the  Clericus; 
he  was  seldom  absent  from  its  meetings;  he  kept  track  of 
absent  members,  and  urged  their  attendance  or  reproved 
them  for  neglect.  But  he  was  also  giving  himself  in  num- 
berless other  ways.  The  demands  upon  him  were  so  great 
even  in  these  early  years  in  Boston  that  one  wondered  how 
he  found  time  for  reading  or  sermon -writing.  Hospitality 
in  Boston  was  extended  to  him  as  freely  as  it  had  been 
in  Philadelphia.  According  to  his  diary  there  is  rarely  a 
day  when  he  does  not  mention  some  dinner  engagement. 
Breakfast  was  about  the  only  meal  that  he  took  at  his  lodg- 
ings. He  never  gave  the  impression,  however,  of  one  who 
suffered  from  the  burden  of  his  duties,  and  certainly  he  never 
complained,  except  in  familiar  letters,  that  his  life  was  not 
wholly  to   his   mind.      He   attended    concerts    occasionally, 

^  The  founders  and  original  members  of  the  Club  were  Phillips  Brooks, 
Rufus  W.  Clark,  C.  A.  L.  Richards,  Arthur  Lawrence,  William  W.  Newton, 
W.  R.  Huntington,  A.  V.  G.  Allen,  James  P.  Franks,  Charles  H.  Learoyd, 
George  L.  Locke,  Henry  L.  Jones,  Charles  C.  Tiffany,  Percy  Browne.  Edmund 
Rowland,  Leonard  K.  Storrs,  Henry  F.  Allen,  Rt.  Rev.  Thomas  M.  Clark, 
Treadwell  Walden,  James  H.  Lee,  C.  G.  Currie,  E.  D.  Tompkins. 


M'r.33-3^']     EARLY   YEARS   IN   BOSTON     59 

especially  the  Oratorios  given  in  Music  Hall.  He  kept  late 
hours,  not  generally  retiring  before  twelve  o'clock,  but  was 
always  an  early  riser,  breakfasting  at  half  past  seven.  He 
had  one  standing  engagement  where  there  was  no  objection 
to  the  lateness  of  the  hour,  —  his  Sunday  evenings  at  Dr. 
Vinton's  after  his  third  service  was  over.  If  he  found  "the 
doctor  favorable  for  conversation  "  the  occasion  was  a  pro- 
longed one. 

Yet  amid  this  multiplicity  of  engagements,  he  did  secure 
time  for  reading  and  study,  and  for  the  writing  of  sermons. 
Despite  the  manifold  distractions,  his  mind  was  preoccupied 
and  concentrated  on  his  work;  because  he  saw  life  in  its 
unity  and  as  a  whole,  all  things  were  contributing  to  his 
purpose.  From  1871  he  was  a  member  of  the  Examining 
Committee  of  the  Public  Library  in  Boston,  which  served 
to  keep  new  literature  before  him.  His  own  library,  already 
large,  was  rapidly  growing.  He  continued  to  make  it  a 
rule  to  read  books  as  they  appeared,  which  every  one  else 
was  reading,  and  so  kept  himself  in  contact  with  the  literary 
trend  of  the  moment.  In  poetry  at  this  time  there  was 
Browning's  "Ring  and  the  Book,"  A.  H.  Clough's  poems, 
Morris's  "Earthly  Paradise,"  Robert  Buchanan's  poems, 
George  Eliot's  "Spanish  Gypsy,"  etc.,  and  these  he  read. 
He  writes  to  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks :  — 

I  indulged  myself  in  a  little  piece  of  mediaevalism  in  Rossetti's 
Poems,  and  as  I  read  over  the  "  Blessed  Damosel  "  last  night  I 
thanked  you  for  it.  Have  you  ever  read  the  Poems  ?  They  are 
Pre-Raphaelitism  in  verse,  veiy  curious  and  very  lovely  in  their 
way,  but  you  need  to  go  at  them  in  the  right  mood,  perfectly 
dreamy,  entirely  untroubled  with  practical  affairs.  .  .  .  Quick 
would  n't  like  them  because  they  don't  preach  the  Gospel  a  bit, 
and  Claxton  would  n't  like  them  because  there  is  not  a  word  of 
parish  work  in  them,  but  they  are  very  pretty,  nevertheless,  when 
you  are  a  trifle  tired  with  parish  work.      (December  27,  1870.) 

There  was  different  and  more  substantial  reading,  as  in 
Hunt's  "Religious  Thought  in  England,"  which  he  greatly 
admired,  and  which  still  remains  the  one  best  work  for  intro- 
ducing a  reader  to  the  comprehensive  character  of  the  Angli- 


6o  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

can  Church;  or  Tulloch's  "Rational  Theology"  in  the 
Church  of  England.  In  other  books  which  he  was  reading 
we  get  the  reflection  of  the  hour:  Lecky's  "History  of  Ra- 
tionalism," Darwin's  "Descent  of  Man,"  the  writings  of 
Herbert  Spencer,  Huxley,  and  Tyndall,  whose  "Prayer 
Gauge "  suggested  a  sermon  on  prayer  in  which  he  main- 
tained its  objective  as  well  as  subjective  effects;  Matthew 
Arnold's  "Culture  and  Anarchy,"  Pater's  "Renaissance," 
Fronde's  "  History  of  England,"  Stanley's  "Westminster 
Abbey,"  and  Parkman's  "Jesuits  in  North  America;"  in 
biography,  the  lives  of  Lacordaire  and  of  Lord  Herbert  of 
Cherbury,  and  the  "Letters"  of  John  Adams;  in  lighter 
books  or  novels,  "Realmah,"  Auerbach's  "On  the  Heights," 
"Wilhelm  Meister,"  and  Lord  Chesterfield's  "Letters." 
There  was  one  period  of  history  which  he  continued  to  study 
with  peculiar  zest,  —  the  English  civil  war  and  the  age  of 
the  Commonwealth,  as  if  he  were  invigorated  by  returning 
to  the  native  atmosphere  which  his  first  American  ancestors 
had  breathed.  He  read  Burnet,  Clarendon,  Hallam,  and 
Nugent's  "  Memorials  of  Hampden."  Masson's  "Life  of 
Milton "  sent  him  to  Milton  himself,  and  especially  to  the 
"Areopagitica."  He  read  anew  "Cromwell's  Letters"  by 
Carlyle,  taking  notes  as  he  read.  There  was  another  author 
whom  he  valued  and  kept  by  him,  Isaac  Taylor,  who  has 
furnished  the  seeds  of  thought,  of  sober  and  sane  criticism 
to  many  minds.  Wordsworth  must  be  mentioned  and 
Shakespeare  particularly  as  writers  to  whom  he  was  con- 
'  stantly  recurring. 

There  is  evidence  that  he  was  carrying  on  some  larger 
purpose  in  his  more  directly  religious  reading.  He  was 
studying  the  Fourth  Gospel  as  the  basis  of  Wednesday  even- 
ing lectures;  he  had  also  begun  a  systematic  study  of  the 
life  of  Christ,  in  order  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  deeper 
questionings  of  his  mind.  Then,  too,  he  was  looking  into 
the  history  of  preaching,  and  to  this  end  was  making  out  a 
list  of  the  great  preachers  in  the  church  from  the  time  of 
Chrysostom.  After  the  first  six  months  of  his  rectorship  at 
Trinity,  during  which  he  was  making  the  acquaintance  of 


^T.  33-36]     EARLY   YEARS   IN   BOSTON     61 

the  parish  and  wrote  only  a  few  sermons,  he  began  with 
renewed  zeal  the  task  of  sermon -writing,  but  under  a  some- 
what different  impulse  from  that  which  had  inspired  the 
Philadelphia  preaching.  He  was  beginning  to  feel  the  influ- 
ence of  Boston.  The  religious  situation  was  also  changing; 
the  spirit  of  free  inquiry  was  growing  deeper;  the  difficulties 
begotten  by  the  scientific  mind  were  to  many  overwhelming. 
These  influences  he  had  not  felt  so  strongly  in  Philadelphia. 
There  his  task  had  been  to  arouse  a  living,  fresher  interest 
in  what  men  already  believed.  Now  he  was  called  upon  to 
meet  the  moods  of  those  who  were  drifting  away  from  the 
historic  Christian  faith.  The  question  was  before  him  how 
far  it  was  possible  to  be  true  to  one's  reason,  to  be  free  to 
accept  new  truth  from  whatever  quarter,  to  be  honest  with 
one's  instincts  and  conviction,  and  yet  to  maintain  the  faith 
of  childhood  as  given  in  the  Apostles'  and  the  Nicene  creeds. 
Out  of  the  many  sermons  which  he  wrote  during  the  first 
three  years  of  his  ministry  in  Boston,  Mr.  Brooks  chose  but 
four  for  publication.  Two  of  these  have  a  distinct  autobi- 
ographical value.  The  sermon  entitled  "The  Young  and  the 
Old  Christian"  from  Deut.  xxxiii.  16,^  "The  goodwill  of 
him  that  dwelt  in  the  bush,"  written  in  1871,  has  the  marks 
of  the  earlier  Philadelphia  manner  when  he  rejoiced  in  dis- 
covering some  unfamiliar  passage  of  Scripture,  whose  mean- 
ing was  not  at  once  obvious.  The  thought  of  the  sermon 
bears  on  the  relation  between  the  beginning  and  the  end  of 
the  Christian  life;  on  the  unbroken  process  of  growth  in 
which  the  personal  Christ  becomes  clearer  to  us  in  the  years 
of  mature  manhood ;  so  that  whatever  the  years  may  bring 
in  the  accretions  of  knowledge  or  wisdom,  we  shall  never 
be  called  on  to  renounce  as  unreal  the  vision  of  youth  by 
the  bush  side  when  we  first  heard  the  voice  of  God  in  our 
ears.  The  local  mood  of  the  moment  when  this  sermon 
was  preached  called  for  a  protest  against  the  narrowness  and 
illiberality  which  many  identified  with  the  Christian  faith: 
"Narrowness  of  view  and  sympathy  is  not  unnatural  in  a 

1  The   sermon  is  published   in   the   second   volume  of    his   sermons,  The 
Candle  of  the  Lord,  and  other  Sermons,  p.  39. 


62  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-72 

new  believer.  It  is  very  unnatural  in  the  maturer  Christian 
life.  .  .  .  I  do  not  say  that  it  is  best  for  the  young  Chris- 
tian to  be  illiberal.  Far  better  certainly  if  he  could  leap  at 
once  to  the  full  comprehension  and  the  wide  charity  which 
the  older  Christian  gathers  out  of  the  experience  of  life." 
We  have  here  the  germ  of  his  later  treatise  on  Tolerance :  — 

It  is  too  apt  to  be  the  case  that  only  by  experience  does  the 
Christian  reach  this  breadth  of  sympathy,  which  comes  not  from 
indifference,  but  from  the  profoundest  personal  earnestness.  It 
is  something  wholly  different  from  the  loose  toleration  which  men 
praise,  which  is  negative,  which  cares  nothing  about  what  is  abso- 
lutely true  or  false.  ...  At  present  it  seems  to  be  assumed  that 
narrowness  is  essential  to  positive  belief,  and  that  toleration  can 
be  reached  only  by  general  indifference.  Not  long  ago  I  read  this 
sentence  in  what  many  hold  to  be  our  ablest  and  most  thoughtful 
journal:  "It  is  a  law  which  in  the  present  condition  of  human 
nature  holds  good,  that  strength  of  conviction  is  always  in  the 
inverse  ratio  of  the  tolerant  spirit." 

Against  such  a  view  he  raises  his  protest.  He  does  not 
believe  that  human  nature  is  so  depressed.  If  men  can  only 
be  filled  with  the  spirit  of  God,  we  "may  still  see  some 
maturer  type  of  Christianity,  in  which  new  ages  of  positive 
faith  may  still  be  filled  with  the  broadest  sympathy,  and  men 
tolerate  their  brethren  without  enfeebling  themselves."  Such 
was  the  ground  he  assumed  at  the  beginning  of  his  Boston 
ministry,  in  a  city  where  religious  differences  were  wider  and 
more  sharply  marked  than  elsewhere  in  the  country,  where 
they  threatened  also  to  be  more  intense,  until  they  should 
endanger  Christian  charity.  From  this  position  Phillips 
Brooks  never  retreated.  But  on  the  other  hand,  the  com- 
prehensiveness of  the  preacher  is  evident  in  his  bold  state- 
ments in  regard  to  dogma,  which  the  liberal  school  of 
thinkers  might  undervalue :  — 

And  for  one  thing  I  should  say  that  as  every  Christian  be- 
comes more  and  more  a  Christian,  there  must  be  a  larger  ^.nd 
larger  absorption  of  truth  or  doctrine  into  life.  "We  hear  all 
around  us  nowadays  great  impatience  with  the  prominence  of 
dogma  —  that  is,  of  truth  abstractly  and  definitely  stated  —  in 
Christianity.     And  most  of  those  who  are  thus  impatient  really 


MT.ss-S^l     EARLY   YEARS   IN   BOSTON     63 

mean  well.  They  feel  that  Christianity,  being  a  thing  of  per- 
sonal salvation,  ought  to  show  itself  in  characters  and  lives. 
There  they  are  right.  But  to  decry  dogma  in  the  interest  of 
character  is  like  despising  food  as  if  it  interfered  with  health. 
Food  is  not  health.  The  human  body  is  built  just  so  as  to  turn 
food  into  health  and  strength.  And  truth  is  not  holiness.  The 
human  soul  is  made  to  turn,  by  the  subtle  chemistry  of  its  diges- 
tive experience,  truth  into  goodness.  And  this,  I  think,  is  just 
what  the  Christian,  as  he  goes  on.  finds  himself  doing  under  God's 
grace.  Before  the  young  Christian  lie  the  doctrines  of  his  faith, 
—  God's  being,  God's  care,  Christ's  incarnation,  Christ's  atone- 
ment, immortality.  What  has  the  old  Christian  with  his  long 
experience  done  with  them?  He  holds  them  no  longer  crudely, 
as  things  to  be  believed  merely.  He  has  transmuted  them  into 
forms  of  life.  .  .  .  The  young  dogmatist  boasts  of  his  dogmas. 
The  old  saint  lives  his  life.  Both  are  natural  in  their  places  and 
times,  as  are  the  ripe  and  the  unripened  fruit.  How  soon  you 
can  tell  the  men  whose  soils  have  tugged  at  the  roots  of  their 
doctrines  and  taken  them  in,  and  left  them  no  longer  lying  on  the 
surface,  but  made  them  germinate  into  life. 

At  this  time  Mr.  Brooks  was  encountering,  whether  as  a 
parish  minister,  or  as  a  reader  of  the  passing  literature,  these 
divergent  attitudes  in  regard  to  Christian  faith :  some  were 
tenacious  and  defiant  in  maintaining  the  traditional  doc- 
trines; others  were  calling  for  elimination,  or  modification, 
or  restatement;  others  still  gloried  in  the  rejection  of  creeds 
altogether,  or  if  there  must  be  a  creed,  let  it  be  made  anew 
each  day  or  year  to  meet  the  changing  moods  of  the  soul  or 
the  requirements  of  the  passing  hour.  Under  these  circum- 
stances he  wrote  his  sermon  on  the  words  of  St.  Paul,  "I 
have  kept  the  faith."  ^  The  history  of  the  sermon  is  inter- 
esting. During  his  summer  in  northern  Europe  in  1872, 
when  his  mind  was  at  leisure  to  review  his  work  and  the 
existing  situation,  the  words  kept  recurring  to  his  mind, 
"I  have  kept  the  faith."  Months  before  the  sermon  was 
preached  he  was  taking  notes  in  his  journal  as  he  prepared 
himself  to  speak.  He  proposes  to  meet  the  popular  fallacy 
*'that  a  man  must  change  his  views  to  show  his  freedom." 
He  had  before  him  "the  danger  of  making  one's  opinions 
matters  of  faith."  The  question  of  training  children  brings 
^  Sermons,  vol.  i.  p.  57. 


64  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

the  issue  to  a  test.  Shall  they  be  brought  up  in  the  tradi- 
tional faith,  or  what  is  the  result  of  the  experiment  which 
leaves  them  without  religious  tenets,  until  they  arrive  at 
maturer  years?  "What  is  the  meaning  of  the  Collect  for 
Trinity  Sunday,  which  asks  of  God  that  He  would  keep  us 
in  this  faith  ?  Is  it  merely  a  prayer  that  pride  and  obstinacy 
may  be  strengthened,  or  that  He  would  show  us  a  method  of 
keeping  ideas  fixed?  Exactly  what  did  St.  Paul  mean  by 
'  the  faith  '  ?  "  It  is  evident  that  he  meant,  whatever  else 
may  have  been  implied,  "certain  fixed  belief,"  which  he  had 
received  and  not  originated.  The  conclusion  is  "the  possi- 
bility of  counting  some  things  settled  and  going  on  to  de- 
velop them  into  life;  "  and  the  method  is  through  obedience. 
No  faith  is  kept  except  as  it  is  obeyed.  There  is  "a  strange 
mixture  of  the  moral  element "  in  all  the  passages  of  the 
New  Testament  where  "the  faith"  is  mentioned.  No  faith 
can  be  truly  kept  except  by  discovering  in  it  relations  to  life. 
So  it  must  be  with  the  doctrines  of  God,  of  the  Incarnation, 
of  the  Trinity,  of  the  Atonement,  of  Immortality. 

Such  were  the  hints  and  fragments  of  the  preparation  he 
made  for  his  sermon  in  the  fall  of  1872.  Some  of  them 
were  incorporated  in  it,  but  the  sermon  when  it  was  born 
throws  this  meagre  outline  into  the  shade.  It  was  delivered 
at  a  moment  when  people  were  wondering  at  his  preaching, 
unable  to  define  his  position  to  their  satisfaction.  But  this 
sermon  gives  the  open  secret.  There  is  no  bondage  in  hold- 
ing to  the  historic  faith  as  expressed  in  Christian  doctrines, 
but  rather  through  them  lies  the  way  to  perfect  freedom. 
The  tendency  of  Christian  doctrines  is  to  expansion  under 
the  vital  process  which  reveals  in  them  a  relation  to  life. 
As  we  follow  the  preacher  in  the  years  that  are  to  be 
studied,  it  is  important  to  keep  this  sermon  in  view.  From 
the  position  here  taken  he  never  receded. 

The  impersonal  character  of  entries  in  his  note-book  pre- 
vents one  from  always  discerning  the  immediate  motive  out 
of  which  they  spring.  His  fellow  traveller  in  Norway  was 
abruptly  summoned  home  by  the  death  of  a  child.  This  is 
his  comment  when  left  alone  to  his  reflections :  — 


^T.  33-36']     EARLY   YEARS   IN   BOSTON     65 

It  seems  as  i£  a  child's  death  and  the  keen,  bitter  pain  it  brings 
us  let  us  see  much  of  the  feebleness  of  the  intellectual  jjowers  to 
command  our  love,  —  of  the  possibility  of  that  in  which  the  intel- 
lectual was  not  at  all  developed  holding  us  intensely. 

A  few  more  extracts  from  his  note -books  of  these  years 
may  be  given  without  comment.  They  illustrate  the  current 
of  his  thoughts,  whether  at  home  or  abroad. 

The  positive  and  negative  pictures  of  heaven,  —  "no  night," 
etc.,  and  "river  of  water  of  life,"  etc.  This  world  suggesting 
the  other  by  contrast  and  by  anticipation.  So  the  uses  both  of 
Sorrow  and  Joy. 

We  have  no  descriptions  of  Jesus  in  the  Gos^jels,  only  stories 
of  what  He  did.  The  perfection  of  Biography.  Contrast  with 
novels. 

In  utter  dark,  in  bitter  pain, 
I  reached  a  vague  hand  out  for  strength, 
It  pressed  a  hand  that  pressed  again. 
And  all  my  tumult  calmed  at  length. 

The  darkness  brightened  slow  around ; 
I  looked  to  see  what  friendly  hand 
My  need  had  grasped,  and  lo  I  found 
My  foe  of  foes  in  all  the  land. 

One  angry  look  of  strange  surprise. 
Then,   "Take  we  what  the  Master  sends;  " 
He  holds  me  to  his  heart  and  cries, 
"Brother,  the  Lord  hath  made  us  friends." 

The  difference  between  suffering  and  pain.  Pain  is  accidental, 
suffering  is  essential.  It  is  right  and  necessary  that  we  should 
undergo  and  accept  as  our  lot  whatever  comes  in  our  way  of  work 
whether  it  is  agreeable  or  disagreeable  (and  therefore  note  that 
the  old  Latin  and  Greek  corresponding  words  were  used  of  "suf- 
fering "  or  "  experiencing  "  either  pleasant  or  unpleasant  things)  ; 
but  that  pain  in  the  sense  of  discomfort  should  accompany  the 
acceptance  is  a  mere  accident,  no  more  to  be  called  absolutely 
"right"  or  "necessary"  by  the  ascetic  than,  on  the  other  hand, 
pleasure  is  by  the  voluptuary. 

"I  will  walk  at  liberty  because  I  keep  Thy  commandments." 
The  liberty  of  law,  Eden ;  the  passage  out  of  it,  a  passage  into 

VOL.  M 


66  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

slavery.  True  liberty  is  harmony.  The  slavery  of  self-conscious- 
ness that  comes  with  sin.  That  is  the  tree  of  knowledge.  David, 
so  free  in  his  goodness,  so  cowardly  in  his  sin.  Sympathy  with  a 
law  well  kept,  that  is  the  best  freedom. 

We  may  not  always  be  consciously  thinking  of  God,  only  we 
must  think  of  all  things  through  and  in  Him,  as  we  do  not  always 
look  at  the  Sun  and  yet  see  all  things  we  know  only  by  the  Sun's 
shining. 

The  man  was  going  somewhere  else  and  sat  down  for  a  moment 
on  the  lowest  step  of  the  Temple  of  Fame,  which  is  work;  and 
Fame  opened  the  door  and  called  him  in,  to  his  surprise. 

Men  keep  their  brains  strangely  in  abeyance,  or  they  show  you 
and  expect  you  to  be  satisfied  with  some  certificate  of  deposit, 
which  shows  that  they  have  got  them  put  away  somewhere. 
There  is  no  doubt  about  the  genuineness  of  the  certificate  and  so 
none  about  the  real  existence  of  their  brains,  but  it  is  not  the 
same  thing  to  you  after  all. 

The  danger,  the  terrible  danger  of  false  tests!  I  have  been 
told  a  hundred  times  that  the  Bible  must  stand  or  fall  with 
slavery;  and  John  Wesley  says,  "Infidels  know,  whether  Christians 
know  it  or  not,  that  the  giving  up  of  witchcraft  is  in  effect  giving 
up  the  Bible." 

As  the  Hebrew  Psalmist  prayed,  "If  I  forget  thee,  0  Jeru- 
salem, let  my  right  hand  forget  her  cunning, "  so  let  us  in  the 
same  spirit  pray  that  our  powers  may  be  of  use  to  us,  only  while 
we  abide  in  the  religion  of  the  right  and  the  true.  Let  us  beg 
that  any  power  of  reason,  or  imagination,  or  persuasion,  or  any 
other  that  we  have  may  abandon  us  when  we  forget  righteousness 
and  God.  Let  us  dread  most  of  all  to  be  builders  for  Satan  with 
those  powers  which  the  Father  gave  us  to  build  with  for  Him. 

"0  Lord  and  Sovereign  of  my  life,  take  from  me  the  spirit 
of  idleness,  despair,  love  of  power,  and  unprofitable  speaking." 
(Prayer  of  St.  Ephraim  of  Syria,  in  the  Russian  Liturgy.) 

To  Miss  Mitchell  he  writes  November  7,  1872 :  — 

I  don't  like  to  hear  you  talk  as  you  have  in  your  last  two  let- 
ters about  not  living  long.  Not  that  I  think  death  is  dreadful 
in  the  least  for  the  one  who  goes ;  he  has  the  best  of  it ;  but  it 
is  dreadful  to  be  left  behind,  and  find  how  merely  impossible  to 
make  new  friends  that  are  at  all  like  the  old.     I  am  sure,  too, 


^^■33-3^1     EARLY   YEARS   IN  BOSTON     67 

that  our  friends  must  be  more  and  not  less  to  us  in  the  other 
world  than  they  are  here,  and  that  this  world  only  begins  friend- 
ships. Otherwise  nothing  could  be  more  wretched.  Only  I 
shudder  when  I  think  how  one's  friends  who  have  believed  in  him 
here  will  find  him  out  there,  and  see  what  a  humbug  he  was.  I 
don't  believe  it  will  alienate  them,  though,  and  no  doubt  even 
there  the  humiliation  will  be  good  for  him.  Promise  me  that 
however  you  find  me  out  to  have  been  a  delusion  and  a  sham  you 
won't  give  me  up,  for  I  forewarn  you  that  you  don't  know  me  now, 
and  if  you  ever  do  the  discovery  will  be  a  shock  to  you.  Which 
does  n't  mean  that  I  ever  murdered  a  parishioner  or  robbed  a 
house,  but  only  that  I  know  myself  better  than  you  know  me.    .    .    . 

I  am  glad  on  the  whole  that  Grant  is  elected,  but  wish  it  had 
been  a  narrow  thing  instead  of  such  a  sweeping  vote.  He  and 
his  party  will  hold  that  the  whole  administration  has  been  tri- 
umphantly endorsed,  and  that  they  are  strong  enough  now  to  do 
just  what  they  please.  There  won't  be  any  great  despotism,  but 
there  is  no  reason  to  look  for  reform  or  for  a  high-toned  govern- 
ment for  the  next  four  years. 

Have  you  read  Beecher's  "Lectures  on  Preaching  "  ?  It  is  very 
rich  and  sensible  and  clever. 

The  most  important  circumstance  in  the  latter  part  of 
1872  was  the  destruction  of  Trinity  Church  in  the  great 
Boston  fire,  to  which  reference  has  been  made  in  the  previous 
chapter.  His  own  account  of  it  is  given  in  this  extract 
from  his  correspondence  with  Miss  Mitchell :  — 

Hotel  Kempton,  Berkeley  Street,  Boston,  November  12, 1872. 
We  have  had  terrible  days.  Last  Saturday  night  and  Sunday 
were  fearful.  For  a  time  it  seemed  as  if  the  thing  would  never 
stop  so  long  as  there  was  anything  left  to  burn.  Everybody  has 
suffered,  almost  everybody  severely.  Very  many  have  lost  all. 
Scores  of  my  parishioners  have  been  burned  out.  But  the  courage 
and  cheerfulness  of  everybody  is  noble  and  delightful.  It  began 
about  eight  o'clock  Saturday  evening,  and  hour  after  hour  it  went 
on,  growing  worse  and  worse.  Street  after  street  went  like  paper. 
There  were  sights  so  splendid  and  awful  as  I  never  dreamed 
of,  and  now  the  desolation  is  bewildering.  There  was  hard  work 
enough  to  do  all  night,  and  though  much  was  lost,  something  was 
saved.  Old  Trinity  seemed  safe  all  night,  but  towards  morning 
the  fire  swept  into  her  rear,  and  there  was  no  chance.  She  went 
at  four  in  the  morning.  I  saw  her  well  afire  inside  and  out, 
carried  off  some  books  and  robes,  and  left  her.     She  burnt  majes- 


68  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

tically,  and  her  great  tower  stands  now  solid  as  ever,  a  most 
picturesque  and  stately  ruin.  She  died  in  dignity.  I  did  not 
know  how  much  I  liked  the  great  gloomy  old  thing  till  I  saw 
her  windows  bursting  and  the  flame  running  along  the  old  high 
pews.  I  feel  that  it  was  better  for  the  church  to  go  so  than 
to  be  torn  down  stone  by  stone.  Of  course  our  immediate  incon- 
venience is  great,  and  we  shall  live  in  much  discomfort  for  the 
next  two  years.  We  have  engaged  the  Lowell  Institute,  a  Lecture 
Hall  that  seats  a  thousand  people,  and  shall  begin  service  there 
next  Sunday. 

But  Trinity  is  only  one  little  bit  of  the  great  catastrophe. 
There  is  little  immediate  destitution,  for  there  were  hardly  any 
dwellings  burnt,  but  thousands  are  thrown  out  of  employment,  and 
it  is  pitiable  to  see  the  rich  men  who  have  been  reduced  to  poverty 

in  a  night.      My  poor  friend  Mr.  ,  the  gentlest  and  best  of 

men,  is  ruined  in  his  old  age.  Every  hour  one  hears  of  some  new 
sufferer,  but  the  strength  and  brightness  of  every  one  is  amazing. 
My  father  was  so  happy  as  not  to  be  touched  in  any  of  his  little 
property.  I  myself  had  none  to  lose.  It  is  going  to  be  a  winter 
of  sadness  and  suffering,  nobody  can  guess  how  much  yet. 

I  can  talk  of  nothing  but  the  fire,  and  not  of  that  coherently. 
Some  day  I  will  tell  you  all  I  can  about  it,  but  the  horribleness 
of  that  night  nobody  can  tell.    .    .    . 

To  this  account  some  other  particulars  may  be  added. 
Mr.  Brooks  was  sitting  in  one  of  the  pews  of  Trinity  Church, 
with  Mr.  Dillon  the  sexton,  resting  after  the  fatigues  of  the 
awful  night,  when  the  flames  were  seen  stealing  in  at  the  roof 
of  the  northeast  corner.  They  waited  there  together,  watch- 
ing the  progress  of  the  flames  until  it  became  unsafe  to 
remain.  As  they  were  hurriedly  leaving  the  building,  Mr. 
Dillon,  in  his  excitement,  threw  open  the  great  doors  of  the 
tower  and  fastened  them  back,  as  had  been  his  habit  for  many 
years  when  the  congregation  was  to  disperse  after  service 
was  over,  —  this  last  time,  as  it  were,  for  the  invisible  crowd 
of  witnesses  to  take  their  final  departure. 

There  is  another  incident  connected  with  that  fearful  night 
which  is  worth  recalling.  As  Mr.  Brooks  came  away  from 
Trinity  Church  he  went  into  the  large  jewelry  establishment 
of  Slireve,  Crump  &  Low,  then  on  the  corner  of  Summer 
and  Washington  streets,  where  they  were  expecting  the  fire 


^T.  33-36]     EARLY   YEARS   IN  BOSTON     69 

to  reach  them  at  any  moment.  It  added  to  the  wild  excite- 
ment of  the  hour  that  thieves  were  known  to  be  in  the 
neighborhood  awaiting  their  opportunity,  some  of  them  ex- 
perienced in  their  craft,  having  come  from  a  distance;  and 
there  were  rumors  of  vessels  lying  at  the  wharf  near  the 
foot  of  Summer  Street,  which  were  being  laden  with  the 
spoils  of  the  burning  district.  Under  these  circumstances, 
Mr.  Brooks  offered  his  aid,  asking  if  there  were  anything 
which  he  could  do.  Mr.  Crump  immediately  responded  by 
emptying  the  safe  which  contained  the  most  valuable  property 
of  the  firm  —  pearls  and  diamonds  and  other  precious  stones 
—  into  two  hand  bags,  and  consigned  them  to  Mr.  Brooks 
with  directions  to  carry  them  to  a  house  on  Newbury  Street, 
a  mile  or  more  from  the  conflagration,  taking  no  certificate 
of  deposit,  and  offering  no  bodyguard  for  protection  on  the 
dangerous  errand,  for  the  distance  was  to  be  walked,  and  no 
conveyances  were  to  be  had.  Under  these  circumstances, 
about  the  hour  of  two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  Mr.  Brooks 
executed  the  commission  entrusted  to  him. 

In  a  letter  to  Rev.  George  A.  Strong,  Mr.  Brooks  describes 
other  aspects  of  the  desolation  which  appealed  to  him :  — 

November  12,  1872. 
Run  your  eye  over  the  map  and  think  what  there  was  between 
Summer  and  State  and  Washington  streets,  and  consider  that  all 
swept  away,  and  it  is  wretched  to  think  about.  None  of  us  knew 
how  fond  we  were  of  the  old  town.  The  streets  that  are  gone 
are  those  that  were  most  familiar  to  us  when  we  were  boys. 
They  were  then  all  residences,  and  I  was  born  in  one,  and  grew 
up  in  another,  and  went  to  school  in  another,  and  had  walked 
them  until  I  knew  all  their  cobblestones.  I  am  glad  to  know  that 
you  are  very  fond  of  Boston  too.  It  is  the  best  city  of  the  con- 
tinent anyhow.  ...  As  for  Old  Trinity,  it  was  sad  to  see  it  go, 
and  we  shall  be  much  inconvenienced  by  living  in  tabernacles  for 
the  next  two  years,  but  in  the  end  it  will  not  hurt  us,  and  if  the 
parish  keeps  together,  as  I  think  it  will,  we  shall  find  some  com- 
pensations in  the  freer  and  heartier  worship  of  our  hall.  We 
have  got  a  beautiful  hall  as  large  as  the  old  church,  close  by  our 
new  place,  and  count  ourselves  very  lucky. 

To  Miss  Mitchell  he  writes :  — 


yo  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-72 

My  kind  friend  Mr.  Dexter  is  dead.  His  funeral  is  to  be  this 
morning.  I  do  not  know  of  anything  more  calamitous  that  could 
have  befallen  the  church,  and  personally  I  had  become  very  fond 
of  him  for  his  constant  kindness  and  thoughtfulness  and  the 
simple,  bright,  transparent  character  he  always  showed.  I  never 
knew  a  more  unselfish  man.  His  own  sorrows  he  had  enough  of, 
and  kept  them  perfectly  to  himself.  He  was  born  with  every 
instinct  of  a  gentleman.  He  had  never  been  successful  in  busi- 
ness, for  he  was  too  good-natured  and  gentle.  I  hardly  ever  saw 
a  man  who  had  been  successful  in  business  whom  I  did  n't  dis- 
like. Mr.  Dexter  had  been  very  busy  since  the  fire  removing  the 
last  of  the  Trinity  dead  to  Mount  Auburn.  He  took  a  severe 
cold  and  last  Saturday  was  laid  up,  and  Tuesday  he  died  of  con- 
gestion of  the  lungs.  I  shall  miss  his  friendship  sadly,  and  to 
the  church  his  loss  is  simply  irreparable.  He  was  full  of  interest 
in  the  new  church,  and  meant  to  give  now  his  whole  time  to  it. 
He  had  been  warden  of  Trinity  about  fifty  years,  and  yet  was 
young  and  fresh  and  progressive,  while  his  long  service  gave  him 
that  sort  of  fatherly  authority  in  the  Parish  which,  if  it  is  wise,  it 
is  a  good  thing  for  somebody  to  have.  Poor  Trinity !  She  seems 
to  get  it  pretty  hard,  but  her  people  come  up  well,  and  I  think 
she  will  stand,  though  this  blow  is  a  hard  one.  Our  new  hall  is 
crowded,  and  the  services  there  are  full  of  such  spirit  as  we  never 
could  get  in  the  old  church. 

Well,  Thanksgiving  Day  is  over,  and  there  was  a  great  deal  to 
be  thankful  for,  and  it  was  a  bright  and  brilliant  day,  and  so  I  am 
glad  it  came,  but  there  was  a  kind  of  sadness  about  it.  That 
great  blotch  [the  burnt  district]  in  the  middle  of  Boston  looks 
more  and  more  miserable  as  the  smoke  dies  away,  and  there  are  so 
many  people  who  you  know  are  suffering  that  your  sympathies 
are  kept  stretched  all  the  time.      (November  29,  1872.) 

With  the  burning  of  Trinity  Church,  Mr.  Dillon  also  dis- 
appears from  the  scene  of  his  labors.  He  was  a  man  of  great 
dignity  of  manner,  quite  the  equal  in  this  respect  of  Bishop 
Eastburn,  whom  in  their  long  association  he  may  have 
unconsciously  imitated.  He  was  bewildered  at  the  time  of 
the  great  fire,  but  it  also  illustrates  his  habit  of  watchfulness 
over  the  property  of  the  church,  that  when  the  fire  brigade 
asked  for  the  coal  in  its  cellars  to  feed  the  exhausted  engines, 
even  though  the  conflagration  was  raging  at  its  worst,  he  re- 
fused the  request.  After  his  retirement  to  his  farm  in  Ver- 
mont, he  would  on  occasions  discourse,  most  edify  ingly  it  was 


^T.  33-36']    EARLY  YEARS  IN  BOSTON       71 

said,  to  his  friends  and  neighbors  on  important  points  in  the- 
ology, exhibiting  with  fine  discrimination  "sound  views,"  and 
warning  against  erroneous  teaching.  His  neighbors  listened 
with  deference,  for  they  knew  that  he  had  had  great  oppor- 
tunities. 


CHAPTER  III 

1873-1874 

ECCLESIASTICAL  CONTROVERSIES.  RELATION  TO  THE  EVAN- 
GELICAL SCHOOL.  EXTRACTS  FROM  CORRESPONDENCE. 
THE        SUMMER         ABROAD.  DEATH        OF        FREDERICK 

BROOKS 

It  does  not  appear  that  Mr.  Brooks  took  any  active  part 
in  the  controversies  within  the  Episcopal  Church  which  cul- 
minated in  the  year  1873.  He  was  an  interested  spectator, 
watching  the  proceedings  of  conventions  and  the  trend  which 
things  were  taking,  but  he  did  not  feel  called  upon  to  enter 
the  arena  as  a  combatant.  Although  he  was  regarded  as  an 
Evangelical  or  Low  Churchman,  yet  so  early  as  1870  he 
found  himself  out  of  sympathy  with  the  management  of  the 
Evangelical  Educational  Society.  What  moved  his  indigna- 
tion was  the  policy  it  had  adopted  of  sending,  to  the  young 
men  who  wished  to  become  its  beneficiaries,  a  circular  letter 
containing  a  series  of  questions  or  tests  which  they  were 
required  to  answer,  in  order  to  show  that  they  were  in  sympa- 
thy with  Evangelical  tenets.  This  was  made  the  condition  on 
which  they  were  allowed  to  receive  the  Society's  aid  in  their 
preparation  for  the  ministry.  When  Mr.  Brooks  became 
aware  that  this  policy  was  approved  by  the  Board  of  Man- 
agers, he  wrote  to  the  secretary  of  the  society  resigning  his 
position  upon  the  Board. 

Boston,  November  14, 1870. 

My  dear  Mr,  Matlack,  —  I  beg  you  to  believe  that  I  did 
not  write  my  last  letter,  resigning  my  position  as  a  Manager  of 
the  Evangelical  Education  Society,  without  careful  consideration. 
I  thank  you  most  heartily  for  the  kind  urgency  of  your  note 
which  I  have  just  received,  and  am  very  sorry  that  I  cannot  with- 
draw my  note  as  you  desire  me  to  do.      I  do   believe  with  you 


'/,r  :iii 


^T.  37-38]    CHURCH  CONTROVERSIES         73 

that  these  are  times  in  which  all  men  truly  Evangelical  ought  to 
stand  firmly  together,  but  I  am  sure  that  the  way  to  bring  that 
to  pass  is  not  to  narrow  their  standing  ground.  Do  you  seriously 
mean  to  count  no  man  Evangelical  who  is  not  able  and  willing  to 
answer  satisfactorily  to  these  questions  of  the  Society  ?  If  so,  it 
will  cast  out  many  not  merely  among  our  students,  but  among  the 
clergy  who  have  always  counted  themselves  one  with  the  great 
Evangelical  section  of  our  church. 

It  is  impossible  to  discuss  the  "questions  "  in  a  letter,  nor  is  it 
of  any  use  to  do  so,  but  I  cannot  help  calling  your  attention  to 
the  strange  effect  which  is  produced  upon  one's  mind  when  in  one 
question  he  is  asked  to  give  up  all  allegiance  to  human  authority, 
and  fasten  his  faith  on  and  define  his  creed  by  revelation,  and  two 
questions  later,  finds  himself  called  upon  to  rank  himself  under 
the  banner  of  two  modern  teachers  as  represented  in  two  of  their 
books.  Nor  can  I  think  that  the  qualifying  phrase  "in  the  main," 
to  which  you  point  me,  helps  the  matter  at  all.  The  degree  of 
conformity  will  be  left  to  the  judgment  of  the  candidate;  as 
always  in  such  cases  the  most  worthy  will  be  the  most  scrupulous 
and  wholly  uncertain  how  near  they  must  come ;  the  less  conscien- 
tious will  content  themselves  with  a  very  general  sort  of  assent, 
while  the  more  faithful  will  demand  of  themselves  an  entire  agree- 
ment to  the  books,  ^  to  which,  whatever  be  our  respect  and  love  for 
their  authors,  I  am  sure  there  is  not  one  of  us  who  is  able  to  give 
his  assent  in  every  particular.  Not  one  of  us  does  not  hesitate 
at  some  statements  in  any  treatise  of  theology  as  long  as  these 
books.  Their  authors  would  be  the  last  men  to  desire  that  we 
should  blindly  agree  with  them  in  every  word.  And  yet  we  cast 
out  students  who  cannot  meet  this  test. 

If  this  be  no  new  policy,  but  only  the  old  one  declared,  then  I 
have  grievously  mistaken  my  duty  in  the  past.  I  have  recom- 
mended students  to  the  Society  often,  and  I  have  been  on  critical 
committees  to  examine  applicants.  I  never  examined  students 
with  questions  such  as  these,  nor  have  I  heard  others  do  it. 

It  is  not  so  very  long  since  we  were  students  ourselves.  I  am 
sure  that  if  these  questions  had  been  laid  as  tests  upon  the  Alex- 
andria seminary  when  you  and  I  were  there  they  would  have 
excluded  all  the  men  who  have  been  most  useful  in  the  ministry 
since.  I  cannot  doubt  it,  and  yet  I  cannot  at  this  moment  think 
of  one  man  of  our  time  who  has  turned  out  a  High  Churchman. 

But  I  did  not  mean  to  argue  the  matter.  I  ought  to  have  been 
at  the  meeting  if  I  had  anything  to  say.      Only  I  cannot  stand 

1  The  tooks  here  referred  to  were  Evangelical  Religion,  hy  Dr.  May  of 
Virginia,  and  the  Contrast,  by  Dr.  J.  S.  Stone. 


74  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

apparently  asking,  as  essential  to  acceptance  of  a  candidate  for 
education  for  the  ministry,  declarations  which  I  do  not  hold  to  be 
essential,  and  which  I  do  not  think  the  best  men  among  the  appli- 
cants will  be  able  or  willing  to  make.  There  is  no  such  condi- 
tion, as  these  questions  imply,  to  any  money  that  comes  from  my 
parish.  I  could  hardly  surprise  my  people  more  than  by  reading 
them  the  questions  next  Sunday. 

So  I  must  resign,  but  I  do  it  with  great  regret.  I  have  had 
more  interest  in  this  than  in  any  Church  Society.  I  have  rejoiced 
in  the  good  work  that  it  has  done,  and  certainly  I  do  not  now 
cease  to  be  interested  in  its  prosperity,  though  I  must  beg  you  to 
present  the  resignation  which  I  sent  you. 

Excuse  this  long  letter,  and  believe  me 

Yours  faithfully, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

After  long  delay  and  with  mucli  reluctance  the  resignation 
was  accepted.  His  attention  having  now  been  called  to  the 
whole  subject  of  assisting  students  with  pecuniary  aid  in  the 
course  of  their  preparation  for  the  ministry,  Mr.  Brooks 
took  a  further  step,  refusing  any  longer  to  ask  for  contribu- 
tions from  his  parish  to  the  treasury  of  the  Educational 
Society,  or  to  allow  its  secretary  to  use  his  pulpit  for  the  pur- 
pose of  soliciting  funds.  The  following  letter  to  his  brother, 
in  Chicago,  who  felt  the  same  difficulty,  reveals  his  state  of 
mind :  — 

Hotel  Kempton,  Berkeley  Street,  Boston,  November  16, 1873. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  I  wish  you  'd  ask  me  easier  questions. 
Here  is  this  Theological  Education  question  which  I  have  been 
puzzling  over  for  years  and  see  no  light  on  yet,  and  your  letter 
just  rubs  it  in  a  little  more.  For  myself  I  have  nothing  to  say. 
Sometimes  I  have  found  a  good  student  to  whom  I  have  made  my 
appropriation,  but  at  present  I  know  of  none  such;  and  I  have 
about  $500  lying  at  interest  which  I  do  not  know  what  to  do 
with.  I  cannot  deliberately  send  to  the  Increase  of  the  Ministry 
Society,  and  the  accounts  which  I  have  heard  of  the  Evangelical 

Anniversaries  make  me  less  inclined  than  ever  to  send  to  Mr. . 

I  am  afraid  that  Washburn  and  Harwood  have  very  little  to  do 
with  the  Society  to  which  they  give  their  names.  But  not  to 
speak  of  myself  I  should  think  your  case  was  easier.  Your  Parish 
has  been  wholly  used  to  one  way  of  giving.  It  is  presumable 
that   some  of  them  know  something  about   the  Increase   of  the 


MT.  37-38]   CHURCH  CONTROVERSIES         75 

Ministry  Society  and  prefer  it.  Why  not  let  them  specify  their 
contributions  to  either  Society  as  they  prefer,  and  then  tell  them 
that  the  unappropriated  balance  is  to  be  appropriated  to  the  gen- 
eral course  of  Theological  Education  at  your  discretion. 

Mr.  Brooks  did  not  come  forward  as  an  advocate  of  any 
reform  in  the  matter  at  issue.  He  continued  to  give  occa- 
sional aid  to  young  men  according  to  his  individual  judgment, 
but  in  some  cases  experienced  grievous  disappointment  with 
the  result.  When  his  name  was  again  placed  in  1892  on  the 
list  of  Vice-Presidents  of  the  Evangelical  Educational  Society 
he  wrote  this  letter  to  its  secretary,  the  late  Rev.  R.  C. 
Matlack :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  February  17,  1892. 

My  dear  Mr.  Matlack,  — I  am  very  grateful  to  those  who 
have  done  me  the  honor  of  electing  an  Honorary  Vice-President 
of  the  Evangelical  Educational  Society.  I  do  not  think  it  best, 
however,  to  accept  the  position  which  is  thus  offered  me,  because 
I  feel  that  it  would  lead  to  a  misunderstanding  of  my  position 
with  reference  to  the  Society. 

A  good  many  years  ago  I  came  to  feel  that  educational  aid 
societies  were  not  desirable  and  therefore  withdrew  from  your 
society  of  which  I  had  been  a  member  and  a  manager.  I  have 
not  changed  my  feeling  with  regard  to  it,  and  while  I  am  con- 
vinced that  a  great  deal  of  good  is  done  by  your  organization, 
under  your  effective  management,  I  cannot,  with  my  convictions, 
feel  it  right  to  take  a  position  as  even  associated  in  an  honorary 
way  with  its  administration. 

I  am  sure  you  will  understand  my  position,  and  will  know  that 
I  do  not  in  the  least  undervalue  the  kindness  of  those  who  have 
invited  me  to  give  my  name. 

Yours  most  sincerely, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

Despite  this  action  of  Mr.  Brooks  in  separating  himself 
from  the  managers  of  the  Evangelical  cause,  there  was  no 
break  in  his  cordial  relations  with  individuals  who  represented 
the  Evangelical  principles  as  he  understood  them.  Thus  to 
Mr.  Cooper  he  writes,  with  reference  to  the  petition  which 
had  been  often  sent  to  the  General  Convention,  asking  that 
the  word  "  regenerate  "  might  be  omitted  from  the  Baptismal 
office,  or  its  use  made  optional :  — 


76  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

Hotel  Kempton,  Bebkelet  Street,  Boston,  March  23,  1871. 

Dear  Cooper,  —  I  got  your  note,  and  last  night  I  read  your 
article  aloud  to  Vinton  and  we  talked  it  over.  It  is  very  strongly 
put,  and  the  motive  that  you  allude  to,  their  possible  dread  of 
being  swamped  by  Ritualism,  is  the  one  thing  that  might  make 
the  High  Churchmen  tolerate  and  concede  a  little  to  the  Low 
Churchmen.  But  they  don't  dread  Ritualism  enough  to  make 
them  yield  their  dear  principle  of  "no  change  in  the  Prayer 
Book."  That  has  become  a  bigotry  with  them.  So  I  do  not 
believe  this  General  Convention  is  going  to  yield  on  the  Prayer 
Book  in  the  least.  Still  I  believe  in  asking  them  to.  Let  the 
responsibility  be  on  them  and  not  on  us.  Let  them  not  say  we 
did  not  ask.  So  I  hope  you  will  put  your  memorial  in  form  very 
soon  and  frankly  and  fairly  let  us  sign  it,  and  tell  the  Swells  what 
we  poor  creatures  want. 

I  shall  be  on  after  the  12th  of  April,  and  then  we  '11  talk  about 
it  all.  We  '11  get  it  out  in  Antique  Type.  Many  thanks  for 
the  Protest.  I  am  to  exchange  with  Jaggar  on  the  19th  and 
preach  there  morning  and  afternoon. 

Always  yours,  P.   B. 

When  Bishop  Eastburn  died,  in  1872,  who  for  more  than 
twenty-five  years  had  been  the  rector  of  Trinity  Church,  Mr. 
Brooks  paid  a  tribute  to  his  memory  from  the  pulpit,  in  which 
he  took  occasion  to  speak  of  the  Evangelical  movement  which 
the  Bishop  had  represented.  These  words  may  be  taken  as 
his  deliberate  and  final  judgment;  they  have  the  apparent 
tone  of  one  speaking  from  the  outside,  but  the  tone  also  of 
one  who  was  still  within  the  circle  from  which  he  did  not  seek 
escape :  — 

The  Evangelical  movement  had  its  zealous  men  here  and  there 
throughout  the  land.  The  peculiarities  of  that  movement  were 
an  earnest  insistence  upon  doctrine,  and  upon  personal,  spiritual 
experience,  of  neither  of  which  had  the  previous  generation  made 
very  much.  Man's  fallen  state,  his  utter  hopelessness,  the  vica- 
rious atonement,  the  supernatural  conversion,  the  work  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  —  these  were  the  truths  which  the  men  of  those  days, 
who  were  what  were  called  "Evangelical"  men,  urged  with  the 
force  of  vehement  belief  upon  their  hearers.  They  were  great 
truths.  There  were  crude,  hard,  and  untrue  statements  of  them 
very  often,  but  they  went  deep ;  they  laid  hold  upon  the  souls  and 
consciences   of  men.      They  created  most  profound  experiences. 


^T.  37-38]   CHURCH  CONTROVERSIES         77 

They  made  many  great  ministers  and  noble  Christians.  It  was 
indeed  the  work  of  God.  To  those  of  you  who  were  his  parishioners 
and  friends,  who  heard  him  preach  year  after  year,  and  knew  what 
lay  nearest  to  his  heart,  I  need  not  say  how  entirely  Bishop  East- 
burn  was  a  man  of  this  movement.  His  whole  life  was  full  of  it. 
He  had  preached  its  Gospel  in  New  York  with  wonderful  success 
and  power.  He  bore  his  testimony  to  it  to  the  last  in  Boston. 
A  faith  that  was  very  beautiful  in  its  childlike  reliance  upon  God ; 
a  sturdy  courage  which  would  have  welcomed  the  martyrdom  of 
more  violent  days;  a  complete,  unquestioning,  unchanging  loyalty 
to  the  ideas  which  he  had  once  accepted;  a  deep  personal  piety, 
which,  knowing  the  happiness  of  divine  communion,  desired  that 
blessedness  for  other  souls ;  a  wide  sympathy  for  all  of  every 
name  who  were  working  for  the  ends  which  he  loved  and  desired ; 
these  with  his  kindly  heart  and  constancy  in  friendship  made  the 
power  of  the  long  ministry  of  Bishop  Eastburn.  The  teaching  of 
this  parish  through  twenty-six  years  was  most  direct  and  simple. 
There  was  a  dread,  even,  of  other  forms  in  which  the  same  awak- 
ening of  spiritual  life  was  manifest.  The  High  Churchman  and 
the  Broad  Churchman  found  no  tolerance.  But  the  preacher  was 
one  whom  all  men  honored,  whose  strong  moral  force  impressed  the 
young  and  old,  whose  sturdy  independence  was  like  a  strong  east 
wind,  and  who  went  to  his  reward  crowned  with  the  love  of  many 
and  the  respect  of  all.  It  seems  but  yesterday  that  his  familiar 
figure  passed  away.  His  voice  is  still  fresh  in  our  ears.  The 
old  Church  comes  back,  and  he  stands  there  in  its  pulpit,  as  he 
must  always  stand,  among  the  most  marked  and  vigorous  figures 
in  our  parish  history.  It  would  not  be  right  to  renew  our  Church 
life  without  cordial  remembrance  of  his  strength  and  faithfulness.^ 

One  other  point  there  was  of  sharp  divergence  between  the 
Low  Church  and  the  High  Church  parties.  It  was  the  custom 
of  the  former  in  administering  the  Lord's  Supper  to  invite 
the  members  of  other  religious  denominations  to  remain  to 
the  communion.  With  this  custom  Mr.  Brooks  was  in 
sympathy.  When  his  brother  Arthur  came  into  collision 
with  the  Bishop  of  Illinois,  the  Rt.  Rev.  Henry  J.  White- 
house,  who  assumed  the  right  to  forbid  such  notice  to  be 
given  and  to  enforce  the  principle  of  "  close  communion  "  in 

^  From  a  manuscript  sermon,  preached  at  Trinity  Church,  September  29, 
1872,  from  the  text,  St.  Matt.  xxv.  21 :  "  Well  done,  thou  good  and  faithful 
servant." 


78  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

the  Episcopal  Church,   Mr.   Brooks  wrote   these  letters  in 
which  he  touches  upon  the  principle  involved :  — 

Hotel  Kempton,  Bbbkelet  Street,  Boston,  May  23,  1873. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  I  suppose  it  was  to  be  expected  that  you 
and  Whitehouse  would  collide  sooner  or  later,  and  the  matter  of 
which  you  wrote  to  me  seems  to  be  a  pretty  good  point  to  meet 

on.      I  do  not  understand  why  Mr. has  never  objected  before 

to  your  action  in  inviting  others  than  Episcopalians  to  the  Com- 
munion. You  have  been  in  St.  James's  almost  a  year.  Have  you 
given  the  invitation  all  that  time,  and  has  he  heard  it  and  only  now 
since  the  Bishop's  visit  entered  his  remonstrance?  That  would 
seem  to  show  that  he  was  acting  under  the  Bishop's  suggestion, 
which  would  be  a  piece  of  parochial  interference  of  which  your 
Bishop  perhaps   may  be  capable,  but   certainly  no   other  in  the 

land.      I  certainly  would  not  yield  the  matter  to  Mr,  alone. 

I  would  go  and  see  him  and  have  a  square,  friendly  talk  about  it. 
If  he  stands  alone  in  his  remonstrance  I  would  not  sacrifice  what 
may  be  a  very  desirable  practice  to  his  narrow  whim.  If  there 
are  a  considerable  number  in  the  parish  who  object  I  should  dis- 
continue it,  but  certainly  take  great  pains  to  say  in  a  sermon  at  the 
same  time  what  my  real  ground  was,  to  explain  the  perfectly  clear 
position  of  our  Church  on  the  subject,  and  not  to  seem  to  fall  low 
before  the  footstool  of  the  Bishop  at  his  first  assumption  of 
authority. 

The  position  of  our  Church  is  perfectly  clear.  The  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  himself  in  the  Vance  Smith  dispute  distinctly  said 
that  the  Collect  which  touches  the  question  applied  only  to  our 
own  people.  The  more  I  think  of  it  the  more  I  hope  you  will 
continue  it  unless  it  is  very  clearly  desirable  to  droj)  it.  I  would 
not  give  it  up  out  of  mere  courtesy  to  any  man.  At  the  same 
time  it  is  not  so  absolutely  a  thing  of  principle  that  it  might  not 
be  omitted  if  its  use  would  seriously  wound  many  people  and 
injure  the  parish.      You  surely  have  done  right  so  far. 

Of  course  you  can  judge  better  than  I.  Excuse  my  venturing 
all  these  remarks,  but  you  asked  for  them.  .  .  .  What  an  un- 
pleasant Christian  Whitehouse  must  be.    .    .    . 

But  with  all  my  heart  I  sympathize  with  your  dread  of  a  con- 
troversy and  of  the  cheap  notoriety  and  the  disgusting  partisan- 
ship that  comes  with  it. 

June  2, 1873. 
I   have    received   the  Papers.      What    a   cheerful    sheet    the 
"Times  "  seems  to  be.      It  is  so  good  and  gentlemanly.      Do  you 


^T.  37-38]   CHURCH  CONTROVERSIES         79 

have  much  of  that  sort  of  Journalism  in  your  town.  As  to  the 
whole  effect,  I  think  the  Church  at  large  will  only  say,  "There  's 
Bishop  Whitehouse  at  it  again,"  and  then  let  the  matter  drop. 
The  "Boston  Journal  "  has  a  paragraph  made  up  from  the  "Chicago 
Tribune  "  article  on  Saturday,  which  Father  discovered,  and  so  they 
knew  all  about  it  at  home.  Then  I  told  them  all  I  knew  about  it. 
They  are  calm.  There  is  only  one  suggestion  I  want  to  make. 
I  do  not  think  the  notice  is  to  be  in  any  way  considered  or  to  be 
either  attacked  or  defended  as  an  addition  or  interpolation  in  the 
Service.  It  is  an  address  by  the  Minister  to  the  Congregation. 
It  is  of  the  nature  of  Sermon  and  not  of  Liturgy,  and  considera- 
tions of  Liturgical  Integrity  have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  If  a 
minister  is  to  be  found  fault  with  for  doing  it,  it  must  be  as  he  would 
be  blamed  for  any  other  statement  that  was  considered  faulty  in 
his  Sermon,  —  on  the  ground  of  false  doctrine  not  of  rubrical  impro- 
priety. But  I  dare  say  the  breeze  has  blown  itself  out  before  this 
and  all  is  forgotten.   .    .   . 

Always  yours,  Phillips. 

It  was  evident  in  these  years,  the  early  seventies,  that 
things  were  rapidly  tending  toward  a  separatist  movement  in 
the  Episcopal  Church.  The  schism  was  finally  consummated 
in  1873  when  the  Reformed  Episcopal  Church  was  organized 
under  the  leadership  of  Bishop  Cummins  of  Kentucky. 
With  this  movement  Mr.  Brooks  had  no  sympathy,  nor  did 
the  idea  of  leaving  the  Church  present  itself  to  him  as  a 
practical  issue  or  as  really  affording  any  relief  from  the 
grievances  which  he  felt  in  common  with  the  Evangelical 
party.  Despite  the  restrictive  legislation,  whose  object  and 
end  he  regarded  as  separating  the  Episcopal  Church  from 
intercommunion  with  the  other  Protestant  churches,  he  held 
it  his  duty  to  remain  and,  in  whatever  way  was  open,  mani- 
fest his  sympathy  for  the  principle  of  open  communion  and 
other  modes  of  Christian  fellowship.  No  canon  that  had 
been  enacted  forbade  his  preaching  in  the  churches  of  other 
denominations.  He  had  the  advantage  of  his  brethren  in 
this  respect  that  such  opportunities  were  constantly  afforded 
him.  He  became  conspicuous,  almost  the  only  Evangelical 
Churchman  remaining,  who  was  in  a  position  where  he 
could  represent  the  natural  affinity  of  the  Protestant  Epis- 
copal Church  with  other  Protestant  bodies.     More  and  more 


8o  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

this  was  to  become  a  distinctive  feature  of  his  attitude.  To 
these  and  other  similar  points  he  alludes  in  his  correspond- 
ence with  Miss  Mitchell :  — 

I  have  been  off  for  a  day  down  to  Ipswich  where  Dr.  Cotton 
Smith  had  a  clerical  powwow  for  the  Dean  of  Canterbury  who 
has  come  over  to  attend  the  Evangelical  Alliance.  He  is  a  solid, 
stolid-looking  Englishman,  an  ecclesiastic  from  the  rosette  on  his 
hat  to  the  buckle  on  his  shoes,  but  a  man  of  learning,  reading 
hard  Sanscrit  as  you  and  I  read  easy  English,  and  healthy  and 
wholesome  through  and  thi'ough.  Several  other  interesting  peo- 
ple are  here,  especially  a  few  famous  Germans,  Dorner,  the 
"Person  of  Christ  "  man,  and  many  others.  But  I  do  not  think  the 
whole  occasion  promises  much,  and  I  shan't  go  on,  though  I  give 
it  my  hearty  blessing  at  this  distance.      (October  3,  1873.) 

The  sermon  is  just  done  which  is  a  rare  event  for  Friday.  It 
is  about  the  Evangelical  Alliance,  which  seems  to  me  as  it  has 
gone  on  to  have  assumed  a  much  larger  look  than  it  had  at  first, 
and  to  be  really  a  great  and  noble  thing.  It  is  really  so  great 
that  it  can  carry  off  a  great  many  small  faults,  speeches  here  and 
there  in  bad  taste,  and  an  occasional  piece  of  bad  temper.  I  can- 
not see  how  such  a  meeting  can  fail  to  make  Christianity  stronger 
and  broader.      (October  9,  1873.) 

What  do  you  think  of  the  Bishop  of  Madagascar  turning  up  in 
New  York  and  writing  a  letter  to  Bishop  Potter,  complaining 
that  the  Dean  of  Canterbury  had  insulted  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury ?  There  is  a  roundabout  confession  and  ingenious  intri- 
cacy about  it  all  which  is  nuts  to  the  ecclesiastical  mind.  One 
may  count  upon  no  end  of  dreary  controversy  about  whether  Christ 
is  willing  that  Dean  Payne  Smith  should  eat  the  Lord's  Supper 
in  an  Episcopal  Church,  but  not  in  Dr.  Adams's  Presbyterian 
Meeting  House.  As  if  all  the  great  questions  of  faith  and  morals 
were  settled,  and  that  one  minute  squabble  was  the  last  thing  left. 
Surely  not  till  then  will  it  begin  to  be  of  consequence.  (October 
15,  1873.) 

And  what  do  you  think  about  Cummins  ?  "What  a  panic  it  must 
make  among  the  bishops  to  know  that  a  stray  parson  is  round  with 
a  true  bit  of  their  genuine  succession,  perfectly  and  indisputably 
the  thing,  which  he  can  give  to  anybody  that  he  pleases  I  Nothing 
like  it  since  the  powwow  among  the  gods  when  Prometheus  stole 
the  fire.      Would  n't  it  be  queer  if  Cummins  actually  became  a 


^T.  37-38]    CHURCH  CONTROVERSIES         8i 

critical  event  by  the  discontented  from to going  off  and 

getting  the  consecration  of  a  new  church  from  him.      (November 
20,  1873.) 

I  don't  know  anything  that  makes  one  feel  more  genuinely  old 
than  to  see  that  great  recognizable  changes  and  advances  of  the 
current  of  thought  have  been  made  in  our  time,  so  that  while  we 
see  the  new  we  can  remember  the  old  as  something  different.  It 
used  to  seem  as  if  such  changes  took  a  half  century  at  least. 
Only  fourteen  years  ago  when  I  entered  the  ministry  there  were 
the  two  old-fashioned  parties,  the  Lows  and  Highs,  over  against 
each  other  in  a  quiet,  intelligent,  comfortable  way.  Now  you  can 
hardly  find  a  representative   of   either   among  the  younger  men 

except ,  and  the  Broad  Churchmen  and  Ritualists  divide  the 

field.      Let  us  be  thankful  that  we  belong  to  the  party  of   the 
future.      (December  11,  1873.) 

I  hear  that is  dead :  another  of  that  fading  school  of  Evan- 
gelicals who  are  fast  passing  away.  One  of  the  best  of  them 
(the  Evangelicals)  died  the  other  day,  my  old  professor  and  friend 
at  Alexandria,  Dr.  Sparrow,  one  of  the  ablest  and  best  men  I  ever 
knew,  learped  and  broad,  and  as  simple  as  a  child.  I  had  a  let- 
ter from  the  dear  old  man,  dated  only  two  days  before  he  died, 
in  which  I  was  delighted  to  hear  him  say,  "I  am  disposed  to  re- 
gard the  prospects  of  our  Church  brighter  now  than  they  have 
ever  been  in  my  day."  All  the  old  men  are  croaking  and  help- 
less, and  it  was  good  to  hear  one  of  them  sanguine.  (January  22, 
1874.) 

In  May,  1874,  the  first  steps  were  taken  toward  the 
establishment  of  the  American  Church  Congress.  The  aim 
of  its  founders  was  to  bring  men  together  who  differed  in 
their  convictions,  to  ventilate  questions  which  were  subjects 
of  controversy  in  free  untrammelled  speech  in  the  hope  that 
it  would  lead  to  a  mutual  confidence  and  understanding. 
Churchmen  of  all  schools  of  opinion  were  present,  and  amid 
much  earnestness  and  enthusiasm  the  new  institution  was 
organized.  Mr.  Brooks  was  placed  upon  its  Central  Com- 
mittee whose  task  was  to  select  topics  for  discussion  and 
appoint  the  speakers. 

Next  week  we  go  to  New  Haven,  all  of  us  Broad  Churchmen, 
to  see  what  can  be  done  to  keep  or  make  the  Church  liberal  and 
VOL.  n 


82  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

free.  Thex'e  is  a  curious  sort  of  sensitiveness  and  expectancy 
everywhere  in  the  Church,  a  sort  of  fear  and  feeling  that  things 
cannot  remain  forever  just  as  they  are  now,  and  a  general  looking 
to  the  General  Convention  of  next  Fall  as  the  critical  time.  The 
last  impression  may  be  wrong  because  General  Conventions  are 
not  apt  to  be  critical,  but  the  other  feeling  has  its  foundation,  and 
one  wonders  what  is  coming  out  of  it  all.  Certainly  some  sort  of 
broad  church.  A  meeting  such  as  this  I  speak  of  could  not  have 
been  possible  ten  years  ago.  Then  the  men  could  not  have  been 
found  to  go;  now  men  are  asking  to  be  invited.      (May  12,  1874.) 

The  Convention  of  the  diocese  of  Massachusetts  which  met 
in  May  to  elect  a  successor  to  Bishop  Eastburn  reflected  the 
stormy  times  which  were  passing  over  the  Episcopal  Church. 
The  High  Church  candidate  was  the  Rev.  James  De  Koven 
of  Wisconsin.  Mr.  Brooks  wanted  Dr.  Vinton  to  be  the 
Low  Church  candidate,  and  when  he  declined,  voted  for  his 
friend  Rev.  Henry  C.  Potter  of  Grace  Church,  New  York. 
When  it  became  evident  that  Dr.  Potter  could  not  be  elected, 
a  compromise  was  effected  by  which  the  choice  of  the  Con- 
vention fell  on  the  Rev.  Benjamin  H.  Paddock  of  Brooklyn, 
N.  Y.  The  Convention  was  a  memorable  one  for  the  inten- 
sity of  feeling  which  prevailed.  Among  the  glowing  speeches 
which  were  made,  none  equalled  that  of  Dr.  Vinton  as  he 
stood  forth  in  all  the  majesty  of  his  appearance  delivering 
his  impassioned  appeal  for  evangelical  truth.  There  was  an- 
other moment,  which  will  not  be  forgotten  by  those  present, 
when  the  Rev.  William  R.  Huntington  of  Worcester  pre- 
sented the  name  of  Phillips  Brooks,  as  a  nian  surpassing  all 
others  who  had  been  named  for  the  vacant  Episcopate.  But 
the  time  for  Phillips  Brooks  had  not  yet  come.  To  the  bishop- 
elect,  he  wrote  this  letter  pledging  him  his  support :  — 

Hotel  Kemptok,  Berkeley  Street,  Boston,  May  21,  1873. 
Rev.  and  dear  Sir,  —  I  have  doubted  whether  I  have  any 
right  to  add  another  to  the  multitude  of  letters  which  I  know  you 
must  have  received  with  reference  to  your  election  to  our  episco- 
pate. But  I  feel  so  deeply  anxious  that  you  should  consent  to  be 
our  Bishop  that  I  venture  to  add  my  assurance  of  cordial  welcome 
and  hearty  cooperation  to  all  the  others  which  must  have  come  to 


^T.  37-38]       CORRESPONDENCE  83 

you.  I  think  I  know  Massachusetts  pretty  well,  and  I  am  deeply 
convinced  that  our  Church  has  a  great  and  good  work  to  do  here. 
She  will  not  do  it  easily,  nor  by  simply  standing  still  in  idle  as- 
sertion of  herself,  but  if  she  will  work  for  the  people,  the  people 
will  understand  her  readily  enough.  I  am  sure  that  all  the  cir- 
cumstances connected  with  your  election  promise  a  cordial  and 
unpartisan  support  of  all  your  plans  and  labors  by  both  the  Clergy 
and  the  Laity  of  our  diocese,  and  knowing  this  I  have  ventured 
to  express  to  you  my  own  sincere  and  anxious  hope  that  you  may 
be  able  to  come  to  us. 

I  beg  you  not  to  trouble  yourself  to  answer  this  note,  but 
believe  me,  with  much  regard. 

Most  sincerely  yours,         Phillips  Beooks, 

Rector  of  Trinity  Church,  Boston. 

It  would  have  been  a  significant  event  for  Massachusetts, 
as  for  himself,  had  Mr.  Brooks  become  its  bishop  in  1873 ; 
but  he  refused  to  allow  his  name  to  be  used,  nor  would  he 
have  accepted  the  office  if  he  had  been  elected.  He  had 
other  work  to  do  as  the  rector  of  Trinity  Church,  and  to  this 
work  we  now  turn,  and  to  the  incidents  which  befell  him  from 
1873  to  1877.  These  years  constitute  a  distinct  group  in  his 
life.  It  was  the  time  when  Trinity  Church  dwelt  in  taber- 
nacles, awaiting  the  completion  of  its  new  temple.  His 
preaching  during  this  period  was  marked  by  increasing 
power  as  he  exerted  himself  to  meet  the  emergency  of  a 
church  without  a  home.  But  before  we  come  to  the  one  lead- 
ing event  which  gives  unity  and  connected  interest  to  these 
years,  we  may  follow  him  in  his  familiar  correspondence. 
These  extracts  are  from  his  letters  to  Miss  Mitchell :  — 

The  worst  thing  that  I  see  about  getting  old,  or  older,  is  that 
you  get  further  away  from  the  young  people  who  are  the  best 
people  in  the  world.  I  never  see  a  lot  of  boys  without  wanting 
to  be  among  them,  and  wishing  they  would  let  me  into  their  com- 
pany and  being  sure  that  they  won't.  I  hate  to  think  that  boys 
of  sixteen  think  of  me  as  I  used  to  think  of  men  of  thirty-seven 
when  I  was  their  age.  Most  of  the  wisdom  of  old  age  is  humbug. 
I  was  struck  dreadfully  by  what  you  said  about  the  prevalent  dis- 
content with  life  that  one  hears  so  much  of.  It 's  awful,  and  is 
the  most  unchristian  thing  one  has  to  deal  with.    I  fancied  it  was 


84  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

more  the  fashion  here,  but  I  suppose  I  have  forgotten  how  much  of 
the  same  thing  I  used  to  hear  in  Philadelphia,  or  perhaps  it  did 
not  impress  me  so  much  then.  I  pray  God  that  I  may  die  before 
I  get  so  tired  of  living.      (January  29,  1873.) 

I  have  just  been  going  again  through  Hessey's  Bamptorf  Lec- 
tures, which  is  satisfactory  enough  in  all  the  theory  of  the  matter ; 
and  I  don't  think  there  is  nearly  as  much  trouble  about  its  prac- 
tical aspects  as  there  sometimes  appears  to  be.  At  any  rate  a 
good  conscience  is  the  best  guide  about  keeping  Sunday  or  enfor- 
cing it  in  others.  There  is  very  little  indeed  in  the  way  of  positive 
law  to  be  made  out  about  it.  It  seems  to  me  there  is  a  strange 
lack  of  faith  in  the  way  that  the  strict  Inspirationists  and  the 
stricter  Sabbatarians  are  always  in  a  panic  lest  the  Book  or  the 
Day,  which  they  above  all  others  claim  for  God,  should  come  to 
grief. 

I  am  having  an  off  week,  that  is,  I  have  no  sermon  to  write 
because  I  go  to  New  Haven  on  Sunday  to  preach  for  the  students. 
I  shall  stay  with  Harwood,  and  if  all  goes  as  it  went  last  year  I 
shall  have  a  good  time.  It  is  the  first  Sunday  that  I  have  not 
preached  at  home  since  I  returned  from  Europe,  except  one  Sunday 
in  November  when  my  Church  burned  down;  and  except  once,  when 
Percy  Browne  preached  for  me,  I  have  not  had  a  single  exchange 
or  supply  all  that  time.     (February  7,  1873.) 

"Keil  on  the  Kings  "  is  a  very  good  commentary  as  commenta- 
ries go,  a  little  overburdened  with  linguistics,  but  on  the  whole 
telling  you  (I  mean  me)  rather  less  of  what  I  know  already  and 
more  of  what  I  don't  than  most  commentaries.  But  they  are  all 
a  poor  set.  Lange  has  a  good  deal  that  is  interesting  and  valu- 
able, but,  bless  me,  who  could  n't  have  a  few  pennies  if  he  swept 
all  the  gutters  in  town  and  saved  all  the  rubbish.  (March  26, 
1873.) 

I  am  just  come  back  from  Andover  where  I  went  to  lecture  to 
the  Congregational  Divinity  Students  about  Preaching.  It  was 
quite  interesting  to  me  if  not  to  them.  .  .  .  They  ask  hard  ques- 
tions which  you  rather  despair  of  answering,  not  because  of  the 
difficulty  of  the  question,  but  because  it  shows  such  a  queer  state 
of  mind  in  the  questioner.  I  stayed  with  Professor  Park,  who  is 
charming,  bright,  witty,  and  genial.  .  .  .  Have  you  read  a  book 
about  Dissent  by  an  English  Bampton  lecturer?      (April  3,  1873.) 

I  am  sorry  to  find  on  getting  home  there  is  some  trouble,  I 
can't   tell  how  serious  yet,   about    the   new  church.     The  land 


^T.  37-38]        CORRESPONDENCE  85 

proves  not  so  good  as  the  average  of  the  made  land,  and  the  piles 
which  we  have  driven  in  it  will  not  probably  hold  a  building  of  the 
weight  of  ours.  We  don't  want  to  go  down  any  lower  than  we 
are,  and  so  some  modification  of  the  plan  must  probably  be  made. 
I  hope  the  change  will  not  need  to  be  great,  and  will  improve 
instead  of  injuring  the  building.      (May  9,  1873.) 

How  interesting  and  beautiful  Tom  Hughes's  little  book  is! 
[Memoirs  of  a  Brother.]  I  wonder  whether  the  brother  was  as 
good  as  he  is  described.  What  he  (the  brother)  actually  does  in 
the  way  of  letters,  etc.,  didn't  strike  me  much.  He  is  the  first 
man  on  record,  I  think,  who  ever  dedicated  his  life  to  the  health 
of  his  Mother-in-law.  I  am  homesick  still  when  I  remember  my 
pleasant  visit.  I  shall  live  now  on  the  hope  of  the  Fall.  (May 
16,  1873.) 

I  am  busy  writing  what  is  a  sort  of  Biographical  Oration  for 
what  is  after  a  fashion  my  native  town,  Andover.  It  is  to  be 
delivered  at  the  opening  of  their  Memorial  Hall  next  week.  I 
don't  like  the  work.  Sermons  I  like  to  write,  the  more  the  bet- 
ter, as  many  as  the  deluded  folk  will  sit  and  hear,  but  anything 
else  except  this  weekly  letter  comes  hard.  I  have  a  pretty  obsti- 
nacy when  I  am  asked  to  do  anything  right  away,  but  when  the 
task  is  three  months  off,  I  am  apt  to  be  feeble  and  assent,  and  by 
and  by  the  day  comes  on  like  Fate.      (May  22,  1873.) 

I  have  been  much  interested  in  reading  up  about  the  old  Puri- 
tan town.  What  a  curious  set  they  were.  So  estimable  and  so 
deadly  dull,  sober  and  serious  to  a  degree  that  is  frightful  to  think 
of,  but  strong  and  tough  as  granite.  The  modern  religion  looks  so 
gentle  beside  them.  I  came  across  this  sentence  yesterday  in  that 
most  unpleasant  book,  Galton's  "Hereditary  Genius,"  which  has 
just  a  vexatious  amount  of  truth  in  it,  "  A  gently  complaining  and 
tired  spirit  is  that  in  which  Evangelical  Divines  are  apt  to  pass 

their  days."    .    .    .   X made  a  prayer  at  the  new  Hall  to-day 

in  which  he  thanked  the  Lord  for  the  workmen  who  had  been 
engaged  upon  the  building,  that  "He  had  given  his  angels  charge 
over  them  that  none  of  them  should  strike  his  foot  against  a 
stone."  What  do  you  think  of  that  for  a  reverent  and  beautiful 
use  of  Scripture  ?     (May  30,  1873.) 

After  this  month  I  am  going  to  shut  up  the  Hall,  and  use 
Emmanuel  Church  which  is  ordinarily  closed  during  the  summer. 
I  shall  be  there  every  Sunday  except  when  I  occasionally  get  Mr. 


86  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1873-74 

Tiffany  to  take  my  place.  One  Sunday  in  July  I  mean  to  be  in 
Philadelphia,  to  preach  for  the  Advent  people.  .  .  .  Then  I  am 
going  to  Newport  for  a  few  days  and  perhaps  to  Mount  Desert, 
and  so  I  hope  to  worry  through  the  summer  comfortably.      Next 

year  comes  Europe  again.    .    .   .  Mr. died  the  other  day.  .  .  . 

One  wouldn't  like  to  stay  quite  as  long  as  he  has,  but  with  the 
world  such  as  it  is,  there  is  great  temptation  to  linger  at  the  feast 
a  good  while  yet.      (June  5,  1873.) 

I  am  very  much  interested  in  the  progress  of  my  new  Church. 
The  foundations  are  going  up  very  fast,  and  the  scene  is  a  lively 
and  hopeful  one.  We  hope  to  get  all  our  foundations  in  before 
winter  stops  our  work.  And  what  a  splendid  Autumn  we  are 
having.  Such  days  as  these  that  keep  coming  one  after  another 
are  always  a  surprise.      (October  15,  1873.) 

I  wonder  what  sort  of  knowledge  we  shall  have  of  our  friends 
when  we  get  to  the  other  side,  and  what  we  shall  do  to  keep  up 
our  intimacy  with  one  another.  There  will  be  one  good  thing 
about  it.  I  suppose  we  shall  see  right  through  one  another  to 
begin  with,  and  start  off  on  quite  a  new  basis  of  mutual  under- 
standing. It  will  be  awful  at  first,  but  afterwards  it  must  be 
quite  pleasant  to  feel  that  your  friends  know  the  worst  of  you  and 
not  be  continually  in  danger  and  in  fear  that  they  will  find  you 
out.  But  then  with  all  Eternity  ahead  there  must  be  a  constantly 
oppressive  fear  that  your  friends  will  get  tired  of  you.  (October 
23,  1873.) 

I  have  been  writing  to-day  an  essay  on  "  Heresy, "  and  have  got 
quite  interested  in  the  subject.  I  have  been  rather  surprised  to 
find  how  clearly  in  the  New  Testament  and  all  the  way  down  in 
the  healthiest  periods  of  Theology,  as  in  Augustine  and  in  the 
English  Reformation  at  its  best,  Heresy  has  meant  obstinacy, 
a  fault  of  the  Will,  not  a  mistake  of  the  Intellect.  The  worst 
persecutors  seem  to  me  to  have  had  some  dim  feeling  of  this  when 
they  reconciled  themselves  to  the  burning  of  heretics.  They 
must  have  had  some  feeling  of  the  moral  character  of  heresy  how- 
ever woefully  their  prejudices  have  blinded  them  in  imputing  it 
in  special  cases.      (October  30,  1873.) 

We  Boston  folk  have  been  celebrating  our  Centennial  Tea 
Party.  We  got  together  in  Faneuil  Hall  and  drank  tea  and 
listened  to  speeches  yesterday  afternoon.  And  we  had  old  Mr. 
Frailey  and  young  Mr.  Brown  of  Philadelphia,  among  a  lot  of 
other  people,  to  talk  to  us.   .   .   . 


^T.  37-38]        CORRESPONDENCE  87 

Nobody  can  help  feeling  Agassiz's  death.  Apart  from  the. scien- 
tific greatness,  he  was  such  a  delightful  man,  so  fresh  and  joyous 
and  simple.  It  does  surely  seem  as  if  he  had  gone  at  the  right 
time,  falling  without  decay  and  setting  without  twilight.  'Tis 
strange  to  see  how  many  people  knew  him  here,  and  how  many 
others  feel  as  if  they  had  known  him  and  mourn  his  death  as  a 
personal  loss.      It  was  a  good,  cheerful,  wholesome  life. 

Three  weeks  from  to-night  I  hope  to  start  for  Philadelphia. 
Fix  which  night  you  will  for  me  to  dine  with  you,  and  I  will  come 
up  to  the  trial  without  a  flinch.  Please  let  me  know  when  it  is 
settled.  .  .  .  Sunday  I  shall  give  to  my  old  Advent  folk  whom 
I  am  proud  to  find  caring  for  me  after  so  many  years.  ...  I 
am  glad  that  the  Bible  doesn't  say  anything  about  the  idle  words 
which  people  write.      (December  17,  1873.) 

The  clock  has  just  struck,  and  I  wish  you  a  Happy  New  Year 
with  all  my  heart.  What  a  splendid  night  for  the  New  Year  to 
come  in  on.  The  snow  and  moonlight  are  gorgeous  and  promise 
glorious  winter  days.  I  wonder  what  will  happen  before  the  year 
grows  old!  Certainly  lots  of  pleasant  things  and  probably  some 
that  will  be  ugly  enough.  We  have  had  a  service  this  evening 
which  reminded  me  of  the  old-time  watch-meeting  at  St.  Philip's. 

You  and  Cooper  were  not  there,  but sat  on  the  front  seat 

without  the  blow  in  her  bonnet,  but  with  quite  enough  of  the 
old  look  to  bring  back  the  old  days.  And  the  first  beauty  of  the 
New  Year  is  that  I  am  coming  on  to  see  you  all,  and  a  week  from 
to-night  shall  be  upon  my  way.  You  do  not  know  how  much  I 
depend  upon  it.  The  Saturday  evening  dinner  will  be  the  great 
event,  and  I  will  stay  and  smoke  as  long  as  you  please  after  it  is 
over.  Dear  me,  how  many  things  there  are  to  enjoy  in  the  old 
year  and  the  new.  I  think  nobody  ever  had  altogether  a  plea- 
santer  life  than  I  have.  Thalaba  was  nothing  to  me.  (Janu- 
ary 1,  1874.      12.03  A.  M.) 

I  have  come  home  from  a  Wednesday  evening  lecture,  which  I 
always  enjoy;  the  only  indication  that  I  have  that  the  people 
enjoy  it  is  that  they  come  in  large  numbers.  Though  they  may 
talk  about  it  among  themselves,  I  myself  never  get  any  idea 
whether  I  hit  them  or  not.  Still  I  jog  on  and  am  very  cheerful. 
I  don't  care  for  applause,  but  I  do  like  to  have  some  idea  whether 
people  are  interested  or  not.      (January  25,  1874.) 

All  yesterday  was  a  hard  pull  at  a  sermon  which  is  to  be 
preached  this  morning,  and  is  n't  good  for  much,  I  am  afraid.  It 
seemed  pretty  good  and  important  before  I  began  to  write  it; 


88  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

but  somehow  it  did  n't  get  on  to  paper  as  I  wanted  it  to.  I  am 
sure  I  have  got  better  sermons  in  me  somewhere  than  I  have  got 
out  yet,  but  probably  fifteen  years  would  have  brought  them. 
(February  13,  1874.) 

Charles  Kingsley  is  here,  and  lectured  to  us  on  Monday  evening. 
It  was  good  to  see  the  author  of  "Hypatia"  in  the  flesh,  but  the 
Lecture  wasn't  much,  and  he  is  the  Englishest  of  Englishmen. 
Then  his  laudation  of  this  country  was  overmuch,  and  we  were 
unnecessarily  reminded  of  how  he  hated  us  and  hoped  good  things 
for  the  rebellion  during  our  war. 

Of  course  I  don't  read  anything  nowadays,  but  "The  Princess  of 
Thule  "  shall  be  my  next  novel.  I  didn't  make  much  out  of 
"Old  Pendleton."  The  over-description  worried  me  and  I  gave 
it  up,  and  have  not  tried  it  again,  but  I  dare  say  I  shall  by  and 
by.  I  am  reading  Forster's  "Life  of  Sir  John  Eliot,"  a  book  I 
have  long  meant  to  get  at,  with  much  delight.  Eight  weeks  from 
to-day  I  '11  be  in  Philadelphia.      (February  19,  1874.) 

How  sad  this  sudden  news  of  Sumner's  death,  and  how  it  makes 
us  realize  the  lack  of  great  men  among  us.  And  certainly  Sum- 
ner was  in  many  respects  a  great  man.  The  time  of  his  depar- 
ture like  Agassiz's  seems  to  be  just  what  one  would  wish  for  him. 
Neither  of  them  was  a  man  whom  one  would  like  to  see  crawling 
about  in  decrepitude.      (March  11,  1874.) 

Poor  Sumner's  funeral  was  a  wonderful  outburst  of  public  feel- 
ing about  a  man  who  had  won  it  by  sheer  force  of  character  and 
principle.  He  was  never  popular  .  .  .  but  true  as  steel  and  capa- 
ble of  ideas.  We  hope  to  have  a  good  man  in  his  place,  probably 
Judge  Hoar  or  Mr.  Adams.  The  country  is  not  as  bad  as  you 
think  it.  Certainly  no  other  land  offers  us  anything  to  envy. 
Surely  England  settling  down  on  Disraeli,  just  to  get  rid  of  the 
trouble  and  tumult  of  reform,  is  about  as  unpleasant  a  sight  as  one 
can  see. 

Have  you  read  the  book  of  a  Mr.  Pater  on  the  Renaissance? 
It  is  wonderfully  fresh  and  full  of  its  subject.  Then  I  got  a  book 
of  Masson's  the  other  day  on  Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  of 
which  I  have  read  a  few  pages  that  promise  something  charming. 
(March  19,  1874.) 

Certainly  there  is  nothing  to  make  us  despair  of  our  Govern- 
ment in  the  present  state  of  things.  The  arrogance  of  able  and 
corrupt  men  is  something  we  could  never  have  expected  to  escape, 


^T.  37-38]        CORRESPONDENCE  89 

and  so  far  it  has  been  less  powerful  among  us  than  in  the  his- 
tory of  any  other  nation,  and  the  present  strongest  sign  of  the 
times  is  a  violent  outbreak  and  protest  against  it.  (March  26, 
1874.) 

I  am  in  the  thick  of  Lent,  with  the  usual  enjoyment  of  its 
spirit,  and  the  usual  misgiving  about  the  way  in  which  we  try  to 
make  it  useful  to  our  people.  It  is  trying  to  see  how,  just  as 
soon  as  we  attempt  to  give  religion  its  fit  expression,  we  are 
instantly  in  danger  of  formalism  and  the  mere  piety  of  outside 
habits.  Yet  still  there  is  a  great  deal  in  changing  habits  which 
mean  sad  things,  for  habits  which  mean  good  things,  for  a  little 
while,  and  some  of  the  meaning  does  get  into  people's  hearts.    .    .    . 

How  hard  it  is  to  write  an  Easter  sermon.  The  associations  of 
the  day  are  so  dependent  that  it  is  really  diflBcult  to  bring  it 
close  to  people's  lives.      But  it  is  remarkable  how  men  like  your 

friend ,  who  give  up  so  much  about  Jesus,  still  cling  to  the 

truth  of  the  Resurrection.      (March  31,  1874.) 

We  have  had  Principal  Tulloch  here.  He  was  at  our  Church 
last  Sunday,  and  I  spent  the  evening  with  him  at  Mr.  Winthrop's. 
I  want  you  to  see  him  when  he  comes  to  Philadelphia.  He  is  a 
splendid  Scotchman.      (April  30,  1874.) 

I  'd  like  to  talk  with  you  some  time  about  that  matter  of  the 
judging  of  people's  characters  before  and  after  death.  I  don't 
think  we  'd  much  disagree.      (May  8,  1874.) 

Last  Sunday  we  tried  here  to  have  a  Hospital  Sunday  like  the 
English  institution,  and  the  result  was  very  successful.  The  spirit 
was  good  and  the  collections  large,  and  it  brought  all  classes  and 
denominations  together.  Trinity  gave  $3200.  .  .  .  Our  new 
Chapel  begins  to  look  beautifully,  and  by  the  time  you  are  here 
the  walls  will  be  almost  done.  ...  So  don't  fail  to  come.  My 
love  to  Weir.      (May  12,  1874.)  ' 

There  are  two  incidents  mentioned  in  the  above  extracts 
which  call  for  some  slight  expansion.  The  first  is  treated  in 
a  casual  manner,  but  was  full  of  significance,  —  the  address 
afterwards  published,  which  was  delivered  at  the  dedication 
of  the  Memorial  Hall  in  Andover.     Apart  from  his  associa- 

^  Here  closes  the  correspondence  -with  Miss  Mitchell.  She  died  soon  after 
the  letter  was  written,  from  which  this  extract  is  taken. 


90  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

tion  with  the  civil  war  which  the  hall  commemorated,  or  his 
fame  as  a  pulpit  orator,  Phillip  Brooks  had  been  chosen  as 
spokesman  for  the  occasion  because  he  was  the  descendant 
of  those  who  were  connected  with  the  town  from  its  earliest 
history,  and  who,  in  later  years,  had  done  much  to  make  it 
famous.  Thus  he  was  recognized  by  Professor  Park  of  An- 
dover,  in  the  impressive  prayer  which  followed  the  address, 
"  It  is  of  Thy  goodness,  O  Lord,  that  we  have  been  permit- 
ted on  this  day  of  our  solemnity  to  hear  the  voice  of  one 
whose  godly  ancestors  our  fathers  delighted  to  honor."  It 
is  a  suggestive  coincidence  that  while  he  was  looking  into 
the  history  of  Andover  in  making  preparation  for  his  address, 
he  was  also  reading  Galton  on  "  Hereditary  Genius,"  and  the 
picture  was  before  him  of  the  generations  of  the  Andover 
Phillipses.  His  address  was  beautiful,  pervaded  with  a  joy- 
ous tone,  with  the  conviction  that  he  had  a  right  to  speak, 
and  that  in  speaking  he  represented  what  was  uppermost  in 
the  minds  of  his  hearers :  — 

If  I  wanted  to  give  a  foreigner  some  clear  idea  of  what  that 
excellent  institution,  a  New  England  town,  really  is,  in  its  history 
and  its  character,  in  its  enterprise  and  its  sobriety,  in  its  godli- 
ness and  its  manliness,  I  should  be  sure  that  I  could  do  it  if  I 
could  make  him  perfectly  familiar  with  the  past  and  present  of 
Andover.  Nor  can  one  know  the  old  town  well  and  not  feel,  how- 
ever, its  scenery  has  the  same  typical  sort  of  value  which  belongs 
to  all  its  life.  All  that  is  most  characteristic  in  our  New  England 
landscape  finds  its  representation  here.  Its  rugged  granite  breaks 
with  hard  lines  through  the  stubborn  soil,  its  sweep  of  hill  and 
valley  fills  the  eye  with  various  beauty.  Its  lakes  catch  the 
sunlight  on  their  generous  bosoms.  Its  rivers  are  New  England 
rivers  ready  for  work  and  yet  not  destitute  of  beauty.  If  every- 
where our  New  England  scenery  suggests  to  the  imagination  that 
is  sensitive  to  such  impressions  some  true  resemblance  to  the 
nature  of  the  people  who  grow  up  among  its  pictures,  nowhere  are 
such  suggestions  clearer  than  in  this  town  which  is  so  thoroughly 
part  and  parcel  of  New  England. 

Mr.  Brooks  went  often  to  Andover  at  this  time  to  visit  his 
youngest  brother  who  was  taking  his  first  year  of  theological 
study.    The  Rt.  Rev.  William  Lawrence,  who  was  also  in  the 


^T.  37-38]  ANDOVER  91 

seminary,  has  given  his  impressions  of  him,  speaking  of  the 
interest  that  he  showed  in  the  discussion  of  theological  ques- 
tions, how  he  always  wished  to  hear  what  Professor  Park  had 
been  teaching  on  Original  Sin  and  other  topics,  but  was  more 
anxious  to  get  at  the  truth  of  the  matter,  than  talk  over 
opinions,  or  compare  them  with  his  own.  Of  his  address  on 
Preaching,  before  the  Andover  students,  Bishop  Lawrence 
says : — 

I  have  often  wished  that  an  exact  report  of  that  lecture  had  been 
taken,  for  as  I  remember  it,  it  followed  exactly  the  lines  of  his 
Yale  Lectures,  step  by  step.  I  mention  it  also  to  speak  of  the 
impression  which  his  closing  prayer  made  upon  the  students.  He 
finished  his  address  and  then,  quite  naturally,  and,  as  it  seemed, 
unexpectedly  to  himself,  he  felt  moved  to  say,  "Let  us  pray," 
and  at  the  same  desk  from  which  we  had  heard  extemporary  pray- 
ers from  the  professors  he  offered  a  prayer  which,  as  compared 
with  theirs,  was  so  beautiful  that,  as  one  of  the  fellows  said 
afterwards,  he  had  to  open  his  eyes  to  see  how  a  man  looked  when 
he  prayed  like  that. 

I  wonder  at  the  amount  of  time  that  he  put  into  talks  with  us 
when  we  were  at  college  and  at  the  seminary,  but  I  have  no  doubt 
that  he  welcomed  us  simply  as  representative  of  what  a  lot  of 
other  fellows  were  thinking.  For  after  a  talk  with  him  on  a 
week  day,  one  could  sometimes  feel  and  even  discover  the  results 
of  the  talk  in  the  next  Sunday  morning's  sermon. 

The  other  incident  to  which  allusion  is  made  in  the  cor- 
respondence with  Miss  Mitchell  deserves  notice  as  a  land- 
mark in  his  theological  growth.  The  essay  on  "  Heresy," 
there  mentioned,  was  read  before  the  "  Clericus  Club  "  in 
October,  1873.  Though  not  written  for  publication,  it  has 
been  given  a  place  in  his  "  Essays  and  Addresses."  Its  sig- 
nificance lies  in  his  discernment  that  religious  thought  was 
entering  upon  a  new  stage  of  development,  whose  motive  was 
to  gain  a  deeper  insight  into  the  meaning  of  doctrines,  and  to 
give  them  a  fuller  statement,  intelligible  to  the  modern  world. 
In  this  process  it  would  become  necessary  to  redefine  the  word 
which  in  the  history  of  the  past  had  been  affixed  as  a  stigma 
to  every  departure  from  received  theological  expressions.  He 
therefore  inquired  into  the  meaning  of  the  word  "  heresy." 


92  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

He  found  that  in  the  New  Testament  it  carried  a  moral  sig- 
nificance, the  presupposition  of  a  vicious  will.  In  its  appli- 
cation in  ecclesiastical  history,  where  it  stands  for  a  diver- 
gence from  received  opinions,  there  could  still  be  detected 
the  earlier  use,  —  the  assumption  that  any  one  diverging 
from  prevailing  statements  of  doctrine  must  at  heart  be 
bad.  The  essay  raises  the  question  of  intellectual  responsi- 
bility, —  the  existence  of  such  a  sin  as  the  seK-will  of  the 
intellect. 

Heretic  is  a  word  of  personal  guilt.  It  had  that  tone  when 
Paul  used  it,  and  it  has  kept  it  ever  since.  But  I  am  sure  that 
we  have  all  felt,  and  perhaps  reproached  ourselves  for  feeling, 
how  impossible  it  was  for  us  in  any  real  way  to  attach  the  notion 
of  personal  guilt  to  those  who  were  called  heretics  in  the  ordinary 
uses  of  the  word.  "We  have  been  unable  to  feel  any  vehement 
condemnation  for  the  earnest  and  truth-seeking  Errorist,  or  any 
strong  approbation  for  the  flippant  and  partisan  Orthodox.  There 
was  no  place  for  the  first  in  the  hell,  nor  for  the  second  in  the 
heaven,  which  alone  our  consciences  tell  us  that  the  God  whom 
we  worship  could  establish.  Speaking  in  the  atmosphere  of  the 
New  Testament,  we  cannot  call  the  first  a  heretic,  nor  the  second 
a  saint,  and  our  misgivings  are  perfectly  right.  The  first  is  not 
a  heretic,  the  second  is  not  a  saint.  .  .  .  The  first  may  be  a 
saint  in  his  error,  the  second,  to  use  Milton's  fine  phrase,  may 
be  a  "heretic  in  the  truth." 

Unless  we  hold  to  the  authority  of  the  infallible  Church,  the 
ecclesiastical  conception  of  the  sin  of  heresy  is  impossible.  Unless 
we  hold  that  all  truth  has  been  so  perfectly  revealed  that  no 
honest  mind  can  mistake  it  (and  who  can  believe  that  ?),  the 
dogmatic  conception  of  heresy  fails.  But  if  we  can  believe  in  the 
conscience,  and  God's  willingness  to  enlighten  it,  and  man's  duty 
to  obey  its  judgments,  the  moral  conception  of  heresy  sets  defi- 
nitely before  us  a  goodness  after  which  we  may  aspire,  and  a  sin 
which  we  may  struggle  against  and  avoid. 

In  ordinary  talk  men  will  call  him  a  heretic  who  departs  from 
a  certain  average  of  Christian  belief  far  enough  to  attract  their 
attention.  Men  will  speak  of  heresy  as  if  it  were  synonymous 
with  error.  It  may  be  that  the  word  is  so  bound  up  with  old 
notions  of  authority  that  it  must  be  considered  obsolete,  and  can 
be  of  little  further  use.  And  yet  there  is  a  sin  which  this  word 
describes,  which  it  describes  to  Paul  and  Augustine  and  Jeremy 
Taylor,  —  a  sin  as  rampant  in  our  day  as  in  theirs.     It  is  the  self- 


^T.  37-38]  KING'S  CHAPEL  93 

will  of  the  intellect.  It  is  the  belief  of  creeds,  whether  they  be 
true  or  false,  because  we  choose  them,  and  not  because  God 
declares  them.  It  is  the  saying,  "I  want  this  to  be  true,"  of  any 
doctrine,  so  vehemently  that  we  forget  to  ask,  "  Is  it  true  ?  " 
When  we  do  this,  we  depart  from  the  Christian  church,  which  is 
the  kingdom  of  God,  and  the  discipleship  of  Christ.  With  the 
danger  of  that  sin  before  our  eyes,  remembering  how  often  we 
have  committed  It,  feeling  its  temptation  ever  present  with  us, 
we  may  still  pray  with  all  our  hearts,  "From  heresy,  good  Lord, 
deliver  us." 


Among  the  varied  incidents  whose  only  bond  of  connection 
is  Phillips  Brooks,  there  is  one  which  caused  at  the  moment 
a  flutter  in  Episcopal  circles  in  Boston,  —  the  occupation  of 
King's  Chapel  on  Ash  Wednesday,  1874,  by  an  Episcopal 
congregation.  For  the  first  time  in  its  history  an  Episcopal 
bishop  officiated  within  its  walls.  To  those  unfamiliar  with 
the  circumstances  it  seemed  portentous  with  some  hidden 
significance.  The  famous  building  was  crowded  with  an 
eager,  curious  audience,  studying  the  ancient  structure,  its 
chancel  and  communion  table,  its  reading  desk  and  pulpit, 
preserved  unchanged,  unimpaired  by  modern  improvements, 
since  the  day  when  Episcopal  rectors  presided  there,  in  this 
first  home  of  Episcopacy  in  Boston.  But  if  the  event  did  not 
have  the  significance  which  some  attributed  to  it,  —  the  pos- 
sible regaining  for  the  Episcopal  Church  of  this  honored 
shrine  in  its  early  history,  —  it  did  yet  possess  a  deeper 
and  larger  significance,  as  the  manifestation  of  Christian 
charity.  It  had  been  offered  to  Phillips  Brooks,  as  the 
rector  of  Trinity  Church,  for  the  delivery  of  the  Price  Lec- 
tures, the  condition  of  whose  endowment  required  that  the 
Lectures  be  given  either  in  Christ  Church,  King's  Chapel,  or 
Trinity  Church.  The  kind  offer  came  from  the  late  Rev. 
Henry  W.  Foote,  then  the  minister  of  King's  Chapel,  a  man  of 
beautiful  and  saintly  character,  beloved  by  all  who  knew  him, 
whose  death  in  the  prime  of  his  manhood  brought  the  deepest 
sense  of  loss  and  sorrow.  Bishop  Paddock  had  already  been 
invited  to  deliver  the  Price  Lecture  before  Mr.  Foote  had 
offered  the  use  of  his  church,  and  so  it  came  about  that  a 


94  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

bishop  of  the  Episcopal  Church  officiated  for  the  first  time 
in  King's  Chapel. 

The  summer  of  1874  was  spent  in  Europe.  He  was  accom- 
panied on  this  visit  by  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks,  who  was  seeing 
the  Old  World  for  the  first  time,  and  for  a  great  part  of  the 
summer  they  were  together.  The  trip  differed  from  previous 
ones,  in  that  he  saw  more  of  people.  The  traditional  Ameri- 
can prejudice  against  the  English,  which  he  had  hitherto 
shared,  to  some  extent,  was  disappearing.  He  received  more 
hospitality  than  on  former  visits,  and  found  everybody  quite 
cordial  and  civil.  It  was  mostly  the  clergy  with  whom  he 
became  acquainted,  but  he  remarks  that  clergymen  and  lay- 
men have  more  common  interests  than  in  America.  They 
were  talking  much  at  this  time  about  the  Public  Worship  Bill 
at  dinner  tables  and  in  the  newspapers,  which  surprises  him, 
as  things  of  this  kind  at  home  are  ordinarily  confined  to  Gen- 
eral Conventions.  Of  London,  where  he  spent  a  few  weeks, 
he  writes  that  he  saw  it  all  over  again  with  his  brother,  find- 
ing in  it  much  of  which  he  never  tires.  It  was  a  special 
pleasure  to  have  been  shown  over  Westminster  Abbey  by  the 
Dean.  His  acquaintance  with  Dean  Stanley  was  now  ripen- 
ing into  friendship ;  he  received  from  him  and  from  Lady 
Augusta  Stanley  the  most  cordial  hospitality,  and  as  a  final 
mark  of  complete  confidence  was  invited  to  preach  in  the 
Abbey,  a  courtesy  extended  in  England  only  to  leading  pulpit 
orators  or  high  dignitaries.  Dean  Stanley  gave  the  invitation 
after  having  assured  himself  that  he  could  not  be  mistaken  in 
thinking  that  Phillips  Brooks  would  serve  the  purpose  for 
which  the  services  on  Sunday  evenings  in  the  Abbey  had  been 
instituted.  The  fame  of  the  preacher  had  in  some  way 
already  reached  England.  Many  were  desirous  to  hear  him, 
and  the  nave  of  the  Abbey  was  filled.  The  subject  of  the 
sermon  was  the  Positiveness  of  the  Divine  Life,  the  text  taken 
from  Galatians  v.  16 :  "  This  I  say  then,  Walk  in  the  Spirit 
and  ye  shall  not  fulfil  the  lust  of  the  flesh."  ^  The  friends  of 
Mr.  Brooks  at  home  were  pained  by  the  report  that  his  sermon 
was  a  failure  in  consequence  of  his  not  making  himself  heard. 

^  This  sermon  is  printed  in  the  first  volnme  of  his  Sermons,  p.  373. 


^T.  37-38]     WESTMINSTER  ABBEY  g^ 

In  the  words  of  an  American  newspaper  correspondent, 
"  After  the  first  ten  minutes  the  speaker  was  inaudible  at  a 
few  yards  distance,  having  pitched  his  voice  too  high  for  the 
old  Abbey."  That  there  was  some  passing  embarrassment  is 
evident,  but  how  differently  Mr.  Brooks  regarded  it  from  the 
newspaper  correspondent  is  seen  by  his  allusion  to  his  expe- 
rience in  a  letter  to  Rev.  Charles  D.  Cooper,  "  The  preach- 
ing went  very  well  when  I  got  used  to  the  size  of  the  Abbey." 
Another  comment  on  the  occurrence  is  interesting,  because 
the  writer  of  it,  who  was  present,  says  that  the  preacher  was 
distinctly  heard :  — 

About  six  o'clock  p.  m.  we  all  started  for  church  service  at  old 
Westminster  Abbey  where  Phillips  Brooks  of  Boston  was  adver- 
tised to  preach  at  seven  o'clock.  We  went  quite  early  anticipating 
a  crowd  and  secured  a  tolerably  good  position.  The  nave  of  the 
church  where  the  services  are  held  on  Sunday  evenings  was  very 
soon  crowded.  There  was  a  choral  service  by  men  and  boys. 
Dean  Stanley  read  the  Lessons  and  Mr.  Brooks  preached.  .  .  . 
It  is  a  very  hard  place  to  preach  in  .  .  .  but  he  was  distinctly 
heard,  and  the  sermon  was  worthy  of  his  reputation.  It  was  a 
plain,  practical  enforcement  of  the  great  truths  of  his  text,  enun- 
ciated in  simple  yet  elegant  language,  and  altogether  such  a  style 
of  preaching  as  those  old  walls  are  not  accustomed  to.  There 
may  be  better  preachers  here  than  the  Rector  of  Trinity  Church, 
Boston,  but  if  so  we  have  yet  to  hear  them.  We  reached  home 
soon  after  nine,  grateful  that  we  had  had  the  privilege  of  hearing 
Mr.  Brooks  in  Westminster  Abbey,  and  still  more  grateful  that 
God  had  given  to  Boston  such  a  man  and  such  a  preacher. 

Other  acquaintances  among  the  English  clergy  whom 
he  mentions  are  Canon  Fremantle  and  Professor  Stanley 
Leathes,  in  whose  church,  St.  Philip's,  Regent  Street,  he 
preached.  From  London  he  passed  to  the  Continent  to  spend 
several  weeks,  wandering  through  Normandy  and  Brittany, 
thence  to  Venice,  and  back  through  the  Tyrol  over  the  great 
Ampezzo  Pass  that  he  had  long  wanted  to  see,  stopping  at 
Innsbruck,  Munich,  Ratisbon,  Nuremberg,  Heidelberg ;  and 
at  Worms,  to  which  he  was  attracted  by  the  memory  of 
Luther.  He  liked  to  revisit  spots  like  these  with  which  he 
was  already  familiar,  but  the  trip  had  been  mainly  planned 


96  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

for  the  convenience  of  his  brother.  The  sense  of  vacation, 
he  writes,  was  complete  and  made  Boston  seem  far  away. 
The  main  interest  was  in  looking  at  churches  in  Normandy 
and  Brittany,  the  richness  and  beauty  of  whose  architecture 
impressed  him.  He  was  gathering  suggestions  which  would 
afterwards  be  of  service. 

We  went  up  to  Rouen  and  spent  a  lovely  day  among  its  old 
Gothic  architecture.  There  is  nothing  more  beautiful  in  Europe. 
Then  we  struck  off  into  the  country  and  for  a  week  we  have  been 
wandering  among  old  Norman  towns  .  .  .  each  with  its  churches 
six  or  eight  hundred  years  old,  some  with  magnificent  cathedrals. 
.  .  .  For  a  week  we  have  wandered  on  through  Brittany,  looked 
at  old  castles  and  cathedrals.  ...  I  have  been  amazed  at  the 
richness  of  the  old  architecture  of  the  country.  In  little  out-of- 
the-way  villages,  reached  only  by  rickety  country  wagons,  we  have 
found  glorious  and  immense  churches  of  rarest  beauty,  —  churches 
that  took  centuries  to  build,  and  stand  to-day  perfect  in  their 
splendor,  with  wonderful  glass  in  their  windows,  and  columns  and 
capitals  that  take  your  breath  away  for  beauty.^ 

As  he  wandered  he  was  thinking  of  the  new  Trinity  Church 
in  Boston  that  was  growing  in  his  absence.  To  Mr.  Robert 
Treat  Paine  he  sends  these  letters  :  — 

Tours,  France,  Au^st  4,  1874. 

Dear  Bob, —  .  .  .  And  how 's  the  new  Church?  I  dreamed 
of  it  when  I  wrote  to  you  from  London,  and  now  I  dream  of  it 
again,  slowly  rising,  course  on  course.  I  should  n't  wonder  if 
the  robing  room  were  done  up  to  the  eaves,  but  I  would  give  much 
to  step  out  of  the  hotel  and  look  in  the  gorgeous  moonlight  at 
that  blessed  lot  on  the  Back  Bay.  Sometimes  I  am  very  impa- 
tient at  being  away  while  it  is  all  going  on,  but  I  comfort  myself 
with  promises  of  coming  home  to  harder  work  with  the  first  Sun- 
day in  October.  I  think  of  many  things  at  this  distance  which  if 
I  can  really  do  them  when  I  get  to  Boston  will  make  the  Parish 
more  entirely  what  it  should  be  than,  by  my  fault,  it  has  been 
yet. 

Normandy  and  Brittany  have  both  been  very  great.  O  my 
dear  Bob,  such  old  glass  as  one  sees  in  these  Churches  little  and 
big.  Some  dreary  little  village  off  as  far  as  Holaker  or  Aak  will 
have  windows,  a  whole  nave  and  choir  and  transepts  full  of  them, 
that  would  make  our  new  Trinity  the  glory  of  America  forever. 

1  Letters  of  Travel,  pp.  173-176. 


^T.  37-38]       CORRESPONDENCE  97 

But  we  cannot  have  it,  and  the  modern  French  glass  seems  to  me 
poor,  not  at  all  equal  to  the  best  English. 

I  should  like  to  be  with  you  at  Waltham  now.  My  kindest 
love  to  Mrs.  Paine  and  the  children,  and  do  write  me  often. 

Always  sincerely  yours,  P.  B. 

Munich,  August  30,  1874. 

Dear  Bob,  —  I  thank  you  again  for  your  kindness  in  writing 
to  me.  Yours  of  the  4th,  a  right  good  letter,  reached  me  a  few 
days  ago  in  Venice.  First  let  me  say  how  I  rejoice  with  you  and 
Mrs.  Paine  in  the  birth  of  your  little  boy.  Nothing  can  be  indif- 
ferent to  me  that  comes  to  your  household  where  I  have  been  so 
kindly  made  one  of  yourselves,  and  this  new  joy  of  yours  is  a  joy 
to  me  too.  May  God  bless  the  boy  and  make  him  all  your  heart 
can  wish.      I  hope  to  know  him  better  as  the  years  go  on. 

I  must  not  say  much  about  the  Church  because  these  twenty- 
six  days  since  your  letter  must  have  changed  many  things.  Only 
do  keep  down  the  expense.  Let 's  decorate  and  beautify  at  our 
leisure,  but  start  as  clear  as  possible.  I  hear  all  sorts  of  good 
things  about  the  new  Chapel.  "If  the  Church  can  equal  the 
Chapel,"  says  one,  "it  will  be  a  great  success."  I  look  forward 
most  impatiently  to  seeing  it  and  going  to  work  in  it.  The 
corner  stone  ought  to  be  laid  about  the  middle  or  last  of  October. 
We  will  go  right  about  our  preparations  when  I  get  home,  but  it 
will  take  two  or  three  weeks  to  make  the  preparations  and  give 
the  necessary  notice.  The  notion  of  setting  the  old  rosettes  is 
first-rate. 

So  much  for  the  Church.  My  summer  goes  swimmingly.  I 
came  down  through  Switzerland  from  France  to  Italy,  but  did  no 
climbing.  My  climbing  days  are  over.  They  never  amounted  to 
much.  I  only  looked  at  Chamouni  and  Zermatt.  Five  royal 
days  I  spent  in  Venice.  It  was  exquisite  weather,  and  the  gondola 
suited  my  lazy  mood  completely.  Now  my  face  is  set  towards 
England  which  I  shall  slowly  reach,  and  then  after  two  or  three 
more  days  in  London  I  sail  in  the  Siberia  for  Boston  on  the  17th. 
How  many  things  I  have  coveted  for  the  new  Church.  There 
was  a  big  mosaic  at  Salviati's  that  would  glorify  our  Chancel. 
But  let  all  that  wait.  Shall  we  not  all  be  ready  to  continue  our 
subscriptions  for  the  new  Church  till  it  is  done  ? 

On  the  first  Sunday  in  October,  then,  we  are  together  again  and, 
bright  as  this  all  is,  I  shall  be  truly  glad. 

My  love  to  all  your  household,  not  forgetting  the  last  born, 
and  I  am 

Always  yours,  P.  B. 

VOL.  n 


98  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

No  traveller  returns  to  his  own  country,  when  the  long 
ocean  passage  intervenes,  without  some  measure  of  suspense  or 
misgiving,  lest  bad  news  should  await  him  on  his  arrival. 
For  Mr.  Brooks  there  was  in  reserve  a  great  sorrow,  in  the 
sudden  death  of  his  brother  Frederick.  The  story  is  told 
in  his  father's  words,  entered  in  a  family  record,  where  he 
chronicled  briefly  the  events  in  the  lives  of  his  sons.  The 
story  of  Frederick  Brooks's  short  life  summarily  interrupted 
at  the  threshold  of  what  promised  to  be  a  career  of  unusual 
success  ends  thus  :  —   ' 

In  September,  1874,  he  came  to  the  city  to  see  a  young  friend 
who  was  sick,  and  who  was  to  take  charge  of  a  school  at  Cleve- 
land. Finding  him  unable,  he  went  to  Lowell  for  a  teacher, 
September  15.  On  returning  from  there  in  the  Boston  &  Lowell 
train  he  left  the  train  at  East  Cambridge,  intending  to  walk 
home  on  the  railroad  bridge.  The  night  being  dark  he  fell 
through  the  draw  and  was  drowned.  This  was  about  8.30  p.  M. 
He  was  thirty-two  years  of  age.  The  body  was  not  found  until 
the  20th  in  the  Charles  River.  Funeral  services  were  held  Sep- 
tember 24,  at  Emmanuel  Church,  and  he  was  laid  in  Mount 
Auburn. 

The  friendship  between  these  two  brothers  was  close  and 
beautiful.  The  older  brother  had  followed  with  sympathetic 
interest  and  aid  every  step  of  the  younger  brother's  progress, 
from  his  days  in  the  Latin  School,  and  then  through  Harvard 
College.  Two  years  they  had  lived  together  while  Frederick 
Brooks  was  at  the  Divinity  School  in  Philadelphia.  For  the 
aid,  the  sympathy,  the  brotherly  love  he  received,  the  younger 
brother  showed  his  appreciation,  as  when  he  wrote  to  Phillips  : 
"  I  wish  you  would  let  me  say  what  a  jump  I  give  to  get  one 
of  your  letters.  They  are  one  of  the  things  that  help  along 
my  year  mightily."  From  the  time  of  his  ordination,  Fred- 
erick Brooks  was  recognized  as  a  preacher  of  singular  attrac- 
tiveness. Calls  to  various  parishes  had  been  the  evidence 
that  he  was  recognized  as  having  some  important  work  to 
do.  For  a  time  he  had  been  at  Des  Moines,  Iowa,  to  get 
a  touch  of  Western  life ;  then  he  became  rector  of  a  promi- 
nent church,  St.  Paul's,  in  Cleveland,  Ohio.     To  the  interests 


^T.  37-38]     FREDERICK   BROOKS  99 

of  this  church  he  gave,  says  his  brother,  "  devoted  care,  prov- 
ing himself  a  rare  pastor  and  preacher,  helping  and  teaching 
many  souls,  and  building  his  parish  work  with  singular  solidity 
and  power."  He  became  editor  of  the  "Standard  of  the 
Cross,"  and  gave  the  paper  "  a  marked  and  noble  character." 
His  inherited  interest  in  education  led  him  to  establish  a 
school  in  Cleveland,  which  should  give  the  best  classical 
preparation.     In  this  cause  he  came  to  his  lamented  death. 

The  first  of  the  two  letters  that  follow  was  written  to  Dr. 
Weir  Mitchell,  the  second  to  the  Rev.  George  Augustus 
Strong :  — 

BosTOK,  Tuesday,  September  29, 1874. 

Dear  Weir,  —  I  cannot  say  how  much  I  thank  you  for  your 
letter.  It  has  helped  me  through  to-day,  but  I  seem  all  lost  and 
bewildered  with  such  an  utterly  unlooked-for  sorrow.  It  will  all 
come  right  by  and  by,  but  just  now  there  is  nothing  to  do  except 
to  sit  down  and  think  it  all  over  in  a  dull  and  weary  sort  of  way. 
Fred  was  very  near  to  me,  and  few  people  knew,  what  crowds 
would  have  known  a  few  years  hence,  the  ability  and  character 
that  was  in  him.  That  is  not  gone  out,  and  must  have  some 
richer  field  to  work  in  than  this  world.  But  it  is  the  terrible- 
ness  of  it  all,  and  the  way  we  shall  miss  him  and  need  him  all 
our  lives,  and  the  wretchedness  at  home  where  Father  and  Mother 
are  as  brave  and  forlorn  as  possible. 

BosTOK,  October  18,  1874. 

Mt  dear  George,  —  I  never  knew  how  good  a  friend  you 
were  till  I  got  your  letter  last  week  about  dear  Fred.  Since  I 
came  home  I  have  thought  of  writing  to  you  because  I  wanted  to 
talk  with  you,  and  because  I  knew  you  had  seen  something  of  him 
who  was  not  out  of  my  thoughts  for  a  moment,  though  I  had  no 
idea  how  well  you  knew  him  and  how  much  you  cared  for  him, 
and  because  I  wanted  to  thank  you  for  the  good  kind  words  you 
sent  to  Father  and  Mother,  which  helped  their  poor  hearts  very 
much.  But  I  did  n't  write,  and  by  and  by  your  letter  came.  I 
should  be  quite  ashamed  to  say  fully  with  what  feeling  I  read  it. 
It  has  been  good  to  hear  a  great  many  people  say  kind  and  honor- 
able and  appreciative  things  about  Fred,  but  there  were  so  few 
who  knew  him  well  enough  to  really  love  him  and  feel  as  I  feel 
about  the  beauty  of  his  simple  working  and  thinking  life. 

I  cannot  write  about  him,  but  I  should  like  so  much  to  be  with 
you  in  your  home  and  hear  you  talk  of  him.     I  do  want  so  to  see 


loo  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-74 

you,  my  dear  George.  These  three  weeks  since  I  came  home 
have  been,  just  between  ourselves,  pretty  wretched.  I  have  tried 
and  tried  to  get  out  of  my  mind  the  dreadful  circumstances  of  it 
all.  When  I  can  shut  them  out  for  a  moment  and  think  only  of 
his  life  here  and  the  life  he  has  begun  beyond  I  am  more  than 
happy.  I  am  thankful  and  full  of  rejoicing.  But  almost  all  the 
time  the  terrible  scene  is  before  me,  and  I  think  I  have  come 
nearer  to  being  gloomy  and  out  of  heart  with  life  than  I  ever  did 
before.      But  I  have  n't  been  and  I  shan't  be. 

I  am  talking  all  about  myself.  To  my  Father  and  Mother, 
who  are  getting  old  now,  and  whose  house  is  empty  of  their  chil- 
dren, it  has  been  sad  enough.  It  makes  my  heart  ache  to  go  up 
there  and  see  them.  Thank  you  again  for  your  kind  thought- 
fulness.     I  am  coming  out  to  Cleveland  this  week. 

On  Sunday  the  25th  of  October  Mr.  Brooks  stood  in  his 
brother's  pulpit  in  Cleveland,  Ohio,  preaching  in  the  morn- 
ing from  the  text,  "Are  the  consolations  of  God  small  with 
thee  ?  "  (Job  xv.  11),^  and  in-  the  afternoon  another  well- 
known  sermon,  with  the  title,  "  The  good  will  of  Him  that 
dwelt  in  the  Bush"  (Deut.  xxxiii.  16).^  Again  in  the  even- 
ing he  preached,  and  his  text  was,  "  It  became  Him,  for 
whom  are  all  things,  and  by  whom  are  all  things,  ...  to  make 
the  captain  of  their  salvation  perfect  through  sufferings  " 
(Heb.  ii.  10).  This  was  the  record  of  a  day  to  be  remem- 
bered by  the  preacher  and  his  hearers.  Another  duty  de- 
volved upon  him,  to  visit  the  deserted  room  where  the  traces 
of  activity  suddenly  interrupted  were  all  about  him.  Into  his 
musings,  as  he  sat  there  alone  with  memory,  we  do  not  enter. 
He  looked  over  the  sermons  of  his  brother,  and  from  them 
selected  a  volume  for  publication.  In  the  preface,  he  alluded 
briefly  to  the  beauty  and  power  of  his  life.  At  a  later  time, 
when  writing  his  Lectures  on  Preaching,  he  made  this  terse 
reference  without  further  explanation,  "  To-day  I  have  been 
thinking  of  one  whom  I  knew,  —  nay,  one  whom  I  know,  — 
who  finished  his  work  and  went  to  God." 

1  Sermons,  vol.  i.  p.  98.  ^  Ibid.  vol.  ii.  p.  39. 


CHAPTER  IV 

1873-1877 

SERVICES  IN  HUNTINGTON  HALL.  EXTRACTS  FROM  NOTE- 
BOOKS. METHOD  OF  PREPARING  SERMONS.  ESSAY  ON 
COURAGE.  CONTEMPORANEOUS  ACCOUNTS  OF  PHILLIPS 
BROOKS  AS  A  PREACHER.  TESTIMONY  OF  PRINCIPAL 
TULLOCH. 

During  more  tlian  four  years  the  congregation  of  Trinity 
Church  worshipped  in  Huntington  Hall  on  Boylston  Street. 
If  it  were  a  disadvantage  to  be  deprived  of  the  accessories 
and  associations  which  make  religion  impressive,  yet  there 
were  compensations.  The  location  was  more  convenient,  the 
accommodations  more  ample,  and  to  many  it  constituted  an 
inducement  rather  than  a  hindrance  that  the  reminders  of 
conventional  worship  were  wanting.  But  it  required  a  greater 
effort  on  the  part  of  the  preacher  to  hold  his  congregation 
together  during  this  unexpectedly  long  period  of  waiting. 
That  Mr.  Brooks  felt  the  harder  necessity  which  had  been 
placed  upon  him,  and  summoned  his  strength  to  meet  it,  is 
apparent  in  many  ways,  but  chiefly  in  the  greater  results  which 
he  accomplished.  The  extracts  which  were  cited  in  a  previous 
chapter  might  seem  to  indicate  that  he  had  already  taken  the 
place  in  Boston  which  he  had  occupied  in  Philadelphia.  But 
there  is  some  evidence  going  to  show  that  the  three  years  in 
the  old  church  on  Summer  Street  had  not  exhibited  the  fruit 
anticipated.  Thus  the  afternoon  service  on  Sundays  con- 
tinued to  be  thinly  attended,  however  large  might  be  the 
congregation  in  the  morning.  This  problem  of  the  Sunday 
afternoons  and  the  second  service  was  an  unwelcome  inherit- 
ance, not  easily  overcome.  To  a  clerical  friend  who  once 
preached  for  him  to  one  of  these  small  congregations,  he 


I02  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

remarked  that  it  was  not  like  the  old  days  in  Philadelphia. 
Then  the  church  had  been  filled  to  its  utmost  capacity,  in  the 
afternoon  as  well  as  in  the  morning. 

From  the  time  that  he  began  to  officiate  in  Huntington 
Hall,  there  came  a  change  so  marked  in  the  direction  and 
the  manifestation  of  his  power  that  these  years  were  not 
remembered  or  lamented  as  a  period  of  deprivation  of  eccle- 
siastical privileges,  but  rather  cherished  for  the  richer 
spiritual  influence  which  they  brought.  The  secular  hall 
took  on  a  sacred  character.  The  preacher  rose  high  above 
disadvantage  or  limitation.  The  afternoon  service  soon  be- 
gan to  be  as  well  attended  as  the  morning,  nor  were  the 
accommodations  sufficient  to  meet  the  demands  of  the  throng- 
ing congregation.  It  was  a  reminder  of  the  early  days  of 
the  Christian  church,  when  as  yet  it  lacked  temples  and 
altars  and  the  symbolic  pageantry  of  the  later  centuries,  when 
the  spoken  word  was  alone  in  itself  adequate  to  reach  the 
intellect  and  to  melt  the  heart.  To  the  preacher  it  must 
have  meant  a  setting  free  from  the  traditions  and  embarrass- 
ments of  a  former  regime,  as  if  like  St.  Paul  he  was  at 
liberty  to  build  for  himself  and  not  upon  other  men's  founda- 
tions. This  sense  of  rejoicing  in  a  larger  freedom  runs 
through  these  years,  giving  them  a  character  of  their  own ; 
there  was  a  joy  and  happiness  in  the  preacher  which  was 
diffused  throughout  the  congregation.  But  it  should  be 
mentioned  as  a  touching  instance  of  his  dependence  upon 
associations,  or  of  his  desire  to  maintain  the  continuousness 
of  his  life,  that  he  sent  a  request,  which  at  once  was  granted, 
to  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity  for  the  lecturn  or 
preaching  desk  at  which  he  had  stood  when  delivering  his 
Wednesday  evening  lectures. 

The  main  event,  of  course,  during  these  years  was  the 
building  of  the  new  Trinity  Church  in  Copley  Square.  Be- 
fore, however,  we  turn  to  describe  it,  we  may  dwell  for  a 
moment  upon  some  features  in  the  preaching  of  Phillips 
Brooks  which  are  as  interesting  as  they  are  important.  He 
had  not  written  many  sermons  since  he  came  to  Boston,  for 
he  had  been  occupied  and  somewhat  distracted  by  the  great 


^T.  37-41]     METHODS   OF   WORK  103 

transition  in  his  life.  He  had  fallen  back  upon  his  old 
Philadelphia  sermons,  using  as  many  of  them  as  he  was  still 
willing  to  preach,  taking,  as  it  were,  his  final  leave  of  his 
old  self  before  launching  out  anew  and  letting  down  his  nets 
for  a  fresh  draught.  His  sermon  record  book  shows  but 
forty  new  sermons  to  have  been  written  in  the  years  from 
1870  to  1873.  There  was  here  no  idleness  or  waste  of  time. 
It  was  the  opportunity  for  large  and  varied  reading, — 
a  period  of  refilling  and  of  quiet  waiting,  wherein  convic- 
tions took  root  and  matured,  till  he  should  be  ready  for  some 
larger  utterance.  Another  forward  movement  in  his  career 
of  triumph  was  slowly  coming  in  the  years  of  his  ministry 
in  Huntington  Hall.  The  signs  of  intellectual  and  spiritual 
growth  may  be  traced  in  the  multiplication  of  the  note-books. 
He  carried  them  in  his  pocket,  and  at  any  time  might  be 
seen  recording  thoughts  as  they  were  flashing  through  his 
mind.  Some  kind  of  note-book  was  his  inseparable  companion.        / 

What  his  earlier  method  was  of  writing  a  sermon  or  of  ^ 
preparation  for  writing  we  do  not  know.  That  the  sermon 
was  often  left  till  the  end  of  the  week,  finished  only  in  time 
for  its  delivery,  is  apparent  from  allusions  in  his  diaries. 
When  he  first  began  to  preach  he  wrote  two  sermons  every 
week.  After  he  went  to  Holy  Trinity  he  wrote  but  one, 
to  be  preached  in  the  morning ;  while  his  gift  for  extempo- 
raneous preaching  was  brought  into  exercise  on  Sunday  after- 
noons and  in  his  Wednesday  evening  lectures.  Many  of  the 
plans  for  these  earlier  extemporaneous  sermons  remain,  show- 
ing that  they  had  been  carefully  elaborated.  It  was  one  of 
his  peculiarities  that  he  remembered  his  work  and  seemed  to 
hold  it  in  account,  so  that  often  he  turned  back  to  these  plans, 
as  if  they  held  an  equal  place  in  his  estimation  with  the  writ- 
ten sermons.  He  had  another  and  a  fortunate  characteristic, 
that  his  mind  kindled  quickly  with  his  own  thoughts,  even 
after  many  years  had  gone  by,  with  the  result  that  old  ser- 
mons were  as  fresh  to  him  as  those  that  were  newly  written. 

There  was  always  a  curious  interest  among  the  clergy  and 
theological  students  who  cultivated  the  art  of  preaching  to 
know  the  methods  by  which  Mr.  Brooks  did  his  work.     The 


I04  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1873-77 

sense  of  form,  the  literary  charm,  the  almost  prodigal 
abundance  of  thought  and  illustration,  the  spontaneity  which 
made  a  written  sermon  possess  the  full  effect  of  an  extempo- 
raneous utterance  inspired  by  the  moment,  —  this  called  for 
explanation,  if  so  be  that  he  could  communicate  to  others  the 
valued  secret.  Now  that  we  know  the  entire  process,  the 
secret  appears  a  simple  one.  Preaching  was  the  one  exclusive 
object  that  occupied  his  mind.  The  message  to  be  delivered 
and  the  form  it  should  take  in  order  to  be  most  effective, 
—  to  that  simple  end  he  devoted  himself.  From  morning 
till  night,  in  every  hour  of  leisure  or  apparent  relaxation,  on 
his  journeys,  in  vacations,  in  social  assemblies,  he  was  think- 
ing of  subjects  for  sermons,  turning  over  new  aspects  of 
old  truths,  thrilled  inwardly  with  the  possibility  of  giving 
better  form  than  had  yet  been  given  to  old,  familiar  doctrine. 
In  a  word,  he  concentrated  his  thought  upon  one  thing,  —  it 
was  preaching ;  that  was  what  he  lived  for,  and  for  that  cause 
he  might  almost  be  said  to  have  come  into  the  world.  Be- 
neath the  nonchalant,  trifling  manner  which  seemed  at  times 
to  refuse  to  take  anything  seriously,  the  humor  that  played 
about  solemn  and  sacred  themes,  the  deep  undertone  of  his 
spirit  was  sounding  without  cessation  or  interruption. 

The  first  shape  which  the  sermon  took  was  the  brief  hint 
in  the  note-book.  It  was  an  apparent  necessity  to  put  it  into 
writing,  or  it  would  not  have  been  that  every  sermon  may 
thus  be  traced  in  its  genesis,  even  every  casual  speech  on 
slight  occasions.  One  might  have  thought  that  after  so  many 
years  of  preparation  it  would  have  been  possible  for  him  to 
make  a  few  minutes'  talk  after  dinner,  or  to  boys  in  school 
or  college,  without  first  writing  down  the  idea  on  which  he 
was  to  touch,  and  then  expanding  it  into  a  complete  plan. 
In  the  reminiscences  by  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell  ^  an  account  of 
one  of  these  extemporaneous  addresses  is  given,  as  it  seemed 
to  have  been  born  at  the  moment,  without  premeditation. 
But  in  truth  it  had  long  been  in  his  mind  what  he  should 
say,  and  the  analysis  had  been  written  out.  He  never  trusted 
to  the  moment  to  bring  him  inspiration.  To  give  other 
1  Cf ,  ante,  vol.  i.  p.  634. 


^T.  37-41]     METHODS   OF  WORK  105 

illustrations,  he  often  went  to  Cambridge  to  address  the  stu- 
dents of  the  St.  Paul's  Society  at  Harvard,  but  in  every 
case  the  analysis  of  his  remarks  may  be  found  in  his  note- 
books or  on  detached  sheets  of  paper.  On  some  occasions 
he  availed  himself  of  ideas  which  he  was  working  up  in 
other  connections,  but  it  still  remained  true  that  he  took 
thought  beforehand  and  never  allowed  himself  to  feel  it 
would  be  given  to  him,  when  called  upon,  what  he  should 
speak.  That  was  a  privilege  of  the  apostolic  age,  and  it  had 
not  been  reserved  for  him.  / 

It  is  not  known  that  he  ever  found  himself  in  a  position 
where  he  was  forced  to  speak  when  he  had  made  no  special 
preparation,  although  there  were  occasions  having  a  resem- 
blance to  emergencies  when  he  was  saved  by  what  seems 
like  mysterious  interposition,  or  the  working  of  some  reserve 
force  within  him.  Such  an  incident  is  described  by  the  Rev. 
Percy  Browne,  to  whom  Mr.  Brooks  communicated  it :  — 

In  one  of  the  later  years  when  Christmas  fell  in  the  middle  of 
the  week,  Mr.  Brooks  had  prepared  two  sermons,  —  one  for 
Christmas  Day,  and  the  other  for  the  morning  of  the  Sunday  after 
Christmas.  He  preached  the  first  sermon  as  it  was  intended.  On 
the  Sunday  morning  after  Christmas  he  went  up  into  the  pulpit, 
and  as  the  choir  were  singing  the  last  stanza  of  the  hymn  he 
looked  down  at  the  sermon  before  him,  when  to  his  horror  he  dis- 
covered that  he  had  made  a  mistake  and  had  brought  with  him  to 
church  the  sermon  preached  some  two  or  three  days  before.  He 
then  reminded  himself  that  he  had  prepared  another  sermon  to 
be  preached  extemporaneously  in  the  afternoon,  — but  both  the 
text  and  the  plan  had  vanished  from  his  memory.  In  his  despair 
he  hastened  down  from  the  pulpit  and  went  to  the  lecturn  where 
he  began  in  almost  reckless  fashion  to  turn  over  the  leaves  of  the 
Bible  in  the  hope  that  the  lost  text  might  recur  to  him.  And 
then  suddenly,  at  the  critical  moment  when  the  large  congregation 
were  waiting  for  him  to  begin,  the  text  flashed  upon  his  mind, 
with  a  vivid  picture  of  the  plan  of  the  sermon.  Some  one  in  the 
congregation,  who  was  asked  if  he  noticed  anything  peculiar,  said 
he  only  remarked  that  Mr.  Brooks  seemed  to  have  changed  his 
mind  after  reaching  the  pulpit,  and  concluded  that  he  would  prefer 
to  preach  from  the  lecturn.  The  reason  for  the  change  he  did 
not  know,  but  he  recalled  that  sermon  as  one  of  the  most  powerful 
and  impressive  he  had  ever  heard. 


io6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

A  few  specimens  are  here  given  from  his  pocket  note- 
books in  order  to  show  the  ideas  germinating  in  his  mind 
which  were  afterwards  to  be  developed  into  sermons ;  they 
also  serve  to  illustrate  the  character  of  his  preaching  and 
the  tone  of  thought  at  the  moment  when  they  were  written. 
One  year  is  as  good  as  another  for  this  purpose,  and  we 
fix  upon  1874,  when  he  was  preaching  in  Huntington 
HaU:  — 

What  do  we  mean  by  hope  and  cheerfulness  about  the  future  ? 
We  know  that  despair  and  weariness  all  come,  we  don't  ignore 
them.  But  from  the  distance  we  see  the  greater  power  envelop- 
ing all  and  working  and  making  peace. 

The  difference  of  the  sense  of  mystery  in  life  in  different  per- 
sons. About  alike  in  those  who  think  nothing  about  it  and  in 
those  who  have  a  settled  scheme. 

There  are  days  which  seem  to  be  made  up  of  spring  and  autumn, 
which  have  the  hope  of  one  and  the  despair  of  the  other.  Our 
time  is  like  such  a  day. 

The  relation  of  the  Church  to  social  life,  throughout  its  his- 
tory. The  Church  and  the  religion  are  not  always  the  same,  but 
(and  it  is  a  weighty  truth)  the  Church  cannot  long  lag  behind 
the  religion.  Christianity  the  religion  at  once  of  individuality 
and  society,  and  so  of  social  life  which  must  have  both  of  these 
in  it. 

The  way  the  Bible  strikes  at  the  average  respectability,  as  in 
the  Elder  Brother  and  Pharisees,  yet  never  would  overturn.  No 
socialism;  always  full  of  virtue  and  order,  always  bringing  up 
the  better  from  below,  always  making  growth  the  changing  force, 
always  developing.  That  the  whole  secret  of  reform.  Other 
systems  purely  destructive ;  have  tried  to  appropriate  Christianity, 
but  have  failed. 

When  an  end  has  been  made  of  the  people's  old  religion,  of 
their  faith,  and  of  the  God-made  man  of  the  Gospel,  do  you  know 
what  was  substituted  ?  The  faith  in  the  God-made  man  of  social- 
ism. For  what  is  socialism  at  bottom?  It  is  man  believing 
himself  God,  in  the  sense  that  he  believes  himself  capable  of 
destroying  evil  and  suffering.  (Life  of  Montalembert,  vol.  ii. 
p.  112.) 

For  thus  saith  the  Lord  unto  the  house  of  Israel,  Seek  ye  me, 


yET.  37-40     METHODS   OF  WORK  107 

and  ye  shall  live.  Amos  v.  4.  One  must  be  in  harmony  with  the 
principles  of  life  in  order  to  live;  for  example,  the  forces  of 
nature,  the  laws  of  the  land,  the  men  about  us,  of  all  good  things. 
This  must  be  what  is  meant  by  seeking  God ;  not  His  favor,  but 
His  nature.  This  is  what  is  meant  by  Christ  reconciling  us  to 
God.  The  full  life  of  Jesus.  .  .  .  There  is  a  rich  vitality  in 
the  man  who  has  sought  God. 

We  have  not  so  much  as  heard  whether  there  he  any  Holy 
Ghost.  Acts  xix.  2.  What  is  perfectly  real  to  us  so  often 
entirely  strange  to  other  men.  What  we  cannot  live  without 
they  never  miss.  .  .  .  But  in  every  such  case  the  soul  is  all  the 
time  getting  help  unconsciously;  the  Spirit  not  confined  to  those 
times  and  places  where  He  consciously  is.  .  .  .  What  they  lose 
by  their  unconsciousness. 

And  there  was  great  joy  in  that  city.  Acts  viii.  8.  Religion 
primarily  personal,  secondarily  social.  Evil  of  reversing  this.  But 
after  the  personal,  the  social  to  be  considered.  What  would  a 
city  be  with  Christianity  accepted  universally?  1.  Belief.  2. 
Behavior.  3.  Charity.  City  joy  is  made  up,  independently  of 
personal  happiness,  of  social  life,  business  prosperity,  and  public 
spirit.  The  love  of  company.  A  revival  in  a  city.  The  beauty 
and  healthiness  of  it.  .  .  .  The  qualities  wanted  in  civic  life  are 
just  the  Christian  qualities. 

Silver  and  gold  have  I  none,  but  such  as  I  have  give  I  thee. 
Acts  iii.  3.  There  is  something  better  for  us  to  have  than 
money.  So  there  must  be  something  better  to  give.  The  greatest 
benefactors  have  not  given  money.  Christ.  So  of  those  who  have 
helped  you  most.  Not  make  anything  I  say  an  excuse  for  not 
giving  money.  What  we  can  give,  —  Ideas,  Inspiration,  Com- 
fort, and  above  all  access  to  God  for  what  He  can  give  alone, — 
Forgiveness  and  Grace.  ...  A  man  must  really  possess  himself 
before  he  can  really  give  himself  to  another. 

Elias  was  a  man  subject  to  like  passions  as  we  are.  James  v. 
17.  General  tendency  to  think  the  great  men  so  much  greater 
than  we  are.  What  is  and  what  is  not  common  to  men  (Declara- 
tion of  Independence).  Settle  it  that  privilege  must  belong  with 
character,  and  then  there  can  be  no  arbitrary  inequality.  "And 
I  will  not  be  judged-  by  any  that  never  felt  the  like, "  said  Richard 
Baxter  on  his  wife's  death. 

The  first  fruits  of  them  that  slept.  1  Cor.  xv.  20.  .  .  . 
Christ  made  death  seem  and  be  a  sleep.     He  established,  that  is, 


io8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

that  sleep  was  its  true  figure.  This  includes  these  ideas,  (1) 
Its  naturalness.  To  sleep  and  to  awaken  again  is  altogether 
natural.  The  sonnet  of  Blanco  White.  The  relation  of  this 
revelation  to  the  wishes  and  hopes  of  the  race.  (2)  The  refreshing, 
renewing  power.  Sleep  brings  back  the  energy  of  the  last  morn- 
ing, only  with  the  added  wisdom  and  experience  of  the  past  day. 
So  of  the  resurrection  life  of  Christ.  The  restoral  of  the  first  life, 
only  with  the  complete  and  redemptive  work  added,  all  the  fatigue 
and  pain  over.  So  your  resurrection  life.  Restored  to  the  Image 
of  God,  only  with  the  experience  of  life  put  in. 

And  when  he  was  come  into  Jerusalem,  all  the  city  was  moved, 
saying.  Who  is  this?  Matt.  xxi.  10,  A  great  city  in  excitement 
always  a  thrilling  and  touching  thing.  For  there  life  is  at  its 
fullest.  ...  1.  The  impressibility  of  men.  2.  The  ignorance: 
hooting  boys,  nay,  even  men,  who  don't  know  what  it  is  all  about. 
3.  The  vast  uncultured  power  that  is  there ;  what  they  might  do. 
'T  is  very  like  a  beast.  'T  is  insignificant  in  detail,  but  mighty 
in  combination. 

Country  good  after  town,  as  night  after  day,  as  sleep  after 
work,  but  that  is  all. 

The  moved  city  is  the  emphasis  of  ideas  by  humanity,  adding 
nothing  to  their  inherent  reasonableness,  but  very  much  to  their 
convincing  force. 

Who  is  this  ?  a  wonder  worker,  a  truth  teacher,  a  soul  changer  ? 

There  must  be  a  Theology,  a  Christology.  Refuge  in  mere 
moralism  will  not  do.  It  is  too  shallow.  If  there  be  a  Christ 
we  must  know  Him,  think  something  of  Him. 

Christ's  view  of  human  nature.  A  general  view  necessary. 
Views  lightly  formed.  Views  of  easy  humanitarians;  present 
views  of  universal  corruption.  —  Constant  variation  from  wretched 
misanthropy  to  wretched  optimism.  — The  necessity  of  some  gen- 
eral conception.  How  it  will  influence  single  judgments.  Two 
sources  —  consciousness  and  experience. 

Christ's  view  in  parable  of  Prodigal  Son,  Woman  of  Samaria, 
and  Simon  Peter ;  in  the  Temptation,  Transfiguration,  Crucifixion. 

Practical  results  of  this  view,  —  deep  indignation  with  sin, 
sober  hope  and  work,  enthusiasm  for  man  without  folly. 

The  Gadarenes  beseeching  Jesus  to  depart  from  their  coast. 
Matt.  viii.  34.      The  shrinking  from  any  great  experience. 

This  one  reason  why  with  all  their  complaint  of  the  world  and 
themselves  men  do  not  strive  for  improvement. 

The  magnitude  of  Christianity  appalls  men.     How  they  get  rid 


^T.  37-41]     METHODS   OF  WORK  109 

of  it:  by  formalism;  by  indifference;  by  breaking  down  the 
truth. 

The  way  in  which  Jesus  lifts  us  to  our  work.  He  will  not  go ; 
is  better  than  our  prayers. 

That  awful  prayer !  .  .  .  Depart  from  us,  O  Christ !  half  un- 
consciously; by  business  absorption. 

Imagine  the  whole  world  eager  for  its  highest.  How  it  would 
take  Christ. 

One  element  of  our  shrinking  from  death,  —  the  natural  fear  of 
the  unknown. 

But  Christ  goes  into  it  with  us,  surrounding  and  tempting  us 
with  His  love.  The  fear  of  great  emotion  is  lost  as  He  is  with 
us.    He  is  with  us  in  a  lower  and  so  leads  us  to  a  higher  state.   .   .   . 

Start  with  the  truth  that  Christianity  is  Christ. 

And  the  Lord  said  unto  Satan,  Behold,  all  that  he  hath  is  in 
thy  power ;  onli/ upon  himself  put  not  forth  thine  hand.  Job  i.  12. 
The  limited  power  of  evil,  —  the  self  that  it  cannot  touch.  Apply 
to  Christian  trials,  to  disturbed  faith,  to  bereavements,  to  loss  of 
property. 

The  need  of  a  central  definite  self.  The  need  of  valuing  it 
above  all  things. 

The  power  of  trouble  to  disentangle  the  self.  Compare  the  lim- 
its of  Satan's  power  over  Jesus.  Christ  the  assertor  of  a  man's 
self.    .   .   . 

To  know  the  depths  to  which  each  sort  of  suffering  and  tempta- 
tion may  go,  how  deep  loss  of  money,  loss  of  health,  loss  of  friends, 
loss  of  reputation.  .  .  .  God's  willingness  to  let  everything  else 
go,  to  save  the  man's  own  self.      That  explains  so  much. 

The  Religious  Fear.  Nervousness,  or  with  some  the  Religious 
scare  of  the  present  moment.  The  need  of  religion  being  driven 
(1)  to  more  reality,  (2)  to  more  applicability,  (3)  to  more  depth. 
Are  not  the  present  tendencies  doing  it  ? 

What  to  do  !  Not  modify  religion  to  every  demand ;  the  great 
liberty  now  to  seek  the  absolute  truth  and  match  our  ideas  to  it. 

Threefold  danger,  —  cultivated  skepticism,  low  life,  Romanism. 
Faith  in  God.  Show  what  it  means.  Not  that  He  will  support 
our  dogma,  but  that  He  will  bring  His  truth,  and  if  our  dogma 
and  Church  is  not  that,  we  do  not  wish  it.  So  I  always  stand 
before  you. 

Who  against  Hope  believed  in  Hope.  Rom.  iv.  18.  Spoken 
of  Abraham  the  father  of  us  all. 

The  lower  hope  and  the  higher.     Hope  in  the  probabilities  of 


no  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

nature ;  and  hope  in  the  promises  of  God.  The  two  levels  of  life. 
So  our  hope  of  comfort,  of  renewal. 

These  two  regions  everywhere,  —  the  natural  and  the  transcen- 
dental. 

Apply  to  standards  of  life;  what  we  may  expect  of  man. 
Apply  to  evidences  of  God  and  Jesus  and  eternity. 

Modern  unbelief  from  admitting  only  lower  evidences.  Higher 
evidence  is  by  consciousness  and  revelation. 

Giving  none  offence  in  any  thing,  that  the  ministry  he  not 
blamed.  2  Cor.  vi.  3.  What  the  classes  are,  — Dogmatic  big- 
ots ;  the  utterly  indifferent ;   earnest  believers.    .    .    . 

What  ought  to  be  our  feeling  towards  each? 

1.  Toward  the  bigot.  Describe  the  evils  of  bigotry,  always 
on  the  verge  of  ^hariseeism.  The  great  variety  of  it,  may  be 
Roman  or  Puritan.  How  can  I  feel  about  it  ?  One  man  says, 
"Trample  it  under  foot;  "  another  man  says,  "Accept  it  for  its 
spirit,  no  matter  about  its  ideas."  Neither  is  good.  Get  hold 
of  its  good  and  develop  that.  Look  on  the  bigot  as  mistaken  in 
the  search  for  truth. 

2.  Look  on  the  indifferent  as  capable  of  truth.  .  .  .  This 
illustrated  by  Paul's  treatment  of  Athenians,  — the  very  pattern 
of  our  treatment  of  the  indifferent  by  our  side.  The  universal 
God  is  the  basis  of  everything. 

3.  The  need  of  having  settled  principles  on  which  to  regulate  our 
life  with  one  another.  What  are  the  principles  which  Christian- 
ity brings  to  bear:  1.  God's  love  for  all  and  guidance  of  all.  2. 
The  common  teachableness.  3.  The  resurrection  and  eternal  life. 
4.  The  personal  conscience.  5.  The  worth  of  the  soul  above  the 
body.      All  these  made  manifest  by  the  Incarnation. 

Some  time  a  strong  sermon  on  the  Incarnation. 

You  cannot  carry  Christianity  everywhere,  but  you  can  carry 
Christ. 

The  character  of  the  arguments  to  which  men's  minds  are  open 
one  of  the  best  indications  of  their  calibre. 

Come  unto  me  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will 
give  you  rest.  Matt.  xi.  28.  Rest  only  in  Character.  Talk 
about  the  restlessness  of  America  which  is  connected  with  the 
lack  of  national  character.  The  causes  of  that  lack  in  absence 
of  traditions  and  in  the  access  of  foreigners. 

Rest  has  true  self-respect,  the  ideal  before  it. 

The  miserable  seeking  for  equilibrium  in  circumstances. 

Restlessness  is  discontent  which  has  no  ideal  before  it.  Dis- 
content which  has  an  ideal  is  progress. 


^T.  37-41]     METHODS   OF   WORK  iii 

Trouble  not  the  Master.  Two  cases  where  the  disciples  inter- 
fered, to  prevent  Christ  being  disturbed:  Bartimseus  and  the 
Children.  Their  anticipation  of  the  tendency  of  Churchmen  to 
shut  up  Christ  to  certain  activities,  and  to  lose  his  spontane- 
ousness  and  freeness.  The  causes  of  such  a  tendency.  Analyze 
into  a  care  for  Him  and  a  lurking,  half-unconscious  fear  of  ex- 
haustion ;  for  example,  Salvability  of  the  heathen ;  Forgiveness  of 
very  great  sins;  Salvation  of  errorists;  Few  that  be  saved. 
(1872.) 

Sermon  on  Forgiveness,  as  the  purpose  of  the  Gospel.  .  .  . 
The  prerequisites  of  forgiveness  are  repentance  and  faith,  .  .  . 
not  remorse  and  belief.  A  reconciled  God,  the  grandeur  of  that 
idea.  .  .  .  Has  it  not  been  done  by  Christ  in  the  world  and  in  the 
heart?  If  men  come  into  the  councils  of  God  and  dwell  there  as 
they  could  not  of  old,  has  not  He  done  it  ?  And  by  the  death  of 
Christ,  is  not  that  true  also  ?  Sin  has  been  made  hideous,  obedience 
lovely,  love  evident.  Then  how  evident  that  not  by  any  mere 
outward  works  the  forgiveness  is  obtained.      (1872.) 

Come  and  see.  The  proper  appeal  that  may  be  made  to  a 
skeptic,  to  come  and  test  Christianity:  1.  The  truth  of  the 
Bible.  2.  The  phenomenon  of  Christ.  3.  The  Christian  His- 
tory. 4.  The  religious  experience  by  putting  himself  into  the 
power  of  what  he  did  hold. 

Biit  ivill  God  indeed  dwell  on  the  earth  ?  Atheism,  Panthe- 
ism, Deism,  Incarnation.  Then  the  spiritual  conception  of  an 
indwelling  God,  a  God  who  is  in,  not  is,  the  human  soul. 

Say  the  Lord  hath  need  of  him.  God's  need  of  men;  the 
solution  of  Calvinism.  The  opposite  statements  of  Spiritual 
things  which  may  both  be  true. 

Humility.  To  be  gained  both  by  sense  of  our  own  weakness 
and  by  the  bigness  of  others.  .  .  .  Humility  and  self-respect 
entirely  consistent. 

That  they  sho^dd  seek  after  God,  if  haply  they  might  feel  after 
and  find  Him,  though  He  is  not  far  from  every  one  of  us.  God 
nearer  than  we  think.  We  are  blind  to  what  is  nearest  to  us 
always.  Christ  the  exhibition  of  a  nearness  of  God  which  is 
already  a  fact.  The  difference  if  we  understood  it  all.  God  the 
atmosphere  of  life. 

Some  said  that  it  thundered;  others  that  an  angel  spake  imto 
Him.       The  profound    and   superficial   explanations  of   things. 


112  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

Everything  is  capable  of  both.  .  .  .  Common  occurrences  of  life, 
discernment  or  non-discernment  of  spiritual  causes.  Religious 
experiences;  nervous  or  spiritual?  Existence  or  non-existence  of 
angels  ?     Which  is  the  more  logical  or  true  to  fact  ? 

The  relation  of  Christ  to  modern  social  life.  The  disposition 
in  earliest  times  to  divide  Christian  Society  from  Pagan.  The 
necessity  of  it  then,  the  undesirableness  of  it  now.  Does  this 
make  the  task  of  Christianity  easier  or  harder?  Does  it  not 
make  it  much  harder,  requiring  watchfulness  more? 

Whether  they  will  hear  or  forbear.  The  absoluteness  of  duty 
as  distinct  from  its  relativeness.  The  whole  subject  of  con- 
sidering consequences  and  results. 

Ah,  Lord  God,  they  say  of  me,  doth  he  not  speak  parables  ? 
Sermon  to  people  who  think  themselves  not  understood.  Of  course 
they  are  not,  in  one  sense  nobody  is.  .  .  .  God  understands  you. 
Is  that  really  a  help?  The  power  of  the  Incarnation  here,  Christ's 
life  misunderstood.  Perhaps  you  are  not  so  misunderstood. 
Others  know  us  in  some  ways  better  than  ourselves.  The  ten- 
dency of  our  time  to  self-consciousness.  Our  houses  full  of  it. 
Specify  various  special  instances.  .  .  .  The  misunderstood  reli- 
gions.     The  would-be  Benefactor,  Teacher,  Idealist,  Leader. 

Me7i's  hearts  failing  them  for  fear.      Descriptive  of  our  time. 
The  tendency  of  such  times. 
^         Even  so  come,  Lord  Jesus.      On  the  willingness  to  meet  and 
welcome  great  experiences. 

The  beauty  and  strength  of  reserve.  The  fact  of  God's  reserve 
and  then  some  of  the  laws  of  it.  The  fact,  in  science,  in  reli- 
gious truth,  in  personal  treatment,  in  prophecy;  the  limits  of 
revelation;  the  Incarnation  a  hiding  as  well  as  an  exhibition. 
The  laws  of  reserve;  reserve  is  for  stimulus,  not  for  vexation. 
Reserve  is  of  what  is  curious,  not  what  is  useful.  The  neces- 
sity of  reserve ;  Jewish  and  Christian  ways  of  looking  at ;  essential 
and  arbitrary.  Man's  feeling  to  a  reserved  God  and  a  garrulous 
God. 

Is  devotion  in  proportion  to  advance  in  civilization  ?  Is  then 
religion  to  be  tested  by  our  civilization?  Answer,  No!  but  by 
its  ability  to  carry  on  its  own  work.  It  has  made  civilization 
and  carried  it  so  far. 

The  relation  of  Christianity  and  society  all  along.  It  has 
worked  so  differently;  has  made  the  monastery  and  made  the 
home. 


^T.  37-41]     METHODS   OF   WORK  113 

Chivalry,  the  desire  to  be  with  the  weak;  a  repugnance  from 
strong  causes ;  strong  in  many  natures  instinctively,  for  example, 
Montalembert. 

From  the  ideas  as  they  first  took  shape  in  his  mind  we 
turn  to  the  process  by  which  the  finished  product  was  reached. 
He  ceased  repeating,  as  he  had  done,  the  Philadelphia  ser- 
mons. His  mind  was  teeming  with  thoughts  which  came 
faster  than  he  could  utilize  them.  The  trouble,  he  said,  was 
not  to  find  subjects  to  preach  about,  there  was  no  danger 
of  failure  of  topics,  but  of  inability  to  exhaust  the  topics. 
For  many  years  he  now  wrote  regularly  one  sermon  each 
week.  Also  he  devoted  the  week  to  this  one  sermon,  for  he 
could  still  command  his  time,  at  least  the  best  part  of  every 
morning.  Before  Monday  came  he  had  the  text  in  his  mind 
on  which  he  was  to  write.  If  he  had  failed  to  secure  his 
text  or  subject  before  the  week  began,  he  knew  there  was 
danger  of  failing  to  produce  a  sermon.  It  was  his  custom 
on  Monday  morning  to  have  his  friends  about  him,  for  that 
was  his  day  of  rest.  But  as  they  sat  in  his  study  and  the 
light  humorous  conversation  ran  on,  in  which  he  delighted, 
his  mind  never  lost  sight  of  the  idea  which  inspired  him. 
On  the  mornings  of  Monday  and  Tuesday  he  was  bringing 
together  in  his  note-book  or  on  scraps  of  paper  the  thoughts 
which  were  cognate  to  his  leading  thought  or  necessary  for 
its  illustration  and  expansion,  collecting,  as  he  called  it,  the 
material  for  the  sermon.  Wednesday  morning  he  devoted 
entire  to  writing  out  the  plan  which  he  would  follow.  In 
these  plans  there  was  something  unusual,  even  remarkable. 
Hundreds  of  them  remain,  for  from  the  time  he  adopted  this 
method  he  continued  to  follow  it  scrupulously  down  to  the 
last  sermon  he  wrote.  To  these  plans  he  must  have  attached 
importance,  preserving  them  with  care,  and  often  making  use 
of  them  in  various  ways.  They  deserve  therefore  some 
description. 

What  is  noticeable,  then,  in  the  first  place  is  the  unvarying 
uniformity  of  their  size  and  appearance,  as  though  the 
working  of  his  mind  were  somewhat  dependent  on  the  out- 
ward form  of  the  paper  on  which  he  wrote.    They  are  written 

VOL.  II 


/ 


114  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

in  a  handwriting  so  small  that  they  resemble  nothing  so  much 
as  some  specimens  of  ancient  Puritan  sermons,  where  it  was 
a  matter  of  economy  of  paper,  and  a  sermon  was  condensed 
into  the  smallest  possible  space.  There  is  a  suggestion  here 
of  some  inherited  touch  from  his  clerical  ancestors,  in  remote 
generations,  which  may  have  been  unconsciously  impelling 
him.  He  took  a  half  sheet  of  sermon  paper,  folding  it  once, 
thus  making  four  small  pages,  some  seven  inches  by  less 
than  five  in  their  dimensions,  which  he  was  to  fill.  It  is  also 
worthy  of  remark  that  he  invariably  filled  them  out  to  the  last 
remaining  space  on  the  last  page,  as  though  only  in  this  way 
he  could  be  sure  that  he  had  sufficient  material  for  his 
sermon.  So  condensed  is  the  handwriting  that  each  one  of 
these  plans  will  average  about  one  thousand  words,  —  in  itself 
a  short  sermon.  Each  plan  contained  when  it  was  finished 
a  dozen  or  more  detached  paragraphs.  His  next  task  —  and 
this  is  the  most  curious  feature  of  all  —  was  to  go  over  the 
paragraphs,  each  of  which  contained  a  distinct  idea,  and  was 
to  become,  when  expanded,  a  paragraph  in  the  finished 
sermon,  placing  over  against  each  the  number  of  pages  it 
would  occupy  when  it  had  been  amplified.  Then  he  added 
the  numbers  together.  Thirty  pages  was  the  limit  of  the 
written  sermon.  If  these  numbers  of  assigned  pages  fell 
short  of  thirty  he  reviewed  his  plan  to  see  where  he  might 
best  expand,  or  where  to  reduce  if  he  had  too  many.  It  was 
extraordinary  that  one  who  gave  the  impression  of  such  utter 
spontaneity,  whose  sermons  seemed  to  come  by  a  flash  of 
inspiration,  costing  no  effort,  should  have  thus  limited  him- 
self in  fixed  and  apparently  mechanical  ways. 

The  hardest  part  of  his  work  was  accomplished  when  he 
had  completed  his  plan.  Thursday  and  Friday  mornings  were 
devoted  to  writing  the  sermon ;  and  as  each  sermon  contained 
some  five  thousand  words  a  considerable  amount  of  labor  was 
still  required.  But  he  wrote  with  rapidity  and  ease,  rarely 
making  a  correction,  and  in  a  large,  legible,  and  graceful 
handwriting,  which  looks  like  a  study  in  penmanship.  Evi- 
dently it  was  a  pleasure  to  him  to  write  a  sermon  under  these 
conditions.     He  came  to  each  paragraph  as  to  a  work  of  art, 


SKELETON   OF   A    SERMON" 


ji^o 


asti^  ^  a<.o  AL.  A;7o  ^^/^  ^  <u.s^o^  A/^f^  ' 

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j[^   ^J^r^c'c^  c^cu^  ^aVc,  .  v>!^  y?!^  A::z^^^^<!^^^^<-^^  '^^ 


■fcv«-»*-t-> 


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tA~c<,    Act??-  /z^  <it<41oA-^!ti:C^   ^  ^^  /^  <Z.-^CC:jj>  c^  ci  ^^^ 


rg:^A-^  ^i/^^^  aT^^^  <i:>4fe  /^  ./a^, . 


n/ 


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\^^J^^^   Z:^  ^:^^^i:z^  y y^,,^'o^  cj^jo  ^  ^/^  Xzj::^  ^^^ 

A^tzJJt^^  ^^6-  e&-  c^<,-^e^    <>4kji^    ^yic&^  /^ y^'-'^''^^^^^^ 

^StS^     <^yeXs  A>^.,^.^  ^^r-t.-":^'  £^^^ 

^?z<xi^  -^w~  >4<^<-l^   c/c^iiiS  ^C-^.-^  o   *^^<r  ^xAr^    -^^./l. 


Cy^  ^Lc^t--— 


\^  y<^     q£^     -tf^^     /^(su    /^f^^^^^-t^     ^fe    *Lu^ 

IzOi^    ^  ill>     /^i-^  c^  ^    (y%2y  ^:j!ieu!isj    ACc</^^4  kJ^oJ^z:;;^ 


^T.  37-41]     METHODS   OF   WORK  115 

knowing  just  the  limits  it  should  have,  with  no  anxiety  about 
proportions,  no  fear  lest  his  material  should  fail  him. 

I  have  been  reading  these  plans  carefully  [writes  a  friend  of 
Mr.  Brooks  to  whom  they  have  been  submitted],  comparing  them 
bit  by  bit  with  the  printed  sermons,  and  was  interested  to  find  how 
closely  he  kept  to  his  plan  as  a  whole,  both  the  order  of  the  passages 
and  the  number  of  pages  allotted  to  each.  How  the  dry  bones 
live !  The  earlier  synopses  seemed  to  me  less  finished  than  the  ones 
written  only  later  by  a  few  years.  For  instance  the  "Curse  of 
Meroz  "  in  1877  has  an  occasional  outburst  apparently  for  himself 
alone,  "It  makes  one  mad;"  "tbe  muddy  humility  of  Uriah 
Heep."  Indeed,  I  noticed  a  number  of  personal  applications 
which  do  not  appear  in  the  sermons  themselves.  In  the  "Great- 
ness of  Faith  "  opposite  the  words  "blatant  infidel  "  is  written 
"Ingersoll."  I  have  also  found  passages  marked  for  three  pages 
reduced  to  half  a  page,  the  example  of  a  man  building  a  house 
changed  to  one  facing  a  great  grief,  and  in  "  Christian  Charity  " 
whole  passages  and  even  ideas  left  entirely  out.  He  must  have 
feared  his  own  facility  and  the  glowing  images  that  came  crowding 
into  his  mind  to  tie  himself  down  so,  almost  as  a  poet  would,  into 
sonnet  form.^ 

What  has  been  said  of  his  method  of  preparing  a  writ- 
ten sermon  applies  equally  to  his  -extemporaneous  sermons. 
Always  there  was  the  plan  elaborated  and  written  out  and 
afterwards  filed  for  future  reference.  There  are  many  hun- 
dreds of  these  plans,  but  this  difference  is  to  be  noted, 
that  in  making  them  he  used  a  full  sheet  of  sermon  paper, 
with  the  handwriting  large  and  bold,  clearly  with  the  pur- 
pose in  view  of  taking  them  into  the  pulpit.  He  could  not 
thus  have  utilized  the  plans  of  the  written  sermon,  for  the 
handwriting  was  so  small  as  to  have  required  a  magnifying 
glass  to  read  it.  In  this  way  he  cultivated  himself  in  the 
art  of  extempore  preaching.     The  practice  which  he  had  in 

^  How  early  Mr.  Brooks  adopted  this  method  of  making  plans  for  his  ser- 
mons is  uncertain.  Cf.  Bemembrances  of  Phillips  Brooks,  where  the  Rev. 
George  A.  Strong  writes :  "  A  stay  of  a  week  with  him  in  Philadelphia  once, 
while  he  was  still  in  charge  of  '  Holy  Trinity,'  showed  me  how  he  wrote  his  ser- 
mons. '  Take  a  book  and  pipe,'  he  said  one  morning,  '  and  let  me  map  out 
work  for  to-morrow.'  The  pen  ran  on  as  if  the  note-paper  '  plan '  were  an 
offhand  letter,  and  after  an  hour  or  so  of  absolute  stillness  the  close-written 
sheet  went  into  the  desk." 


ii6  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1873-77 

amplifying  his  ideas  in  the  written  sermon  helped  him  when 
preaching  without  notes,  for  he  rarely  took  them  into  the 
pulpit,  to  keep  within  limits,  and  to  build  up  a  sermon  with 
as  much  skill  and  success  as  when  he  wrote  it  out  word  for 
word  in  his  study.  But  all  this  preparation  served  a  greater 
end,  to  give  him  freedom  in  the  pulpit.  Often  when  he  was 
most  powerful  he  had  departed  from  the  manuscript  before 
him,  or  ceased  to  follow  the  plan  laid  out.  He  was  never 
more  effective  than  when  he  delivered  some  written  sermon 
extemporaneously.  In  such  cases  he  did  not  use  the  manu- 
script for  preparation,  but  went  to  the  plan  on  which  it  had 
been  written,  coming  again  under  the  influence  of  the  original 
idea  which  had  first  inspired  him,  and  then  giving  to  it  such 
fresh  treatment  as  made  it  seem  as  if  he  were  delivering 
a  new  sermon. 

It  is  another  characteristic  of  Phillips  Brooks  as  a  preacher 
that  he  made  no  effort  to  follow  the  rule  enjoined  in  rhetorical 
treatises  calling  for  a  culmination  at  the  end  of  the  discourse, 
for  which  the  most  effective  points  or  arguments  should  be 
reserved.  On  the  contrary  he  often,  perhaps  generally,  came 
to  his  climax  as  he  began.  He  followed  the  artist's  method, 
rather  than  the  rhetorician's,  throwing  his  leading  idea  upon 
the  canvas  in  bold  outline,  and  then  holding  his  audience 
with  a  gaze,  growing  deeper  in  its  intensity  as  with  an  artist's 
power  he  filled  up  the  outline  and  made  a  living,  speaking 
portrait.  What  he  was  doing  in  every  sermon  was  to  repro- 
duce the  personal  process  through  which  he  himself  had 
passed  from  the  moment  when  he  grasped  a  truth  till  he 
had  traced  out  in  his  own  experience  its  relation  to  life 
and  to  all  other  truth.  He  first  opened  his  soul  to  the 
influence  of  the  truth  which  was  to  constitute  his  message, 
devising  the  most  forcible  method  in  order  to  make  it  appeal 
to  his  own  heart,  and  then  under  the  influence  of  this  con- 
viction he  wrote  his  sermon.  He  studied  its  effect  upon  him- 
self before  studying  how  to  reach  a  congregation.  This 
process  kept  him  natural,  sincere,  and  unaffected,  preserving 
his  personality  in  all  that  he  said,  and  free  from  the  dangers 
of  conventionalism  or  artificiality.     No  one  ever  charged  him 


^T.  37-40     METHODS   OF   WORK  117 

with  employing  the  artifices  of  rhetoric  to  accomplish  his  end, 
nor  did  his  hearers  harden  themselves  against  his  teaching 
under  the  suspicion  that  he  moved  them  by  sensational 
methods.  Although  the  rules  of  rhetoric  require  that  the 
strongest  argument  should  be  placed  last  if  an  audience  is  to 
be  stirred  by  the  orator  to  accept  the  truth  which  he  advo- 
cates, yet  in  real  life  the  strongest  argument  comes  first,  and  y 
is  confirmed  by  the  lesser  reasons  which  may  be  alleged. 
This  was  Phillips  Brooks's  method.  There  was  a  letting 
down  of  the  audience  as  he  closed  from  the  exaltation  with 
which  he  began  to  the  sober  application  of  his  truth  in  the 
realities  of  life. 

During  these  years,  while  Trinity  Church  was  worshipping 
in  Huntington  Hall,  Phillips  Brooks,  as  has  been  said, 
gave  himself  up  almost  exclusively  to  the  work  of  preaching. 
There  is  the  record  of  only  two  important  addresses  which  he 
gave,  both  of  them  significant  not  only  for  their  inherent 
value,  but  as  illustrations  of  his  methods  of  work,  and  for  the 
latter  reason  they  may  here  be  mentioned.  He  went  to 
Worcester  in  December,  1874,  to  deliver  an  address  before 
the  Massachusetts  Teachers'  Association.  His  subject  was 
"  Milton  as  an  Educator,"  and  it  was  treated  with  apparent 
learning,  with  the  marks  of  familiarity  with  his  theme,  as  well 
as  with  its  remoter  scientific  bearings.  But  why,  one  is 
tempted  to  ask,  should  an  association  of  teachers,  knowing  so 
well  the  needs  of  their  profession,  call  upon  one  who  was 
not  a  professed  educator  for  this  service  ?  And  how  should 
the  busy  parish  minister  find  time  for  the  investigation  of 
his  subject,  so  that  he  could  speak  the  word  which  would 
give  to  teachers  the  stimulus  and  encouragement  for  which 
they  craved  ?  Or  did  Mr.  Brooks  have  the  art  of  cramming 
in  a  short  time  so  as  to  give  the  appearance  of  erudition,  and 
for  the  rest  dress  up  the  old  platitudes  under  some  temporary 
mood  of  enthusiasm  ?  The  truth  is  that  six  months  before, 
while  he  was  abroad  for  his  summer's  vacation,  he  was 
making  his  preparation.  For  years  he  had  been  studying  the 
life  and  times  of  Milton.  He  took  with  him  as  he  went  away 
the  important  books  on  the  subject  of  education  by  Milton, 


ii8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

Locke,  Bacon,  and  Herbert  Spencer.  He  studied  Quick's 
"  Essays  on  Educational  Reformers,"  then  went  for  himseK  to 
the  writings  of  Quintilian,  Montaigne,  Comenius,  Pestalozzi, 
and  Basedow.  When  we  add  to  this  special  preparation  his 
interest  in  the  subject  of  teaching,  his  efforts  for  many  years 
to  detect  the  methods  of  success,  his  experience  in  visiting 
schools,  his  gifts  of  insight  and  of  observation,  his  philosophi- 
cal capacity  for  tracing  relationships  of  thought,  unobvious  to 
many,  we  have  the  evidence  that  he  was  not  seeking  to  pose 
as  a  scholar  outside  of  his  own  department,  but  was  doing 
conscientious  and  faithful  work. 

Another  address  was  delivered  at  the  anniversary  of  the 
Massachusetts  State  Normal  School,  in  July,  1875,  when  his 
subject  was  "  Courage."  ^  The  preparation  for  it  was  made 
a  long  time  in  advance,  and  among  the  writings  of  Phillips 
Brooks  it  occupies  a  most  important  place.  We  are  haunted 
as  we  read  with  the  conviction  that  we  have  before  us  a  chap- 
ter from  his  experience,  had  he  chosen  to  give  it  a  personal 
form.     He  tells  us  his  method  of  reading :  — 

The  habit  of  review  reading  is  hostile  to  literary  courage.  To 
read  merely  what  some  one  has  said  about  a  book  is  probably 
as  unstimulating,  as  unfertilizing  a  process  as  the  human  mind 
can  submit  to.  .  .  .  Read  books  themselves.  To  read  a  book  is 
to  make  a  friend ;  if  it  is  worth  your  reading  you  meet  a  man ; 
you  go  away  full  of  his  spirit ;  if  there  is  anything  in  you,  he  will 
quicken  it.  ...  To  make  young  people  know  the  souls  of  books 
and  find  their  own  souls  in  knowing  them,  that  is  the  only  way  to 
cultivate  their  literary  courage. 

But  it  is  the  subject  itself  which  is  most  suggestive.  If  we 
might  fix  upon  one  word  to  describe  the  character  of  Phillips 
Brooks,  it  would  be  courage.  It  was  written  in  his  appear- 
ance and  manner,  showing  itself  in  his  sermons  and  his  conver- 
sation, the  one  quality  in  him  which  could  not  be  suppressed 
x^  or  disguised.     It  had  been  manifested  in  Philadelphia  when 

he  espoused  causes  which  were  unpopular.  Had  he  chosen 
to  become  a  professional  reformer,  however  obnoxious  his 

1  Cf.  Essays  and  Addresses  for  both  these  papers,  "  Milton  as  an  Educator," 
p.  800,  and  "  Courage,"  p.  319. 


^T.  37-41]     METHODS   OF   WORK  119 

cause  or  strenuous  the  opposition  to  it,  he  would  not  have 
flinched  from  its  advocacy.  Those  who  heard  him  preach 
were  inspired  by  his  courage,  as  an  army  by  the  command  of 
a  fearless  leader.  And  this  quality  was  a  positive  one,  which 
had  been  developed  in  spite  of  timidity  and  shyness  and  self- 
consciousness.  He  would  not  have  failed  a  second  time  in 
the  Boston  Latin  School.  The  difficulty  he  surmounted  in 
overcoming  his  natural  reserve  contributed  to  the  development 
of  courage.  In  the  earlier  years  a  certain  air  of  noncha- 
lance has  been  noticed,  as  marking  his  manner  while  preach- 
ing, —  the  mask  it  may  have  been  of  his  still  too  sensitive 
spirit.  But  in  later  years,  those  who  have  watched  him  on 
occasions  when  he  was  to  address  a  congregation,  waiting  for 
his  word  to  lift  up  their  hearts,  have  noticed  how  his  face 
grew  pale  and  his  whole  countenance  straitened  with  a  look 
of  agony  in  the  moment  before  he  turned  to  mount  the  pul- 
pit. To  preach  was  an  act  requiring  courage,  because  he 
must  needs,  in  order  to  be  successful,  unfold  his  inner  self, 
and  speak  of  the  intimate  phases  of  the  soul's  life  in  God, 
when  no  pressure  could  have  extracted  these  things  from 
him  in  ordinary  circumstances.  When,  therefore,  he  speaks 
to  us  of  courage,  and  gives  us  the  definition  of  courage,  he 
is  imparting  the  secret  of  his  own  experience  :  "  Courage  is 
the  power  of  being  mastered  by  and  possessed  with  an  idea. 
How  rare  it  is  !  I  do  not  say  how  few  men  are  so  mastered 
and  possessed ;  I  say  how  few  men  have  the  power  so  to  be." 
The  Sundays  at  Huntington  Hall  succeeded  each  other 
with  their  unvarying  testimony  to  the  preacher's  power.  No 
courses  of  lectures  on  literature,  art,  or  science  with  which 
the  hall  was  associated  ever  witnessed  a  greater  audience.  It 
would  not  have  been  so  surprising  if  on  anniversary  occasions 
the  crowd  had  gone  forth  to  meet  him ;  but  this  was  the  case 
Sunday  after  Sunday,  like  the  sun  each  day  as  it  rises  in  its 
strength,  till  people  became  accustomed  to  it  as  to  the  gifts  of 
God,  and  hardly  wondered  at  the  munificence  of  the  feast.  Here 
is  a  description  of  one  of  these  Sundays,  which  will  answer  for 
them  all ;  it  is  taken  from  a  Boston  religious  paper,  "  Zion's 
Herald,"  in  1874:  — 


I20  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

Religious  papers  in  the  Middle  and  Southern  States  speak  of 
Boston  as  if  given  over  to  religious  doubts,  to  the  gospel  of 
modern  science,  and  to  heterodoxy  generally.  If  their  editors 
could  see  the  crowd,  and  know  the  character  of  it,  that  waits  upon 
the  ministry  of  Phillips  Brooks,  their  views  might  be  somewhat 
modified.  Last  Sabbath  morning  the  immense  hall  was  far  from 
being  equal  to  the  demands  of  the  audience  that  crowded  it. 
Many  stood  throughout  the  whole  service,  and  many  went  away  not 
finding  even  a  place  for  the  sole  of  the  foot.  Here  ex-governors 
and  senators,  judges  and  college  professors,  intermingled  with  the 
humblest  populace  of  the  city.  The  services  were  most  devoutly 
rendered.  The  sermon  was  a  fervid,  simple  utterance  of  the  gospel 
of  the  Lord  Jesus,  in  the  love  and  personal  enjoyment  of  it.  A 
few  words  of  address  to  young  men  and  boys,  at  the  close,  in 
reference  to  the  great  privilege  of  preaching  the  gospel  were  very 
impressive.  A  tender  silence  was  the  appropriate  response  from 
the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  excellent  and  eminently  spiritual 
discourse.  The  service  in  the  interest  of  "  Free  Religion "  in 
Boston  never  draws  such  an  audience  as  this.  "And  if  I  be 
lifted  up  will  draw  all  men  unto  me." 

Another  writer  has  described  the  preacher  at  this  time  in 
terms  felicitous  and  true :  — 

We  sometimes  read  of  Schleiermacher  and  Whitefield  and 
Robertson  and  McCheyne  and  Chalmers  and  Mason,  and  think  it 
must  have  been  good  to  live  in  the  times  when  men  preached  with 
their  fire  and  their  mighty  hold  on  the  heart ;  but  lo !  we  have 
the  same  phenomena  in  Boston  to-day,  a  man  in  some  respects 
even  more  than  the  equal  of  some  I  have  named. 

He  seizes  a  great  and  living  theme ;  he  throws  it  out  with  a 
sentence  into  shape ;  he  then  follows  it  in  all  its  relations  to  life, 
never  entering  into  quibbles,  nor  minute  matters  which  pertain  to 
some  but  not  to  all,  and  shows  the  bearing  of  the  great  central 
truth  on  the  daily  needs  of  men.  He  never  overflows  with  nor 
lacks  illustration,  but  uses  it  as  the  conditions  of  his  subject 
require,  keeping  it  as  illustrative  and  not  as  metaphorical  show. 
He  betrays  a  thorough  acquaintance  with  the  thought  of  our 
time,  passing  into  no  antiquated  domain,  but  meeting  an  audience 
fresh  from  the  magazine  and  newspaper  with  a  style  which  is 
natural  and  earnest  and  in  sympathy  with  what  is  best  in  our 
day.  His  breadth  of  thought  is,  perhaps,  that  which  strikes  and 
draws  one  most,  and  in  this  not  even  Beecher  is  his  master. 
Philosophic  candor,  and  a  large  grasp,  this  separates  him  world 
wide  from  the  common  pulpit;  and  those  who  find  themselves 


^T.  37-41]     METHODS   OF   WORK  121 

always  on  the  guard  about  the  statements  of  others  give  Phillips 
Brooks  a  ready  ear.  But  with  all  this,  there  is  in  his  preaching 
what  one  must  call  the  everlasting  Gospel;  that  faithfulness  to 
the  conscience,  that  tender  pleading,  that  dignity  of  condescen- 
sion, and  yet  that  brotherliness  and  sympathy,  that  fidelity  to 
dogmas,  yet  that  absence  of  dogmatic  expression,  that  lack  of  the 
sensational,  ludicrous,  and  egotistic,  and  that  spiritual  quickening, 
which  men  sum  up  in  one  brief  phrase  when  they  say,  "That 
is  what  I  call  preaching."  For  myself,  I  should  deem  no  vaca- 
tion complete  without  hearing  Phillips  Brooks.  After  hearing 
Candish,  Dyce,  Hamilton,  Jones,  Binney,  Spurgeon,  Pressensd, 
Monod,  Krummacher,  and  Tholuck,  not  to  mention  other  dis- 
tinguished divines  of  Europe,  there  is  no  one  who  so  exactly 
suits  me  as  Phillijis  Brooks.  There  is  a  warmth  and  life  and 
inspiration  and  truth  from  his  lips  that  I  have  not  found  else- 
where.     And  from  what  I  hear  mine  is  not  an  isolated  case.^ 


The  late  Dr.  Tulloch,  Principal  of  St.  Mary's  College,  in 

the  University  of  Aberdeen,  was  visiting  Boston  in  the  spring 

of  1874.     This  was  his  tribute  to  Phillips  Brooks,  in  a  letter 

to  his  wife  :  — 

April  26, 1874. 

I  have  just  heard  the  most  remarkable  sermon  I  ever  heard  in 
my  life  (I  use  the  word  in  no  American  sense)  from  Mr.  Phillips 
Brooks,  an  Episcopal  clergyman  here :  equal  to  the  best  of  Fred- 
erick Robertson's  sermons,  with  a  vigor  and  force  of  thought 
which  he  has  not  always.  I  never  heard  preaching  like  it,  and 
you  know  how  slow  I  am  to  praise  preachers.  So  much  thought 
and  so  much  life  combined;  such  a  reach  of  mind,  and  such  a 
depth  and  insight  of  soul.  I  was  electrified.  I  could  have  got 
up  and  shouted. 

And  again  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  the  comment  is  repeated, 
and  the  comparison  with  Robertson  made  more  explicit :  — 

I  cannot  tell  you  how  much  I  have  enjoyed  myself  here,  how 
kind  everybody  has  been,  and  with  what  flattering  kindness  they 
have  received  me,  —  Longfellow,  Emerson,  Holmes,  Dana,  and  a 
man  in  some  respects  as  remarkable  as  any  of  them,  Phillips 
Brooks,  the  great  preacher  here  now.  I  never  heard  anything 
equal  to  his  sermon  to-day,  and  you  know  I  don't  readily  praise 
sermons.      It   had   all   the   originality   and   life   and   thought   of 

^  Rev.  W.  L.  Gage,  in  the  Congregationalist,  1874. 


122  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

Robertson  of  Brighton,  with  less  tenderness  and  delicacy  of  in- 
sight, but  more  robustness  and  incision.^ 

That  a  man  like  Principal  Tulloch  could  bear  this  testi- 
mony to  a  sermon  by  Phillips  Brooks  shows  that  something 
had  happened  in  the  history  of  preaching  and  in  the  history 
of  religious  thought.  There  was  certainly  no  living  critic 
who  surpassed  him,  very  few  if  any  who  could  be  said  to 
equal  him,  in  those  qualities  which  go  to  making  up  the  capa- 
city for  final  arbitration.  He  was  distinguished  as  a  preacher, 
Chaplain  in  Ordinary  to  the  Queen,  Moderator  of  the  Gen- 
eral Assembly  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  a  man  of  rigid 
standards  and  exacting  in  his  judgments,  acquainted  with 
the  preachers  of  his  time,  whose  profession  called  him  to 
study  the  history  of  preaching  and  the  history  of  theology. 
Those  who  have  read  his  "  Leaders  of  the  Reformation,"  his 
"  English  Puritanism  and  its  Leaders,"  or  his  important  work 
on  "  The  Rational  Theologians  of  the  Church  of  England 
in  the  Seventeenth  Century,"  will  know  that  Phillips  Brooks 
was  preaching  in  the  presence  of  one  whose  judgment  was  of 
value.  The  man  who  could  move  Principal  Tulloch  to  such 
an  outburst  had  gained  some  vantage  ground  in  the  struggle 
of  the  Christian  church  to  overcome  the  world,  which  it  is 
essential  that  we  should  discover.  When  we  turn  with  an 
interest  to  the  sermon,  it  is  to  find  that  it  was  no  excep- 
tional utterance  compared  with  a  hundred  others  that  might 
be  mentioned.  And  yet  it  contained  in  a  marked  degree 
that  quality  which  now  made  all  the  sermons  great.  This 
was  the  text :  Jesus  said  unto  him^  Dost  thou  believe  on 
the  Son  of  God  ?  He  answered  and  said,  Who  is  he.  Lord, 
that  I  might  believe  on  him  f  And  Jesus  said  unto  him, 
Thou  hast  both  seen  him,  and  it  is  he  that  talketh  with 
thee?  The  climax  of  the  sermon  was  delayed  till  the  mean- 
ing of  the  last  answer  of  Jesus  had  been  unfolded.  As  the 
successive  points  in  the  conversation  were  opened  up  to  the 
hearer  in  the  wealth  of  their  direct  and  unsuspected  spiritual 
import,  the  interest  grew  deeper,  for  the  portrait  of  Christ 

1  Mrs.  Oliphant's  Life  of  Principal  Tulloch,  pp.  292,  303. 

2  Cf.  Sermons,  "  The  Opening  of  the  Eyes,"  vol.  v.  p.  194. 


^T.  37-41]     METHODS   OF  WORK  123 

was  growing  clearer  and  the  nature  of  every  man.  Christ  is 
drawn  as  the  most  real,  most  present  power  in  the  Christian 
world.  Men  see  Him,  talk  with  Him  continually,  but  they 
do  not  know  what  lofty  converse  they  are  holding.  The  sub- 
tlety of  the  spiritual  imagination  that  enabled  the  preacher 
to  enter  into  the  mind  of  Christ  had  the  effect  of  reproducing 
the  scene,  as  though  Christ  were  standing  in  bodily  presence 
before  the  congregation.  What  had  taken  place  those  cen- 
turies ago  was  repeating  itself  in  the  consciousness  of  many 
on  that  Sunday  afternoon. 


CHAPTER  V 

1873-1877 

THE  BUILDING  OF  THE  NEW  TRINITY  CHURCH.      THE  MOTIVES 
IN  ITS   CONSTRUCTION.      THE   CONSECRATION   SERVICES 

The  story  of  the  building  of  Trinity  Church  reads  like 
a  romance  from  its  first  inception,  through  the  difficulties 
surmounted,  till  it  culminated  in  the  service  of  consecration. 
In  the  accomplishment  of  the  work,  the  building  committee, 
the  architect,  the  rector,  labored  together  in  a  spirit  of 
harmony,  with  an  aim  which  cannot  be  better  expressed 
than  in  the  words  of  the  report  of  the  building  committee : 
"  the  conviction  that  our  duty  to  the  parish,  to  posterity,  and 
to  God  has  been  clear,  to  make  the  new  church  fully  worthy 
of  the  piety,  the  culture,  and  the  wealth  of  our  people."  It 
was  fortunate  for  the  architect  and  the  rector  that  they  had 
such  a  building  committee  and  such  a  parish  to  support 
them,  for  as  the  original  design  of  the  church  expanded,  there 
came  the  demand  for  increased  expenditure  until  the  com- 
pleted work  had  cost  more  than  double  the  amount  originally 
contemplated.  From  beginning  to  end  a  deep  enthusiasm 
pervaded  the  whole  undertaking.  It  was  impossible  to  bring 
together  two  such  personalities  as  Richardson  and  Phillips 
Brooks  without  something  great  and  unique  as  the  product 
of  their  joint  discourse.  Mr.  Richardson  was  not  a  man 
with  ecclesiastical  convictions,  who  endeavored  to  turn  his 
religious  musings  into  architectural  expression,  but  endowed 
with  a  rich  and  generous  nature,  who  appreciated  the  large- 
hearted  rector  of  Trinity  and  responded  to  his  suggestions. 
Mr.  Brooks  was  not  an  architect,  but  he  came  near  being  one. 
In  his  journeys  through  Europe  he  had  made  himself  familiar 
with  historic  churches  in  the  countries  he  visited,  and  by  his 


^T.  37-41]     NEW   TRINITY   CHURCH        125 

intelligent  interest  in  the  subject  had  prepared  himself  for 
the  tuition  which  Richardson  could  give.  He  had  also 
certain  first  principles  of  his  own,  which  appear  embodied  in 
Trinity  Church. 

From  one  point  of  view  the  credit  for  the  accomplishment 
of  so  large  an  undertaking  belonged  to  the  building  committee, 
whose  culture,  judgment,  and  zeal,  as  well  as  business  capac- 
ity, made  the  work  possible,  preventing  misunderstandings 
which  would  have  marred  the  plan  or  limited  its  realization. 
From  another  point  the  glory  belongs  to  an  architect  who 
stood  foremost  in  his  profession  for  originality  and  boldness 
and  power.  But  with  Phillips  Brooks  originated  the  motives 
which  dominate  the  edifice.  His  ideas  are  written  in  the  struc- 
ture ;  he  supported  and  stimulated  the  genius  of  the  architect, 
turning  it  to  his  own  purpose ;  he  possessed  the  confidence  of 
the  building  committee  and  of  the  members  of  the  parish, 
manifested  by  unstinted  generosity  in  giving,  in  response  to 
increasing  appeals.  While  the  share  which  he  took  in  the 
work  cannot  be  exactly  measured,  or  the  influence  he  exerted 
be  sharply  discriminated  from  that  of  the  architect  or  build- 
ing committee,  yet  the  story  may  be  told  from  his  point  of 
view.  Trinity  Church  in  his  lifetime  was  popularly  known 
as  Phillips  Brooks's  Church ;  there  is  a  sense  in  which  it 
may  be  regarded  as  his  monument. 

In  the  first  place  he  appreciated  the  greatness  of  the 
opportunity.  The  time  was  ripe  to  make  an  attempt  in 
ecclesiastical  architecture  which,  while  it  respected  and 
followed  whatever  was  true  or  desirable  in  traditional  methods, 
should  yet  be  subservient  to  the  expression  of  those  higher 
aspects  of  religion  which  it  had  been  the  glory  of  the  Pro- 
testant Reformation  to  unveil.  Upon  that  point  he  was  clear, 
that  the  first  condition  was  to  break  away  from  the  so-called 
Gothic  style,  to  whose  introduction  into  England  and  America, 
following  in  the  wake  of  the  Oxford  Movement,  was  owing 
in  a  measure  the  attempted  return  to  mediaeval  religion 
which  had  characterized  the  Anglican  Church  for  the  last 
generation.  That  type  of  religion,  with  its  priesthood  and 
confessional,  and  its  undue  emphasis  on  the  sacrament  of  the 


126  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1873-77 

altar,  had  clothed  itself  in  a  style  of  architecture  whose  chief 
requisite  was  to  see,  or  to  supplement  sight  by  the  ringing  of 
a  bell,  but  where  the  hearing  of  the  word  of  God  by  the  ear 
was  not  taken  into  consideration  as  affecting  the  structural 
necessities  of  the  building  art.  Faith  cometh  by  hearing,  and 
hearing  by  the  word  of  God  was  the  conviction  of  Phillips 
Brooks.  Preaching  might  seem  weak  in  comparison  with 
gorgeous  rites  calculated  to  impress  the  imagination,  but  God 
had  appointed  the  foolishness  of  preaching  to  save  them  that 
believe.  This  was  the  principle  kept  in  the  foreground,  as 
controlling  the  details  of  the  construction.  Even  the  piers 
of  the  central  tower,  where  they  are  visible  in  the  church, 
were  made  smaller  than  the  fitting  proportions  seemed  to 
demand,  failing  to  represent  the  massive  foundations  on 
which  they  rest,  and  even  concealing  in  some  measure  their 
structural  purpose,  in  order  that  the  symbolism  of  the  church 
as  a  place  for  the  proclamation  of  the  gospel  might  be  more 
effectually  secured. 

But  preaching  was  not  the  only  motive  to  be  embodied  in 
a  church  aiming  to  represent  the  symmetry  and  fulness  of  the 
Christian  faith.  For  the  "  visible  church  of  God  is  a  con- 
gregation of  faithful  men,  where  not  only  the  pure  word  of 
God  is  preached,  but  the  sacraments  be  duly  ministered 
according  to  Christ's  ordinance  in  all  those  things  that  of 
necessity  are  requisite  to  the  same."  In  order  that  the 
dignity  of  the  sacraments  might  not  only  be  secured,  but 
their  true  significance  made  prominent,  there  was  added  to 
the  chancel  end  of  the  church,  which  was  in  the  form  of  the 
Latin  cross,  a  large  semicircular  apse,  to  be  devoted  to  the 
one  purpose  of  the  administration  of  the  Lord's  Supper. 
This  was  a  departure  from  ecclesiastical  traditions,  marked 
and  even  glaring,  and  gives  to  Trinity  Church  a  distinctive 
character.  Its  motive  was  to  represent  the  idea  of  Christian 
communion  and  fellowship  as  one  great  end  which  the  Lord's 
Supper  was  designed  to  promote.  In  the  centre  of  the  apse 
stood  the  Lord's  table,  —  a  table  according  to  the  original 
institution  of  the  feast,  not  an  altar  or  a  sideboard,  but  a 
table,  whose  importance  to  the  Christian  imagination  was  not 


^T.  37-41]     NEW   TRINITY   CHURCH        127 

obscured  or  dwarfed  by  other  ornament,  not  even  by  the  chan- 
cel windows.  Whether  it  would  be  a  success  or  not  from 
an  aesthetic  or  architectural  point  of  view,  whether  something 
more  impressive  to  the  outward  eye  might  have  been  devised 
or  not,  was  not  the  question.  The  spirit  of  ecclesiastical  mys- 
ticism, dreaming  of  an  elaborate  altar,  with  its  imposing  ac- 
cessories, as  in  Latin  churches,  might  be  disappointed  at  the 
result  in  a  building  that  promised  and  fulfilled  so  much  to  the 
visual  imagination.  But  if  it  were  a  failure  in  devising  a  form 
of  architecture  where  the  central  truths  of  Anglicanism,  as 
distinct  from  Romanism,  should  be  bodied  forth  in  unmistak- 
able manner,  yet  it  was  an  attempt  at  this  end  under  circum- 
stances most  favorable  and  rare.  If  it  were  a  failure,  then  the 
inference  would  seem  close  at  hand  that  Protestantism,  which 
has  been  powerful  enough  to  build  up  the  modern  world,  and 
now  carries  the  hopes  and  the  possibilities  of  the  world's  future, 
is  driven,  in  seeking  a  fitting  shrine  for  worship,  to  resort  to 
types  of  architecture  that  originated  in  and  expressed  the 
spirit  of  an  inferior  age,  to  which  the  higher  forms  of  Christ's 
religion  were  unknown.  But  those  who  have  witnessed  the 
feast  of  the  Lord's  Supper  in  Trinity  Church,  when  the  full 
significance  of  the  divine  symbolism  is  apparent,  must  feel 
that  there  has  been  no  failure.  The  Protestant  principle 
controls  the  edifice,  securing  the  prominence  to  the  pure  word 
of  God,  and  with  it  the  due  ministration  of  the  monumental 
rite  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  The  baptismal  font,  from  this 
point  of  view,  is  placed  next  the  chancel,  as  it  should  be, 
connecting  closely  the  two  sacraments,  setting  forth  the  truth 
that  an  inward  purification  is  the  condition  for  participating 
in  the  heavenly  banquet. 

There  was  still  another  motive  in  the  mind  of  Mr.  Brooks : 
to  combine  with  these  features  of  a  Protestant  church  what- 
ever was  of  human  and  enduring  significance  in  the  earlier 
methods  of  Christian  architecture.  It  was  no  part  of  his 
purpose  to  break  with  the  spirit  of  the  ages  before  the  Refor- 
mation. To  his  mind  they  were  the  "  ages  of  faith,"  and  to 
them  he  made  the  appeal,  when  searching  for  the  evidence 
upon  which  the  Christian  religion  must  repose.     Therefore, 


128  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1873-77 

he  would  take  from  the  old  order  the  ideas  of  solidity  and 
of  imposing  grandeur,  of  beauty,  of  adornment  in  form  and 
color,  which  should  surpass,  if  possible,  all  other  beauty,  as 
when  the  church  seemed  greater  than  the  world,  the  spiritual 
stronger  and  richer  than  the  temporal,  and  in  its  costly  deco- 
ration symbolizing  that  wealth  was  most  worthily  employed 
when  it  ministered  to  spiritual  ends.  Let  the  complex  invo- 
lutions of  the  result  stand  for  the  rich  variety  of  religious 
interests.  Retain  from  the  old,  also,  the  sense  of  awe  and 
mystery,  the  deep  mystery  of  human  life,  that  combination 
of  effects  in  roof  and  windows,  in  which  Milton,  though  a 
Puritan,  rejoiced,  whose  result  was  to  dissolve  the  spirit  in 
religious  ecstasy  and  bring  heaven  before  the  eye. 

The  main  feature  in  the  architecture  of  Trinity  Church 
both  within  and  without  is  the  central  tower.  In  this  respect, 
as  well  as  in  the  rejection  of  the  pointed  arch,  the  departure 
from  the  so-called  Gothic  reproductions  is  apparent  and  strik- 
ing.    To  quote  the  architect's  words  on  this  point :  — 

In  studying  the  problem  presented  by  a  building  fronting  on 
three  streets,  it  appeared  equally  desirable  that  the  tower  should 
be  central,  thus  belonging  equally  to  each  front,  rather  than  put- 
ting it  on  any  corner,  where,  from  at  least  one  side,  it  would  be 
nearly  out  of  sight ;  and  in  carrying  out  this  motive,  it  was  plain 
that  with  the  ordinary  proportion  of  church  and  tower,  either  the 
tower  must  be  comparatively  small,  which  would  bring  its  sup- 
porting piers  inconveniently  into  the  midst  of  the  congregation,  or 
the  tower  being  large,  the  rest  of  the  church  must  be  magnified  to 
inordinate  proportions.  For  this  dilemma  the  Auvergnat  solu- 
tion seemed  perfectly  adapted.  Instead  of  the  tower  being  an 
inconvenient  and  unnecessary  addition  to  the  church,  it  was  itself 
made  the  main  feature.  The  struggle  for  precedence,  which 
often  takes  place  between  a  church  and  its  spire,  was  disposed  of, 
by  at  once  and  completely  subordinating  nave,  transepts,  and  apse, 
and  grouping  them  about  the  tower  as  the  central  mass. 

In  the  discussions  over  the  plan  of  the  church  by  which 
this  result  was  finally  determined,  Mr.  Brooks  took  an  im- 
portant part.  Both  architect  and  rector  were  agreed  in 
the  matter  of  the  tower  as  a  central  feature,  rather  than  a 
tower  at  one  corner,  as  was   at  first  intended.     As  to  the 


^T.  37-41]     NEW   TRINITY   CHURCH        129 

"  Auvergnat  solution,"  —  Mr.  Brooks  spent  the  summer  of 
1874  travelling  through  the  towns  of  middle  France,  where, 
as  at  Auvergne  and  the  Angoumois,  there  existed  from  the 
twelfth  century  churches  of  the  peculiar  construction  whence 
Mr.  Richardson  drew,  in  some  measure,  his  suggestion.  He 
was  thus  prepared  to  form  an  intelligent  opinion.  But  apart 
from  this  special  preparation,  he  had  an  earlier  predilection 
for  the  tower,  as  has  been  already  shown  in  his  experience 
at  Philadelphia,  where  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity  had 
been  completed  in  accordance  with  his  desire.  This  pre- 
ference for  the  tower  was  accompanied  by  another  equally 
strong  for  the  rounded  arch,  or  for  what  is  called  the 
Romanesque  style.  These  things  may  seem  to  be  a  matter 
of  indifference  from  a  religious  point  of  view,  but  he  did  not 
so  regard  them.  If  it  is  admissible  to  suppose  that  religious, 
or  intellectual,  or  other  motives  consciously  or  unconsciously 
inspire  those  who  plan  and  build,  then  we  may  recall  that  the 
Romanesque  style  was  developed  in  the  earlier  Middle  Ages 
before  the  Latin  Church  had  conquered  the  state,  or  begun 
the  movement  for  suppressing  freedom  of  inquiry,  before 
the  promulgation  of  the  dogma  of  transubstantiation  had  car- 
ried the  power  of  the  priesthood  to  absolute  supremacy  over 
the  Christian  imagination.  The  Gothic,  or  as  it  is  called 
the  pointed  style,  came  later,  when  these  things  had  been 
accomplished.  To  the  professed  ecclesiologist,  a  church  like 
Trinity,  without  a  spire,  without  the  pointed  arch,  is  an  eye- 
sore and  hardly  worthy  to  be  called  an  ecclesiastical  con- 
struction, for  their  rejection  seems  to  imply  the  sacrifice  of 
the  ideas  of  solemnity  and  devotion,  —  spire  and  arches 
mounting  upwards  to  express  the  soul  of  religious  aspiration 
pointing  forever  away  from  earth  to  heaven.  But  there  is 
another  conception  of  religion  than  this,  —  the  consecration 
of  the  world  that  now  is,  the  recognition  of  the  sacredness  of 
earth  and  of  the  secular  life.  To  this  conception  Mr.  Brooks 
had  given  expression  in  an  essay  ^  read  before  the  Church 
Congress  in  1875  on  the  "  Best  Method  of  Promoting  Spir- 

1  Essays  and  Addresses,  pp.  20  £F.    Also  published  separately  by  T.  Whit- 
taker,  N.  Y. 

VOL.  II 


I30  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

itual  Life,"  where  he  had  maintained  that  religion  is  not 
something  to  be  added  to  a  man's  nature  over  and  above 
what  he  already  possesses,  but  it  is  rather  the  consecration 
of  all  his  gifts  and  powers  to  the  service  of  God. 

The  spiritual  life  of  man  in  its  fullest  sense  is  the  activity  of 
man's  whole  nature  under  the  highest  spiritual  impulse,  which  is 
the  love  of  God.  It  is  not  the  activity  of  one  set  of  powers,  one 
part  of  the  nature.  It  is  the  movement  of  all  the  powers,  of  the 
whole  of  his  nature  under  a  certain  force  and  so  with  a  certain 
completeness  and  effect. 

With  this  idea  the  architecture  of  Trinity  Church  is  in 
harmony.  Nor  is  it  lacking  in  seriousness,  solemnity,  and 
devotion,  but  ministers  to  them,  as  also  to  a  certain  spiritual 
serenity,  in  a  manner  and  degree  unsurpassed  by  what  is  called 
the  ecclesiological  style. 

It  had  formed  a  part  of  Richardson's  design  that  the  interior 
of  the  church  should  be  decorated  in  accordance  with  a  large 
plan  embracing  the  whole  and  every  separate  part  in  its 
unity  of  treatment ;  that  this  should  be  done  by  some  crea- 
tive mind,  capable  of  a  task  which  in  this  country  hitherto 
had  no  precedent ;  that  the  church  within  should  be  rich  with 
the  luxuriance  of  color,  as  well  as  with  paintings  representing 
angelic  intelligences  and  the  great  personages  of  religious 
history.  Into  this  scheme  PhiUips  Brooks  entered  with  en- 
thusiasm. For  its  criticism  and  appreciation  he  had  prepared 
himself  by  lingering  in  the  art  galleries,  the  museums,  the 
churches  of  the  Old  World,  with  an  almost  passionate  devo- 
tion. He  studied  and  penetrated  the  artistic  purpose;  he 
knew  how  to  enjoy  ;  he  was  the  natural  friend  of  every  artist. 
In  close  connection  with  this  artistic  sense,  there  was  one 
peculiarity  about  him,  so  marked  as  to  be  almost  extra- 
ordinary, —  his  love  of  color,  in  itself  and  for  its  own  sake. 
There  is  some  mystery  here  which  we  do  not  fathom.  If  it 
be  true,  as  has  been  suggested,  that  color  is  only  a  subtler, 
higher  form  of  music,  his  whole  being  was  responding  to  its 
innumerable  manifestations,  and  it  ministered  to  him  a  per- 
petual inward  delight.  His  susceptibility  to  color  was  almost 
feminine,  so  quick  was  he  to  feel  and  appreciate.     But  he 


^T.  37-41]     NEW   TRINITY   CHURCH        131 

seems  to  have  loved  pure  color,  apart  from  any  attempt  at 
adjustment  or  harmony.  This  was  shown  in  little  things, 
as  when,  in  one  of  his  later  journeys  in  Europe,  he  bought  a 
piece  of  richly  colored  glass,  carrying  it  in  his  pocket,  simply 
for  the  pleasure  it  gave  him  to  look  at  it.  In  the  highest 
sense  of  the  word  he  was  not  musical.  But  if  color  be 
only  another  form  of  the  musical  appeal,  a  higher  and  in 
some  ways  more  intellectual  and  more  spiritual  form,  then 
we  can  understand  how  he  had  more  than  a  substitute  for  the 
melody  of  sound.  He  became  also  an  adept  and  a  devotee  in 
the  matter  of  stained  glass,  studying  at  factories  abroad  the 
method  of  its  production.  It  was  no  indifferent  subject,  then, 
to  Phillips  Brooks,  when  the  architect  proposed  that  the 
church  should  be  made  glorious  by  the  richest  effects  of  color 
which  the  best  artists  could  devise. 

But  to  execute  these  things  called  for  a  large  expenditure 
of  money  as  well  as  the  artistic,  creative  imagination  to  de- 
vise them.  Upon  this  point  there  was  the  inevitable  sensi- 
tiveness partly  grounded  in  human  nature,  and  partly  in  the 
movements  of  the  age.  Puritanism  had  not  hitherto  been 
favorable  to  the  cultivation  of  beauty  or  splendor  in  its 
churches.  The  reaction  at  the  Reformation  when  iconoclasm 
marred  or  wrecked  so  many  mediaeval  monuments  was  an  influ- 
ence which  had  not  wholly  lost  its  force.  To  this  lurking 
mood  which  would  have  made  practical  necessity  the  ruling 
idea  and  not  beauty  or  splendor  —  the  mood  of  the  disciple 
who  exclaimed  at  the  waste  of  the  costly  ointment,  "This 
might  have  been  sold  and  given  to  the  poor  "  —  there  came  a 
reinforcement  in  the  socialistic  temper  of  the  hour,  which 
was  making  good  men  sensitive  to  the  uses  of  wealth.  Upon 
this  point  there  is  evidence  that  Phillips  Brooks  had  thought 
seriously  and  come  to  a  conclusion.  There  was  a  danger  lest 
men  in  their  desire  to  be  of  service  to  others  should  lessen 
and  reduce  themselves  by  the  neglect  of  the  gifts  of  God,  and 
so  hinder  and  even  frustrate  their  mission.  To  set  forth  the 
richness  and  the  beauty  of  God's  creation  in  a  temple  where 
these  things  were  read  as  in  a  symbol  was  in  itself  a  motive 
and  a  stimulus  for  which  the  world,  the  poor  also  whom  we 


132  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

have  always  with  us,  would  be  the  better.  Hence  Mr.  Brooks 
not  only  justified  the  lavish  use  of  wealth  for  the  beautifying 
and  ennobling  of  the  house  of  God,  but  his  voice  was  inspiring 
as  he  made  the  appeal  to  his  congregation.  In  1897,  at  the 
twentieth  anniversary  of  the  consecration  of  Trinity  Church, 
his  successor.  Rev.  E.  W.  Donald,  referred  in  his  sermon  to 
this  point,  when  the  results  of  the  experiment  were  manifest : 

These  twenty  years  have  demonstrated  a  fact  which  I  fancy 
will  always  need  demonstration  in  the  eyes  of  those  people  who 
immemorially  have  "begrudged  the  house  of  God  the  touch  of 
beauty, "  and  deplored  great  cost  in  its  erection  and  adornment. 
You  built  a  splendid  temple ;  you  meant  to  build  a  splendid  tem- 
ple. You  spared  no  cost;  you  nobly  met  every  demand  which 
enlarged  plans  and  richer  beauty  year  by  year  made  upon  your 
generosity.  You  had  to  meet  the  plain-spoken  criticism  of  those 
who  insisted  that  the  difference  between  slightness  and  solidity, 
between  barrenness  and  beauty,  should  have  been  given  to  works 
of  mercy,  religion,  and  education.  If  the  cost  of  this  building 
had  been  funded  and  the  interest  of  the  fund  devoted  to  causes 
universally  acknowledged  to  be  worthy,  the  aggregate  income  of 
twenty  years  would  not  equal  the  munificent  sum  which,  with  the 
blessing  of  God  upon  it,  has  been  offered  and  distributed  by 
Trinity  Church. 

The  interest  in  watching  the  progress  of  the  work  grew 
stronger  as  the  many  anxious  problems  in  the  matter  of  con- 
struction were  met  and  overcome.  The  completed  edifice 
did  not  quite  represent  the  original  intention  of  the  archi- 
tect. The  walls  were  to  have  been  several  feet  higher,  and 
"  the  original  design  of  the  tower  showed  a  square  lantern 
with  turrets  at  each  corner,  much  like  the  present  tower,  but 
surmounted  by  an  octagonal  portion  rising  some  fifty  feet 
higher."  But  to  carry  out  this  plan  of  the  tower  called  for 
walls  of  such  thickness  in  the  tower  that,  in  the  minds  of 
experts  who  were  consulted,  the  foundations,  however  strong, 
would  not  be  strong  enough  to  support  the  weight.  To  this 
criticism  Mr.  Richardson  demurred,  but  the  change  was  made. 
The  lowering  of  the  walls  was  partly  in  obedience  to  acoustic 
demands,  which  were  an  important  consideration,  as  was  also 
the  construction  of  the  ceiling,  —  a  wisdom  justified  by  the 
result. 


^T.  37-41]     NEW   TRINITY   CHURCH        133 

The  first  difficulty  to  be  overcome  lay  in  the  nature  of  the 
ground,  which  was  of  gravel  filled  in,  what  is  called  "  made 
land,"  incapable  of  sustaining  the  weight  of  a  building.  In 
the  spring  of  1873  the  work  began  of  preparing  the  founda- 
tions. The  number  of  piles  which  were  driven  was  some 
forty-eight  hundred.  A  careful  record  was  kept  of  each  pile 
driven,  "  the  number  of  blows  required  to  drive  it  to  a  resist- 
ing medium,  the  depth  to  which  it  was  driven,  the  height 
from  which  the  hammer  fell,  the  weight  of  the  hammer,  and 
the  number  of  inches  which  the  head  of  the  pile  sank  at  each 
of  the  last  three  blows."  The  final  determination  of  the  plan 
of  the  church  was  delayed  until  this  preliminary  work  was 
done.  In  the  fall  of  1873  the  contract  was  made  for  the 
masonry  of  the  structure.  The  immense  weight  of  the  central 
tower  constituted  the  chief  difficulty  against  which  an  excess 
of  precaution  was  taken.  The  four  piers  which  support  it, 
carrying  arches,  fifty  feet  in  span,  —  the  whole  tower  weigh- 
ing nineteen  million  pounds,  —  rest  upon  four  truncated  pyra- 
mids, each  thirty-five  feet  square  at  the  base,  seven  feet 
square  at  the  top,  and  seventeen  feet  high.  Mr.  Richardson 
has  told  the  story  of  the  experiments  made,  the  failures,  the 
work  which  had  to  be  undone,  the  time  taken  for  testing  ex- 
periments, with  stones  and  cement  of  different  kinds,  until 
the  desired  security  was  attained.  Thus  the  year  1873  was 
spent  in  getting  ready,  a  tedious  year  which  to  onlookers 
yielded  no  visible  result. 

In  the  following  year  the  work  was  pushed  rapidly  forward. 
The  corner  stone  should  have  been  laid  in  the  summer  of 
1874,  but  owing  to  Mr.  Brooks's  absence  in  Europe  the  event 
was  postponed  till  November  10,  when  the  height  of  the  walls 
prevented  the  attendance  of  all  but  a  few.  The  contract 
called  for  the  completion,  in  November,  1874,  of  the  chapel, 
connected  by  a  corridor  with  the  church,  and  at  that  time  the 
congregation  took  possession  of  it,  the  foretaste  of  the  greater 
things  to  come.  Through  the  following  winter  the  stone  was 
cut  for  the  remainder  of  the  building  at  Westerly,  Dedham, 
and  Longmeadow,  some  of  it  also  coming  from  Rockport, 
from  Quincy,  and  from  the  coast  of  Maine.     It  is  an  interest- 


134  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

ing  fact  that  much  of  the  granite  stone  from  the  Old  Trinity 
on  Summer  Street  has  been  worked  into  the  foundations. 
The  massive  scaffolding  was  now  built  which  was  to  serve  for 
the  piers  and  arches  of  towers,  and  which  remained  in  place 
in  the  interior,  preventing  any  view  of  the  final  effect  until  it 
was  taken  down  a  few  days  before  the  church  was  consecrated. 
So  the  work  went  on,  until  in  July,  1876,  the  last  stone  was 
laid  in  the  tower,  and  in  its  exterior  appearance  the  church 
was  completed. 

There  now  followed  a  period  of  impatient  waiting  for  the 
completion  of  the  interior  decoration.  Mr.  John  La  Farge, 
the  most  eminent  of  American  artists,  to  whose  superintend- 
ence this  task  was  entrusted,  gathered  about  him  competent 
assistants  who  labored  with  him,  says  Richardson,  "in  a 
spirit  of  true  artistic  enthusiasm  for  a  work  so  novel  and 
affording  such  an  opportunity  for  the  highest  exercise  of  a 
painter's  talents."  Mr.  La  Farge  had  a  magnificent  scheme, 
but  it  required  time  for  its  fulfilment,  and  time  was  now 
becoming  a  condition  which  he  could  not  control.  He  asked 
for  an  extension  and  it  was  given  him,  but  even  that  was 
not  sufficient.  Still  he  had  accomplished  much  and  made 
the  completion  necessary  and  possible  also  at  a  future  day. 
At  first  it  had  only  been  intended  that  he  should  paint  a 
few  pictures  on  the  walls.  But  he  and  Richardson  saw  their 
opportunity  to  attempt  something  never  before  accomplished 
in  America.  He  succeeded  in  obtaining  permission  to  paint 
pictures  which  should  be  an  organic  part  of  a  great  scheme 
of  color  for  the  whole  church.  He  did  not  ask  for  any  ade- 
quate compensation,  but  only  for  permission  to  make  the 
effort.  He  confined  his  attention  to  the  roof  and  the  walls 
of  the  central  tower  in  the  confidence  that  if  this  were  com- 
pleted the  rest  would  follow.  He  consented  to  stop  his  work 
on  the  thirty-first  day  of  January,  1877,  and  with  great  doubts 
and  misgivings  the  day  of  consecration  was  fixed  for  Feb- 
ruary 9.  He  labored  up  to  the  last  moment  of  the  allotted 
time,  and  is  reported  to  have  spent  the  whole  night  of  Jan- 
uary 31  at  his  work.  Then  began  the  task  of  taking  down 
the  great  tower  staging,  which  had  stood  for  two  years  and 


^T.  37-41]     NEW   TRINITY   CHURCH        135 

a  half,  when  for  the  first  time  the  full  effect  of  the  interior 
was  visible. 

It  is  not  possible  here  to  go  into  any  detailed  description 
of  the  building  or  its  decoration.  At  the  time  of  its  erection 
it  awakened  an  unusual  interest  in  Boston  ;  its  progress  was 
followed  by  the  newspapers ;  architects  discussed  it  at  their 
meetings.  There  was  no  standard  for  judgment  or  compari- 
son ;  some  called  it  the  chief  architectural  ornament  of  the 
city ;  others  said  it  surpassed  in  magnificence  any  church  in 
New  England;  and  others,  still,  were  not  afraid,  as  they 
thought  of  the  architect  and  his  colaborers,  to  pronounce  it 
unequalled  throughout  the  land.  A  report  of  the  impression 
it  produced,  in  its  then  novel  beauty  and  magnificence  upon 
a  competent  judge,  is  taken  from  the  "  Boston  Transcript " 
of  February  5,  which  will  stand  for  many  similar  notices 
written  at  the  time:  — 

A  splendid  surprise  is  in  store  for  the  worshippers  at  Trinity 
Church  on  the  opening  of  that  temple  to  the  public  for  consecra- 
tion next  Friday.  The  interior  is  impressive  in  its  vast  spaces 
alone,  the  grandeur  of  its  wide  and  lofty  arches  spanning  nave 
and  transepts,  and  the  height  of  the  ceiling  in  the  great  square 
tower  open  to  the  sight  far  beyond  the  vaulted  roof.  The  grand 
exterior  dimensions  of  the  church  somewhat  prejiare  one  for  the 
spaciousness  within.  But  only  seeing  can  realize  the  superb 
beauty  of  the  decoration,  rich  yet  not  garish,  elaborate  and  not 
"piled  on,"  magnificent  in  splendors,  yet  noble  and  dignified, 
artistic  yet  religious  and  fitting  for  the  place.  Its  richness  is 
beyond  compare,  because  there  is  literally  nothing  like  it  this  side 
of  the  ocean.  Trinity  is  the  first  church  in  this  country  to  be 
decorated  by  artists,  as  distinguished  from  artisans.  The  result 
must  be  to  make  an  era  in  American  art  and  Church  building. 

On  February  3  the  last  timbers  of  the  staging  were  taken 
down.  In  the  five  days  that  remained  the  work  was  carried 
on  with  great  rapidity,  of  cleaning,  finishing  the  floor,  putting 
up  the  pews,  laying  the  carpets,  completing  the  organ,  and  on 
Thursday  night,  February  8,  everything  was  done.  The  debt 
of  $60,000,  unavoidably  incurred,  had  been  paid  as  soon  as 
the  appeal  to  remove  it  was  received.  The  following  day 
was  to  be  the  greatest  in  the  history  of  the  parish,  memorable 


136  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

for  the  congregation,  but  chiefly  for  the  building  committee, 
the  architect,  and  the  rector :  an  occasion  of  interest,  also, 
to  more  than  could  participate  in  the  ceremonies,  to  those 
outside  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  and  to  the  city  of  Boston. 
To  Mr.  Brooks  it  was  left  to  perfect  the  details  of  the 
function  of  consecration,  that  it  might  be  worthily  performed. 
The  services  began  at  eleven  o'clock,  and  by  that  time  the 
church  was  crowded.  Among  the  invited  guests  were  the 
Governor  of  the  State,  the  Mayor  of  Boston,  clergymen  of 
other  denominations,  the  wardens  and  vestrymen  of  other 
parishes,  the  architect,  the  artists,  and  builders.  The  late 
Colonel  Theodore  Lyman,  a  friend  and  college  classmate  of 
the  rector,  acted  as  the  marshal  of  the  day.  One  hundred 
and  seven  clergymen  walked  in  procession  from  the  chapel 
to  the  western  entrance,  where  they  were  received  by  the 
wardens  and  vestry  of  the  Church,  and  together  went  up  the 
nave,  reciting  alternately  the  twenty-fourth  Psalm,  whose 
sentences  seemed  to  take  on  a  deeper  meaning  :  "  The  earth 
is  the  Lord's  and  all  that  therein  is ;  the  compass  of  the  world 
and  they  that  dwell  therein.  Lift  up  your  heads,  O  ye  gates ; 
and  be  ye  lift  up,  ye  everlasting  doors ;  and  the  King  of  glory 
shall  come  in."  The  consecration  prayers  were  said  by  Bishop 
Paddock ;  the  Instrument  of  Donation  was  read  by  Charles 
Henry  Parker,  the  senior  warden,  and  the  sentence  of  conse- 
cration by  the  Kev.  W.  R.  Huntington  of  Worcester.  It 
was  characteristic  of  Phillips  Brooks  that  he  should  call  about 
him  on  such  a  day  the  friends  of  his  life  who  were  in  the  min- 
istry, or  who  had  been  associated  with  him  in  the  theologi- 
cal seminary.  Thus  the  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks,  the  Rev.  Thomas 
S.  Yocum,  the  Rev.  Wilbur  F.  Paddock,  and  the  Rev.  C.  A.  L. 
Richards  were  assigned  parts  in  the  service.  The  Rev.  Dr. 
Richard  Newton  represented  Philadelphia  and  its  associations. 
The  venerable  Stephen  H.  Tyng  of  New  York  read  the  Com- 
mandments, the  Rev.  Henry  C.  Potter  the  Epistle,  and  the 
Gospel  was  taken  by  Rev.  George  Z.  Gray,  the  Dean  of  the 
Episcopal  Theological  School  in  Cambridge.  But  in  the  chief 
place  of  honor  stood  Dr.  Vinton  to  perform  the  act  necessary  to 
complete  and  crown  the  occasion,  —;■  the  delivery  of  the  sermon. 


^T.  37-41]  NEW   TRINITY   CHURCH  137 

He  had  followed  Phillips  Brooks  from  his  boyhood,  had 
advised  with  him  when  in  uncertain  groping  after  his  life- 
work  he  had  first  thought  of  the  Christian  ministry ;  he  had 
received  him  to  his  heart  and  home  when  as  a  young  clergy- 
man he  came  to  Philadelphia ;  had  made  the  way  for  him  to 
the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity  as  his  successor ;  had  been  his 
counsellor  on  every  occasion,  blessing  him  away  from  Phila- 
delphia to  Boston,  and  now  in  Boston,  once  more  as  the  rector 
of  Emmanuel  Church,  had  resumed  the  old  relation  in  deeper, 
more  sacred  intimacy.  Dr.  Vinton  preached  the  sermon,  and 
his  text  was  Revelation  xxi.  22  :  "I  saw  no  temple  therein : 
for  the  Lord  God  Almighty  and  the  Lamb  are  the  temple  of 
it."  Then  followed  the  Communion  service  at  which  Bishop 
Paddock  officiated,  assisted  by  the  Bishop  of  Central  Pennsyl- 
vania, the  Rt.  Rev.  M.  A.  De Wolfe  Howe.  The  music  was 
under  the  direction  of  the  organist  of  Trinity,  Mr.  James 
C.  D.  Parker;  the  choir  consisted  of  Miss  Parker,  Dr. 
Langmaid,  Miss  Morse,  and  Mr.  Aiken,  together  with  a 
chorus  of  forty  voices.  With  a  lunch  served  at  the  adjacent 
Hotel  Brunswick,  the  exhilarating  and  glorious  occasion  came 
to  an  end.  This  letter,  manifesting  the  spirit  in  which  the 
building  of  Trinity  Church  was  accomplished,  was  written  to 
the  rector  by  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine  on  the  evening  of  the 
day  of  its  consecration :  — 

Boston,  Friday,  February  9,  1877. 

And  now,  my  dear  old  Friend,  at  the  close  of  this  great  day, 
which  has  brought  the  glorious  consummation  of  our  hopes  and 
prayers,  I  want  to  send  you  a  few  words  to  say  how  this  long  five 
years'  labor,  working  with  you  and  for  you  and  for  our  noble 
church,  has  been  to  me  an  inexpressible  pleasure. 

lu  all  the  difficult  and  doubtful  questions  which  have  met  us 
from  time  to  time,  the  hand  of  God  seems  to  have  guided  us  and 
to  have  brought  us  to  a  wise  decision.  I  have  felt  throughout 
that  your  prayers  were  powerful  to  get  this  aid  and  guidance. 

On  6ne  matter,  that  of  involving  the  Parish  in  debt,  I  have 
always  been  moved  in  two  directions,  feeling  on  the  one  hand  that 
we  were  bound  not  to  load  the  future  of  the  Church  with  a  heavy 
debt,  and  that  as  an  agent  of  theirs  I  rmist  be  faithful  to  this 
obligation,  and  yet  on  the  other  hand  unable  myself  to  tolerate 
the  idea  that,   in  carrying  out  the  great  work  of  transplanting 


138  PHILLIPS    BROOKS         [1873-77 

the  church  from  one  site  to  another  and  building  our  new  church 
to  stand  for  centuries  as  we  trust,  we  should  strive  or  even  be 
willing  only  to  use  the  resources  of  the  past. 

Here,  too,  God  seems  to  have  been  with  us.  And  the  debt, 
which  in  spite  of  our  efforts  to  keep  it  down  rolled  up  so  large  a 
sum,  has  only  given  us  all  an  opportunity  to  show  the  love  of  the 
whole  people  to  you,  and  their  readiness  to  follow  your  example 
of  great  generosity,  and  their  devotion  to  our  glorious  new  House 
of  God.  The  eager  and  noble  response  to  your  appeal  shows 
better  than  any  words,  not  only  their  love  to  you,  but  how  much 
you  have  done  in  them. 

Not  one  of  the  donors,  large  or  small,  but  must  always  love  it 
more  as  Ms  church,  now  that  he  has  taken  his  part  in  its  comple- 
tion. And  surely  we  must  feel  more  worthy  to  have  it  and  enjoy 
it,  when  we  have  added  so  largely  to  make  it  broad  and  beautiful 
and  rich. 

May  the  spirit  of  the  Living  God  go  with  us  into  our  new  Home, 
and  fill  it  and  you  and  all  of  us  full  of  His  presence  and  power 
and  blessing  in  this  generation  and  many  future  generations,  and 
make  it  a  mighty  power  for  good  so  that  we  shall  not  have 
builded  it  in  vain,  —  this  is  the  prayer  of  one  whose  rare  privilege 
it  has  been  to  be  in  this  matter  your  coworker,  and  always  your 
friend,  R.  T.  Paine,  Jr. 

To  this  letter  Mr.  Brooks  replied :  — 

Hotel  Kempton,  Boston,  Saturday  evening, 
February  10,  1877. 

I  wish  I  could  tell  you,  my  dear  Bob,  something  of  what  yes- 
terday was  to  me,  and  of  how  my  deep  gratitude  and  love  to  you 
mingled  with  the  feeling  of  every  hour.  May  God  bless  you  is 
all  that  I  can  say.  The  Church  would  not  be  standing  there,  the 
beautiful  and  stately  thing  that  it  is,  except  for  your  tireless 
devotion.  How  often  I  have  wondered  at  your  undiscouraged 
faith;  and  all  my  life  as  I  look  back  on  these  years  of  anxiety 
and  work,  I  shall  see  a  picture  of  constancy  which  I  know  will 
make  me  stronger  for  whatever  I  have  to  do.  Your  kind  words 
crown  the  whole  and  leave  nothing  to  be  desired  in  this  complete 
achievement. 

I  am  almost  appalled  when  I  think  what  the  great  work  in  this 
new  Church  may  be.  I  know  that  I  shall  have  your  help  and 
prayers  in  the  part  of  it  which  will  fall  to  me  to  do.  Many, 
many  happy  years  are  before  us,  if  God  will,  and  when  we  leave 
the  great  dear  thing  to  those  who  come  after  us  we  shall  be  near 
one  another,  I  am  sure,  in  the  better  life. 


^T.  37-41]     NEW   TRINITY   CHURCH        139 

I  cannot  realize  to-morrow.  But  I  know  it  will  be  a  happy- 
day.     And  so  may  God's  blessings  rest  on  you  and  yours  always. 

Your  grateful  friend,  P.   B. 

In  the  following  letter  the  Proprietors  of  Trinity  Church 
acknowledge  the  contribution  of  the  rector  to  the  beauty  and 
glory  of  the  new  edifice :  — 

Boston,  9  Doane  Street,  April  4, 1877. 

My  dear  Mr.  Brooks,  —  At  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Pro- 
prietors of  Trinity  Church,  held  on  Easter  Monday,  last,  the 
following  vote  was  passed  and  is  now  transcribed  from  the 
Records :  — 

That  in  the  midst  of  the  rejoicing  with  which  our  people  with 
overflowing  numbers  of  old  friends  and  large  accessions  of  new- 
comers have  crowded  our  new  and  spacious  House  of  Worship,  we 
cannot  let  this  great  epoch  in  the  life  of  our  ancient  Parish  pass, 
without  placing  on  permanent  record  our  sense  of  the  deep  obliga- 
tions of  us  and  our  whole  people  to  our  beloved  Rector,  Mr. 
Brooks. 

We  have  heard  with  pleasure  our  Building  Committee  report 
that  throughout  this  great  five  years'  enterprise  of  building  our  new 
Church,  his  taste  and  culture,  his  zeal  and  patience  and  faith  have 
largely  aided  in  the  great  result ;  that  to  him  in  large  measure  is 
due  the  beauty  and  the  glory  of  the  new  Church ;  that  he  has  been 
himself  the  inspiration  of  the  Architect,  Builders,  and  Committee. 

We  appreciate  most  deeply  his  noble  generosity  in  contributing 
so  largely  to  the  treasury  of  the  Parish,  and  in  thus  setting  an 
example  which  was  followed  by  our  people  so  liberally  that  we 
have  been  able  to  present  our  church  free  from  debt  and  conse- 
crated to  God.  And  we  accept  his  gift  as  one  more  proof  among 
many  of  his  ardent  love  to  his  parish. 

We  cannot  conclude  these  few  words,  so  feebly  expressing  our 
gratitude  to  our  noble  pastor  and  beloved  friend,  without  telling 
him  how  deeply  we  all  feel  indebted  to  him  for  holding  our  Parish 
so  firmly  united  by  his  devotion  to  us,  through  all  the  dreary 
interval  between  our  old  home  on  Summer  Street  and  our  new 
Church.  The  love  of  our  whole  people,  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren, is  all  that  we  can  give  him  in  return. 

A  true  copy  from  the  Records, 

Attest :  Stephen  G.   Deblois,  Clerk  of  Corporation. 

It  may  seem  to  mar  so  beautiful  a  narrative,  but  it  is 
necessary  to  allude  to  an  incident  which  occurred  in  connec- 
tion with  the  services  of  consecration.     To  the  sacrament  of 


I40  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1873-77 

the  Lord's  Supper  there  came  many  clergymen  of  other 
denominations,  and  among  them  were  eminent  Unitarian 
divines,  all  of  whom  had  been  personally  invited  to  remain 
for  the  communion.  Such  an  event  might  in  other  days  have 
taken  place  without  comment.  But  at  this  peculiar  juncture 
of  ecclesiastical  circumstances  it  called  forth  criticism  and 
condemnation.  The  late  Rev.  O.  B.  Frothingham,  who  re- 
presented the  movement  known  as  "Free  Religion,"  com- 
plained in  a  letter  to  Dr.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  published 
in  "  The  Inquirer  "  (Unitarian),  that  by  participating  in  the 
sacrament  at  Trinity  Church  Dr.  Clarke  had  shown  himself 
oblivious  of  the  high  ideal  of  his  own  communion  :  — 

The  dignitaries  (?)  who  invited  the  liberal  clergy  to  partake  of 
the  sacrament  did  what  was  for  them  a  generous  thing;  they 
were  liberal  and  magnanimous;  they  forgot  for  a  moment  their 
ecclesiasticism,  the  stringency  of  their  dogma,  the  exclusiveness 
of  their  institution,  the  anathema  of  their  creed.  .  .  .  Their  eye 
had  caught  the  vision  of  a  broad  church,  whose  enclosing  walls 
embraced  believers  of  every  name.  But  what  shall  we  think  of 
the  liberals  who  accepted  the  invitation?  Were  they  looking  for- 
ward? Were  their  faces  bathed  in  light?  Were  they  straining 
the  line  of  their  traditions? 

To  this  piece  of  fine  rhetoric,  beneath  which  was  the 
familiar  ecclesiastical  exclusiveness.  Dr.  Clarke  briefly  re- 
plied that  in  his  judgment  it  was  more  in  accordance  with 
the  spirit  of  liberal  Christianity  to  accept  such  an  invitation 
than  to  refuse  it.  He  distinguished  between  the  simple  rite 
of  the  Lord's  Supper  and  any  formal  ceremonial  with  which 
it  might  be  encompassed.  To  Mr.  Brooks  he  wrote :  "  I  was 
not  at  all  disturbed  by  what  was  said  by  some  Unitarians  of 
our  communing  at  your  church.  Their  objections  seemed  to 
me  too  frivolous  to  deserve  notice,  but  for  the  sake  of  the 
principle  I  thought  it  worth  while  to  reply  to  Frothingham's 
strictures  and  may  do  so  again.  But  really  it  seems  almost 
too  simple  a  matter  to  discuss." 

From  the  other  side  there  came  a  protest  by  a  presbyter 
of  the  Episcopal  Church  to  the  bishop  of  the  diocese  against 
what  seemed  to  him  "  a  grievous  sacrilege  "  at  the  consecration 
of  Trinity  Church,  in  the  admission  to  the  Holy  Communion 


JET.  37-41]     NEW  TRINITY  CHURCH         141 

of  "  those  who  avowedly  deny  the  faith  once  delivered  to  the 
saints,  even  concerning  the  fundamental  doctrines  of  our 
Lord's  Godhead."  Such  an  act  was  to  be  regarded  as  a  vio- 
lation of  Scripture,  of  "  Catholic  "  custom,  and  of  Christian 
instinct,  as  well  as  contrary  to  the  letter  and  spirit  of  the 
formularies  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church. 

The  newspapers  took  up  the  subject,  speaking  of  it  as  an 
unprecedented  circumstance,  never  witnessed  in  the  Episco- 
pal Church  before.  Mr.  Brooks  kept  silence.  He  had  made 
up  his  mind  to  keep  out  of  ecclesiastical  controversy.  As 
to  the  meaning  of  the  formularies  of  the  Episcopal  Church, 
he  had  long  since  come  to  the  conclusion  that  they  were  not 
intended  to  exclude  from  the  communion  those  who  did  not 
accept  her  articles  of  faith  or  follow  her  mode  of  worship. 
He  was  in  sympathy  with  Dean  Stanley's  attitude  in  admin- 
istering the  Lord's  Supper  to  Dr.  Vance  Smith,  a  Unitarian 
minister,  when  the  Communion  was  kept  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  at  the  moment  the  revisers  of  the  New  Testament 
were  about  to  begin  their  work.  Those  who  objected  to  this 
act  of  intercommunion  did  not,  as  he  thought,  represent  the 
spirit  or  the  history  of  the  Church  of  England  or  of  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  this  country.  He,  too,  dis- 
tinguished between  the  ceremonial  forms  or  professions  which 
accompanied  the  act  of  Holy  Communion  and  the  simple  rite 
itself,  the  eating  of  the  bread  and  the  participation  in  the 
cup  of  blessing.  The  one  essential  requisition  for  the  com- 
munion were  the  words  of  invitation  in  the  office  itself :  "  Ye 
who  do  truly  and  earnestly  repent  you  of  your  sins,  and  are 
in  love  and  charity  with  your  neighbors,  and  intend  to  lead  a 
new  life,  following  the  commandments  of  God,  and  walking 
from  henceforth  in  His  holy  ways,  draw  near  with  faith,  and 
take  this  Holy  Sacrament  to  your  comfort." 

Because  he  was  convinced  of  the  truth  of  the  doctrines  of 
the  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation,  it  did  not  follow  that  he 
should  refuse  to  associate  with  those  who  could  not  receive 
them.  The  "  Catholic  "  usage  which  forbade  Christian  fellow- 
ship with  those  who  denied  the  coequality  of  the  Son  with 
the  Father  was  not  necessarily  Christian  usage,  and  was  no 


142  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1873-77 

ideal  to  be  followed.  From  this  position  he  did  not  recede. 
But,  as  in  the  case  of  Dean  Stanley,  his  comprehensiveness  of 
spirit  was  obnoxious  to  many  of  his  brethren  ;  his  action  was 
not  to  be  forgotten ;  he  was'  destined  to  hear  from  it  again 
after  many  years.  He  had  gained,  however,  the  confidence 
and  affection  of  ministers  and  people  of  every  Christian 
denomination.  The  love  and  respect  of  the  Unitarians  in 
Boston  were  henceforth  accorded  to  him  as  to  no  other  man 
outside  their  own  communion. 

The  new  Trinity  Church  was  not  what  is  technically  known 
as  a  "  free  church,"  nor  did  the  rector  covet  for  it  that  title, 
knowing  as  he  did  how  phrases  which  spoke  much  to  the  ear 
might  in  reality  be  hollow.  The  pews  were  owned  or  rented 
by  the  Proprietors,  and  on  each  pew  a  tax  was  laid  for  the 
support  of  public  worship.  But  the  large  galleries  in  the 
transepts  of  the  church  were  free  in  every  sense ;  no  tax  was 
laid  on  them,  and  no  contribution  solicited  from  those  who 
occupied  them.  It  had  been  an  object  kept  in  view  by  Mr. 
Brooks  when  the  plans  of  the  church  were  drawn,  and  urged 
by  him  upon  the  architect,  that  this  ample  accommodation 
should  be  provided.  When  it  is  remembered  that  the  gal- 
leries accommodate  some  four  hundred  people,  —  a  larger 
congregation  than  is  found  in  most  churches,  thus  constitut- 
ing as  it  were  a  church  within  a  church,  —  the  generosity 
of  Trinity  Church  can  hardly  be  impugned,  even  if  it  is  not 
known  in  ecclesiastical  parlance  as  a  free  church.  Not  only 
so,  but  it  was  understood  between  the  rector  and  the  congre- 
gation that  at  an  early  moment  in  the  service  pews  not 
occupied  should  be  regarded  as  vacant,  to  be  placed  at  the 
disposal  of  the  stranger. 

These  things  were  making  their  impression  upon  the  peo- 
ple of  Boston  and  the  community  at  large,  changing  what 
had  been  a  long  and  deep-seated  prejudice  into  a  mood  of 
expectation  that  with  Phillips  Brooks  as  a  leader  there  was  a 
great  work  in  the  city  for  the  Episcopal  Church  to  accom- 
plish. Boston  was  the  city  of  the  Puritans,  their  chief  strong- 
hold, where  memories  were  long  and  traditions  tenacious. 
The  revival  of  the  study  of  American  history  was  bringing 


^T.  37-41]     NEW  TRINITY  CHURCH         143 

out  again  in  new  vividness  the  grievances,  real  or  fancied,  of 
the  time  of  the  Stuarts  and  the  age  of  the  Commonwealth. 
The  people  of  Boston  were  not  to  be  deceived  with  sounding 
phrases ;  they  were  quicker  than  most  people  to  get  at  the 
reality  of  things,  and  there  were  many  among  them  who 
disliked  or  mistrusted  the  Episcopal  Church.  They  did  not 
believe  that  anything  good  could  come  out  of  it.  It  seemed 
to  them  like  an  alien  church,  whose  spirit  was  hostile  to 
liberty  and  to  religious  freedom.  They  watched  its  bishops, 
thinking  that  they  detected  in  them  as  of  old  the  tendency 
of  ecclesiastical  power  to  beget  tyranny.  Its  services  seemed 
to  them  cold,  formal,  and  meagre,  inadequate  to  the  expres- 
sion of  human  sympathies  or  spiritual  aspirations.  These 
long-standing  prejudices  had  been  aggravated  by  the  ecclesias- 
tical reaction  which  followed  in  the  wake  of  the  Oxford 
Movement,  verifying  the  reasons  for  the  ancient  dislike  and 
dread  of  a  communion  which  was  now  seeking  for  fellowship 
with  Home,  and  had  learned  to  disown  the  Protestant 
churches  as  having  no  place  within  the  bounds  of  organic 
Christianity. 

It  was  the  work  of  Phillips  Brooks  in  Boston  and  through- 
out the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts  to  overcome  this 
dread  and  disarm  these  suspicions.  The  traces  of  his  influ- 
ence now  begin  to  be  manifest.  There  was  no  one  among 
the  descendants  of  the  Puritans  who  had  a  more  represent- 
ative estimate  of  the  situation  than  the  late  Rev,  Dr.  George 
E.  Ellis.  He  was  a  Unitarian  minister  retired  from  active 
service,  devoting  his  leisure  to  historical  reading  and  the 
writing  of  books,  at  a  later  time  to  become  the  honored  pre- 
sident of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  He  was  one  of 
those  who  went  to  the  Communion  in  Trinity  Church.  This 
letter  will  show  how  strongly  he  was  drawn  to  Mr.  Brooks  :  — 

110  Marlborough  Street,  February  10, 1877. 
My  dear  Mb.  Brooks,  — After  thoughtfully  digesting  the 
noble  and  appropriate  services  and  the  delightful  experiences  of 
yesterday  in  connection  with  the  consecration  of  Trinity  Church, 
I  feel  prompted  to  express  to  you  in  this  form  my  sincerest  con- 
gratulations on  the  fair  completion  of  an  undertaking  which  must 


144  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1873-77 

have  engaged  so  deeply  your  own  anxieties  and  interests.  It  has 
been  something  more  and  better  than  mere  curiosity  that  has  led 
me  almost  daily  to  watch  the  progress  of  a  critical  and  generous 
enterprise,  from  the  driving  of  the  first  pile  to  the  solemn  dedica- 
tion of  the  completed  sanctuary.  In  my  view,  the  distinctive 
character  of  your  congregation,  your  own  ministry,  and  the  pro- 
minent and  honored  position  which  you  represent  before  this  com- 
munity conserve  the  very  best  elements  of  religious  culture,  and 
of  a  spirit  of  Christian  comprehensiveness  and  liberality,  associ- 
ated in  my  thought  with  the  selectest  fellowship  of  the  class  of 
disciples  with  whom  I  have  been  most  intimately  connected ; 
while  at  the  same  time  the  original  deposit  of  the  faith  and  the 
fitness  of  its  dispensation  have  found  in  you  a  wiser  guardianship 
than  it  proved  to  have  with  the  so-called  Liberal  denomination  as 
a  whole.  So  I  would  venture  with  much  respect  to  assure  you 
that  I  am  heartily  interested  in  the  effective  work  which,  with 
such  modest  personal  unobtrusiveness  and  with  such  power,  you 
are  doing  among  us. 

And  I  must  recognize  with  a  hearty  appreciation  and  gratitude 
the  delightful  Christian  courtesy  shown  towards  all  the  miscella- 
neous company  of  ministers,  including  myself,  in  the  arrangement 
made  yesterday  for  our  participation  in  and  enjoyment  of  the 
seemly  and  impressive  services,  especially  the  Holy  Communion. 

With  sincerest  respect  and  regard,  I  am 

Very  truly  yours, 

George  E.  Ellis. 
Rev.  PmxLrps  Bbooks. 

The  following  comments  from  the  daily  newspapers  of 
Boston  are  not  quite  free  from  a  touch  of  severe  kindliness. 
There  is  a  tone  in  one  of  them,  at  least,  of  lingering  uncer- 
tainty ;  they  warn  while  they  praise  ;  but,  on  the  whole,  they 
are  constrained  to  trust  the  larger  hope  for  the  Episcopal 
Church.  As  for  Phillips  Brooks,  they  join  in  the  chorus  of 
unqualified  approbation.  The  first  extract  is  from  the  "  Bos- 
ton Globe,"  the  second  from  the  "  Daily  Advertiser  :  "  — 

The  Episcopal  Church  is  evidently  to  have  a  future  in  Boston, 
and  has  now,  at  least,  one  house  of  worship  to  which  all  can  point 
with  local  pride.  It  remains,  however,  to  be  seen  how  Bishop 
Paddock  and  his  coworkers  shall  develop  their  religious  body  as 
a  Christian  force  in  this  community.  If  this  Church  shall  largely 
show  forth  the  admirable  spirit  for  which  Phillips  Brooks  is  so 
well  known,  the  spirit  of  liberality  and  cordial  sympathy  toward 


^T.  37-41]     NEW  TRINITY  CHURCH         145 

all  Christian  people,  it  will  rapidly  gain  in  strength  and  numbers. 
To-day  this  purpose  appears  to  be  in  the  ascendant,  and  the 
result  is  a  cause  for  rejoicing  everywhere.  We  do  not  ask  Epis- 
copalians to  change  their  polity  or  their  doctrines,  but  as  a  con- 
servative Church  to  be  sympathetic,  generous,  and  noble  in  practi- 
cal work ;  and  it  is  because  the  ovation  of  yesterday  points  in  this 
direction  that  we  give  it  mention  here.  Not  the  least  interesting 
feature  of  the  services  yesterday  was  the  invited  presence  of  the 
pastors  of  nearly  all  the  leading  congregations  in  the  city.  The 
Episcopal  Church  lost  nothing  by  this,  and  the  whole  community 
gained  a  great  deal. 

The  dedication  of  Trinity  Church  to-day  is  an  occasion  of  inter- 
est to  many  more  than  those  who  will  participate  in  the  cere- 
monies, and  to  persons  who  do  not  belong  to  the  Episcopal 
Church  communion,  as  well  as  to  churchmen  and  churchwomen. 
In  the  first  place  the  parish  is  an  historic  one,  and  for  many 
generations  has  had  a  conspicuous  place  in  Boston's  annals.  In 
the  next  place  the  building  to  be  dedicated  ranks  as  one  of  the 
notable  ornaments  of  the  city.  .  .  .  Not  a  little  of  the  wide- 
spread interest  in  this  particular  parish  and  its  magnificent  house 
of  worship  is  owing  to  the  respect  and  affection  felt  for  its  elo- 
quent and  noble-hearted  pastor.  There  is  no  doubt  that  when- 
ever he  leads  the  worship,  whether  in  hall  or  cathedral,  he  will 
exert  a  liberal,  exalted,  and  powerful  influence  in  behalf  of  the 
highest  standards  of  Christian  living.  The  good  wishes  and 
sincere  prayers  of  a  multitude  which  no  church  could  contain  will 
ascend  with  the  words  of  solemn  dedication  to  be  uttered  within 
the  walls  of  the  beautiful  temple,  that  Trinity  and  Phillips  Brooks 
may  long  be  spared  to  Boston  and  to  mankind. 

So  Phillips  Brooks  took  his  place  as  in  a  cathedral,  where 
for  many  years  he  was  to  sway  the  people  with  an  hitherto 
unknown  power.  The  enthronement  of  an  ecclesiastical  digni- 
tary could  possess  no  deeper  significance.  He  seemed  now  to 
stand  at  the  height  of  his  renown.  He  had  other  conquests 
yet  to  achieve,  but  he  had  accomplished  the  most  difficult,  in 
some  respects  the  most  important,  of  them  all,  —  he  had 
made  the  conquest  of  Boston.  From  this  moment  his  friends 
watched  him  with  -a  feeling  of  pride  mingled  with  awe,  while 
he  continued  to  stride  forward  and  upward,  as  if  there  had 
been  placed  no  limit  to  his  power. 

VOL.  n. 


CHAPTER  VI 

1877-1879 

EXTRACTS  FROM  CORRESPONDENCE.  INVITATION  TO  PREACH 
FOR  MR.  MOODY.  SUMMER  ABROAD.  SERMON  AT  WEST- 
MINSTER ABBEY.  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY  CONFERS  THE 
DEGREE  OF  DOCTOR  OF  DIVINITY.  COMMENTS  ON  THE 
GENERAL  CONVENTION.  VISIT  OF  DEAN  STANLEY  TO 
AMERICA.  ILLNESS  AND  DEATH  OF  WILLIAM  GRAY 
BROOKS 

The  chief  event  in  the  year  1877  was  the  consecration  of 
Trinity  Church.  Next  to  it  in  importance  was  the  delivery, 
before  the  Divinity  School  of  Yale  University,  of  the  "  Lec- 
tures on  Preaching,"  which  will  be  referred  to  in  a  subse- 
quent chapter.  The  lectures  were  delivered  during  the  months 
of  January  and  February.  Before  entering  the  new  Trinity 
Church,  Mr.  Brooks  had  feared  that  his  voice  might  not  be 
found  sufficient  for  the  large  edifice,  but  the  first  trial 
demonstrated  that  the  fear  was  groundless.  There  were 
places  where  it  was  difficult  to  hear,  but  he  was  heard  as  well 
as  any  and  better  than  most  of  those  who  officiated  at  its 
consecration.^ 

Dr.  Tyng,  then  in  the  fifty-sixth  year  of  his  ministry,  an 
uncompromising  Evangelical  divine,  but  none  the  less  in  sym- 
pathy with  Phillips  Brooks,  wrote  to  him  on  his  return  to 
New  York  :  — 

^  In  his  Yale  Lectures  he  had  said  little  about  the  manner  of  delivering  a 
sermon,  but  his  one  reference  to  elocution  is  of  a  humorous  character:  "Of 
oratory  and  all  the  marvellous  mysterious  ways  of  those  who  teach  it,  I  dare  say 
nothing.  I  believe  in  the  true  elocution  teacher  as  I  believe  in  the  existence  of 
Halley's  comet,  which  comes  in  sight  of  this  earth  once  in  about  seventy-six 
years." 


^T.  41-43]  EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS        147 

St.  George's  Rectory,  New  York,  February  25,  1877. 
My  dear  Brother, — Two  weeks  ago  I  had  the  great  plea- 
sure of  being  with  you  in  your  new  and  grand  Church.  I  have 
desired  to  write  to  you  since  I  returned  home.  But  I  have  had 
a  busy  and  a  feeble  time.  The  impression  made  upon  me  by  all 
the  events  of  my  visit  has  been  very  absorbing.  Familiar  with 
the  time  when  the  Old  Church  was  in  the  midst  of  scattered 
houses,  and  large  gardens,  I  could  hardly  realize  the  prospect 
from  my  windows  as  possible.  Half  a  mile  out  in  the  sea,  I 
found  myself  in  the  midst  of  a  new  and  wonderful  city,  more 
grand  and  glorious  than  I  had  ever  dreamed  as  possible.  Boston 
has  thus  become  almost  unrivalled  as  a  City.  The  Churches  now 
in  this  new  place  are  marked  with  a  singular  grandeur  of  as- 
pect. But  the  glory  of  the  later  house  for  my  dear  old  parental 
Church  was  to  me,  perhaps,  the  chief  wonder  of  the  place.  I 
can  but  congratulate  you,  and  all  your  contemporaries,  over  the 
attainment  you  have  made  and  at  the  prospect  before  you.  In 
the  vast  liberality  of  their  action,  and  the  majestic  scale  on  which 
they  were  ready  to  record  it,  they  have  given  you  a  pledge  for 
great  results,  by  God's  blessing,  for  your  whole  succeeding  min- 
istry.   .    .   . 

Farewell.     Pax  Vobiscum, 

Stephen  H.  Tyng. 

Mr.  Brooks  responded  to  this  letter  in  a  spirit  of  reverence 
and  afPection  for  its  venerable  writer.  But  he  could  not  for- 
bear taking  exception  to  statements  made  by  Dr.  Tyng  in  a 
sermon  which  he  preached  in  the  new  church  shortly  after  its 
consecration.     To  the  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks  he  writes  :  — 

March  5,  1877. 

I  have  been  amused  at  the  way  in  which  the  New  York  clergy 
have  given  us  their  blessing  since  we  started.  Dr.  Tyng  preached 
for  us  on  the  afternoon  of  the  first  day,  and  told  us  that  nobody 
could  be  a  Christian  who  did  n't  believe  that  the  world  was  made 
in  six  literal  days.  The  Moses  up  in  the  New  Tower  laughed 
aloud  at  the  statement.  Yesterday  afternoon  Dr.  Morgan  of  St. 
Thomas's  in  your  town  turned  up  and  preached  an  orotund  dis- 
course which  had  quite  a  good  manly  flavor  to  it.  In  conse- 
quence of  his  appearance,  I  find  myself  the  surprised  possessor  of 
a  discourse  which  I  have  never  preached,  an  event  which  has  not 
occurred  before,  except  on  a  Saturday,  for  years.    .   .   . 

We  are  in  the  rush  of  Lent.     One  talks  until  he  is  tired  of  the 


J 


148  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1877-79 

sound  of  his  own  voice,  and  then  he  talks  some  more.  There  is  a 
good  healthy  religious  influence,  I  think,  and  underneath  our  little 
work  the  deep  thunder  of  the  Moody  movement  is  rolling  all  the 
time,  I  hear  nothing  from  Bristol,  but  have  no  doubt  your  Ordi- 
nation took  and  all  goes  well  there.* 

Boston,  March  Y,  1877. 
Dearest  Arthur,  — Queer  what  you  said  about  Hans  Sachs's 
poems.  I  had  sent  for  and  got  the  volume,  and  here  it  is  with 
some  of  the  jolliest  woodcuts  and  German  poetry,  which  is  pretty 
easy  to  make  out,  and  very  quaint.  Oh,  if  we  were  but  in  Nurem- 
berg, you  and  I,  to-day!  As  a  sort  of  variety  in  Lent  I  have 
begun  to  read  Miss  Martineau's  "Autobiography."  It  is  as  unlike 
a  Lent  lecture  as  possible.  The  calm  complacency  of  her  unbelief 
is  something  wonderful.  Just  here  Mother  came  in  to  see  me. 
The  first  visit  she  has  made  this  winter.  They  really  seem  likely 
to  break  up  and  go  to  Andover  this  spring,  I  am  talking  of 
taking  their  servants  and  setting  up  housekeeping  this  fall. 

The  allusion  to  the  work  in  Boston  of  Mr,  D.  L.  Moody, 
the  Evangelist,  recalls  the  circumstance  that  while  the  revival 
meetings  were  in  progress  Mr.  Moody  was  for  some  reason 
unable  to  preach,  and  Mr.  Brooks  was  invited  to  take  his 
place.  It  was  an  interesting  circumstance,  and  invested  with 
theological  curiosity,  that  an  Episcopal  clergyman,  the  rector 
of  Trinity  Church,  should  receive  such  an  invitation.  The 
Episcopal  Church  had  hitherto  shown  but  little  sympathy 
with  revivals.  Many  doubted  whether  Mr.  Brooks  was  suffi- 
ciently familiar  with  evangelistic  methods  to  meet  a  con- 
gregation drawn  together  by  Mr.  Moody's  earnestness  and 
eloquence.  But  he  was  invited  in  the  confidence  that  the 
thousands  who  were  flocking  nightly  to  the  tent,  or  Tabernacle 
as  it  was  called,  where  the  services  were  held  would  not  be 
disappointed  when  they  knew  of  the  change.  And  this  con- 
fidence was  not  misplaced.  It  was  an  event  in  the  history 
of  the  revival  that  Phillips  Brooks  had  taken  part  in  it. 

The  announcement  [said  one  of  the  Boston  papers]  that  the 
Rev.  Phillips  Brooks  was  to  preach  was  suflBcient  to  fill  the 
Tabernacle  to  its  utmost  capacity  last  evening.      On  no  occasion 

^  The  reference  is  to  the  Rev.  John  Cotton  Brooks,  who  after  his  ordination 
became  rector  of  St.  James's  Church,  Bristol,  Pa. 


^T.  41-43]  EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS      149 

has  there  been  a  larger  audience,  and  it  was  composed  of  a  much 
different  class  of  people  thaft  usually  gather.  The  regular  ser- 
vices were  opened  by  the  congregation  rising  and  singing,  "Just 
as  I  am  without  one  plea."  The  Rev.  W.  W.  Newton  of  St. 
Paul's  offered  prayer,  and  Mr,  Sankey  gave  the  notices  for  the 
week,  and  sang  "The  Ninety  and  Nine."  Mr.  Brooks  read  for 
the  Scripture  lesson  from  the  twenty-sixth  chapter  of  Acts. 
The  congregation  joined  in  singing  the  hymn,  "'Tis  the  promise 
of  God  full  salvation  to  give."  Mr.  Brooks  then  preached,  and 
the  services  closed  with  benediction. 

The  text  from  which  the  sermon  was  preached  was  the 
passage  from  St.  Paul  where  he  describes  his  conversion: 
"Whereupon,  O  King  Agrippa,  I  was  not  disobedient  unto 
the  heavenly  vision."  The  preacher  was  at  his  best  as  lie 
unfolded  the  text,  expounding  the  principle  of  conversion 
as  he  himself  had  experienced  it,  —  that  the  vision  must  come 
first,  to  be  followed  by  obedience,  when  the  sense  of  sin  would 
inevitably  ensue,  but  with  the  assurance  of  forgiveness.  He 
condemned  not  only  by  implication,  but  in  express  language, 
the  opposite  method  which  sought  first  to  produce  the  sense  of 
sin,  and  after  the  conviction  of  forgiveness  had  been  attained, 
held  out  the  prospect  of  the  heavenly  vision.  He  assumed 
throughout  that  religion  was  natural  to  man,  because  all  men 
were  by  creation  and  by  redemption  the  children  of  God. 
They  had  wandered ;  they  had  forgotten  or  neglected  or  were 
ignorant  of  their  birthright ;  but  when  the  vision  came,  it 
appealed  to  something  in  every  man's  constitution,  rousing 
within  him  the  dormant  faculties  of  a  divine  relationship. 

Dr.  Tyng  was  moved  when  he  heard  of  the  incident,  and 
wrote  to  Mr.  Brooks  this  letter :  — 

St.  George's  Rectoky,  New  York,  March  24, 1877. 
My  dear  Brother,  —  I  have  read  your  Sermon  at  the  Taber- 
nacle, as  reported  in  the  "Journal,"  and  I  am  grateful  for  the 
grace  which  enabled  you  to  do  the  thing  itself  in  the  midst  of  all 
the  prejudices  of  Boston,  and  then  to  do  it  so  skilfully  and  well, 
amidst  the  pressures  of  the  occasion.  I  have  always  united  with 
those  faithful  brethren,  because  I  have  believed  them  doing  God's 
work,  and  in  the  way  which  His  providence  had  planned.  In 
all  the  work  which  they  have  done  under  my  notice,  I  have  found 
much  to  praise,   much  to  be  thankful  for,  nothing  to  reprove- 


I50  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-79 

That  the  varied  shapes  of  denial,  which  modern  Anti- Evangelism 
has  adopted,  whether  the  pride  of  opinion,  or  the  vanity  of  posi- 
tion, or  the  veil  of  formalism,  or  the  working  of  mere  hatred  of 
truth,  should  combine  against  the  simplicity  of  Truth  as  these 
plain  men  present  it  could  not  surprise  me,  and  would  not  in  the 
least  move  me.  But  perhaps  there  is  no  place  where  authority 
so  much  opposes  Freedom  after  all  as  our  dear  Old  Boston.  The 
Cradle  of  Liberty  in  name,  but  at  the  same  time  the  nursery  of 
much  prejudice,  and  of  much  determination  that  no  one  shall 
violate  Boston  Notions,  whenever  they  become  popular.  That 
you  have  given  your  growing  influence  to  revival  movements  is 
to  me  and  to  many  a  call  for  much  thankfulness.  God,  even 
our  own  God,  will  bless  you  and  your  work.  I  rejoice  that  you 
were  not  disobedient  to  the  Heavenly  Vision.  It  is  a  curious 
fact  to  remember  how  many  have  received  a  heavenly  vision,  in 
Old  Trinity  in  years  gone  by,  when  there  was  but  little  Earthly, 
to  make  it  probable,  or  to  encourage  it,  when  appearing.  There 
was  always  there  an  undercurrent  of  real,  vital  religion.  It  was 
the  home  of  many  of  the  Lord's  hidden  ones.  Your  ministry 
is  the  New  Testament  upon  the  Old,  the  bringing  out  to  being 
and  view  the  things  which  were.  The  Gracious  Lord  bless  you 
in  it  all,  and  make  you  an  eminent  Caller  forth  of  his  hidden  ones 
to  open  light,  usefulness,  and  glory.  I  take  the  greatest  interest 
in  hearing  of  you,  and  am  always  glad  to  hear  from  you. 
Faithfully  yours, 

Stephen  H.  Ttng. 

It  had  now  been  three  years  since  Mr.  Brooks  had  known  a 
vacation  which  had  brought  him  rest  from  preaching.  In  the 
summer  of  1875  he  had  preached  at  Emmanuel  Church,  Bos- 
ton, and  in  the  summer  of  1876  at  Emmanuel  in  the  morning 
and  at  St.  Mark's  in  the  evening.  His  congregations  were 
composed  of  dwellers  in  the  city  who  could  not  leave,  and  of 
strangers  sojourning  or  passing  through,  who  availed  them- 
selves of  the  opportunity.  This  free  gift  of  himself  met  its 
full  appreciation,  and  was  part  of  the  larger  ministry,  whose 
fruits  would  be  manifest  in  due  time.  But  now  he  had 
resolved  upon  a  summer  abroad,  for,  though  he  does  not 
mention  it,  the  strain  had  been  long  and  severe.  When  his 
intention  was  known  to  the  people  of  Trinity  Church,  the 
following  unanimous  resolution  was  taken  at  a  meeting  of  the 
Proprietors  on  Easter  Monday :  — 


^.  41-43]  EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS       151 

On  Motion  of  Mr.  Winthrop,  it  was  Resolved:  "That  the 
Proprietors  of  Trinity  Church,  deeply  sensible  of  the  great  labors 
of  their  Rector  during  the  past  year,  and  of  the  invaluable  ser- 
vices which  he  has  rendered  to  the  Church,  desire  to  express  their 
cordial  concurrence  in  his  purpose  to  seek  rest  and  relaxation  in 
foreign  travel  during  the  approaching  summer,  and  that  the  sum 
of  Two  Thousand  dollars  be  appropriated  towards  defraying  the 
expenses  of  his  tour,  with  the  best  wishes  of  us  all  that  he  may 
enjoy  the  vacation  which  he  has  so  richly  earned,  and  return  to 
us  with  fresh  vigor  for  his  work. " 

While  in  London  Mr.  Brooks  saw  many  people  whom  he 
speaks  of  as  pleasant  and  civil.  General  Grant  was  then  in 
England,  of  whom  he  writes  as  the  great  sensation,  eclipsing 
all  other  Americans,  "  as  if  they  wondered  what  we  had  come 
for."  He  dined  at  the  American  Minister's,  and  met  the 
"great  warrior."  He  saw  much  of  Dean  Stanley  and  of  the 
English  clergy,  was  admitted  to  the  House  of  Lords  and  the 
House  of  Commons,  attended  the  Convocation  of  the  southern 
province,  listening  to  a  discussion  on  the  subject  of  the  con- 
fessional, which  ended  in  a  vote  by  a  large  majority  on  the 
Protestant  side.  He  carried  with  him  abroad  the  interests  of 
Trinity  Church.  To  the  late  Hon.  Robert  C.  Winthrop,  who 
was  also  in  England,  he  wrote  :  — 

London,  July  4, 1877. 

Dear  Mr.  Winthrop,  — I  must  write  you  a  few  words  to 
tell  you  how  much  I  enjoyed  my  little  visit  to  Groton  yesterday, 
and  how  much  I  thank  you  for  sending  me  there.  It  was  a 
delightful  day,  and  the  drive  from  Sudbury  to  Groton  was  very 
charming.  The  Rector  was  most  courteous  and  hospitable,  and  1 
saw  all  that  must  always  make  the  place  very  interesting  to 
Massachusetts  men,  I  congratulate  you  upon  this  window  in  the 
church  at  Groton.  It  was  looking  very  beautiful  yesterday.  The 
thick  glass  behind  it  seems  to  have  brought  it  to  just  the  right 
degree  of  brilliancy  and  color.  The  restoration  of  the  tomb 
seemed  to  me  also  to  have  been  thoroughly  well  done. 

My  glass  efforts  in  London  have  been  very  perplexing.  Clayton 
&  Bell  were  shamefully  behindhand,  and  yet  what  they  had  done 
seemed  to  me  even  better  than  the  window  already  in  the  Chancel. 
The  Lord's  Supper  window  is  almost  finished,  and  the  centre 
window  is  just  begun  in  glass  from  a  cartoon  which  I  like  exceed- 
ingly.    I  have  not  definitely  entrusted  the  other  four  windows  to 


152  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-79 

them,  but  I  have  no  doubt  that  I  shall  do  so  this  week.  I  leave 
for  the  Continent  next  Monday  (July  9).  My  only  hesitation 
is  in  the  matter  of  time.  They  promise  to  have  them  all  done  by 
next  Easter  or  Whitsunday  at  the  farthest,  but  we  know  what 
their  promises  are  worth.  But  I  am  sure  that  when  they  come 
they  will  be  thoroughly  good.  I  hope  that  the  Committee  will 
think  that  I  have  done  right.  I  called  at  Burlison  &  Grill's 
the  first  day  I  was  in  London,  but  found  they  had  just  sent  your 
window.  It  is  probably  in  its  place  before  this,  and  I  hope  it 
wholly  pleases  you.  They  had  some  beautiful  work  just  finished 
for  Lichfield  Cathedral,  and  I  hear  them  praised  everywhere. 

I  was  sorry  to  find  that  Lady  Rose  had  left  town.  She  wrote 
kindly,  asking  me  to  come  to  Henley-on-Thames,  but  I  was  not 
able  to  command  the  day.  I  saw  the  Archbishop,  who  asked  much 
of  you.  Dean  Stanley  is  sadly  changed  since  I  saw  him  last, 
and  the  Deanery  is  a  very  different  place.  I  have  promised  to 
preach  for  him  in  the  Abbey  on  Sunday  morning,  which  will  be  my 
only  preaching  away  from  Trinity.  I  beg  you  to  remember  me 
most  kindly  to  Mrs.  Winthrop,  and  I  am 

Most  faithfully  yours, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

On  Sunday,  July  8,  he  preached  for  the  second  time  at 
Westminster  Abbey.  There  was  no  complaint  of  his  not  being 
heard.  Canon  Farrar,  whose  acquaintance  he  now  made,  wrote 
to  him,  "  It  was  a  very  great  pleasure  to  me  to  resign  the 
Abbey  pulpit  to  you,  and  very  nobly  you  used  the  opportu- 
nity." Dean  Stanley,  who  was  present,  listened  with  delight 
to  a  doctrine  which  was  after  his  own  heart.  The  text  was 
from  Isaiah  Ix.  19 :  "  The  sun  shall  be  no  more  thy  light  by 
day ;  neither  for  brightness  shall  the  moon  give  light  unto 
thee  :  but  the  Lord  shall  be  unto  thee  an  everlasting  light, 
and  thy  God  thy  glory."  The  subject  was  "  The  Symbol  and 
the  Reality."  At  a  moment  when  the  symbolism  of  mediaeval 
ritual  was  urged  upon  the  modern  church  as  though  the  Pro- 
testant Reformation  had  been  mistaken  in  abandoning  it,  when 
it  was  argued  that  an  elaborate  and  gorgeous  symbolism  was 
a  necessity  of  the  religious  life,  the  conviction  was  growing 
stronger  in  the  mind  of  the  preacher  that  this  was  not  the 
method  which  brought  the  highest  result,  that  no  symbol  was 
doing  its  true  work  unless  it  was  educating  those  who  used  it 


^T.  41-43]  EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS      153 

to  do  without  it  if  need  be.  This  principle  was  applied  not 
only  to  religious  symbolism,  but  to  all  the  symbols  of  life. 
Everywhere  the  letter  stands  for  the  spirit,  and  to  give  up 
the  letter,  that  the  spirit  may  live  more  fully,  becomes  from 
time  to  time  the  absolute  necessity. 

After  a  few  weeks  in  England,  Mr.  Brooks  left  for  the  Con- 
tinent, going  first  to  Belgium  and  Holland,  then  up  the  Rhine, 
pausing  for  a  moment  in  Germany,  then  to  Italy,  Venice, 
Florence,  and  Milan,  and  finally  to  Switzerland.  While  he 
was  in  Holland  he  received  the  news  that  Harvard  University 
had  in  his  absence  conferred  upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Divinity.  On  the  diploma  which  was  sent  to  him 
it  read  that  the  degree  was  given  "  in  recognition  of  his  elo- 
quence as  a  preacher,  his  dignity  and  purity  of  life  as  a 
minister  of  religion,  and  his  liberality  and  large-mindedness 
as  a  man."  To  the  Rev.  James  P.  Franks  of  Salem,  who  first 
conveyed  him  the  news,  he  wrote  that  he  would  not  be  called 
Dr.  Brooks.  To  his  friends  and  parishioners,  and  to  people 
generally,  it  seemed  most  fitting  still  to  call  him  Mr.  Brooks, 
as  though  ecclesiastical  titles,  however  deserved,  somehow 
separated  them  from  the  man.  There  was  a  self-conscious 
smile  when  his  friends  ventured  to  address  him  as  Dr.  Brooks. 
Old  Bible  Hotel,  Amsterdam,  Sunday,  July  15,  1877. 

Dear  James,  —  You  are  a  jewel  of  a  fellow  to  write  me  that 
letter.  It  reached  me  as  I  was  dressing  myself  at  Brussels  the 
other  morning.  It  was  the  first  news  I  heard  of  the  honor  which 
Harvard  had  done  me.  I  was  surprised  at  it,  and  of  course  grati- 
fied. I  had  supposed  the  College  had  given  up  all  idea  of  making 
any  more  D.  D.  's,  and  especially  that  they  would  not  give  the 
degree  to  one  of  their  own  overseers.  But  as  they  have  thought 
good  to  do  it,  I  am  pleased  and  proud,  for  a  Cambridge  man 
thinks  that  there  are  no  honors  like  those  which  come  from  Cam- 
bridge. Only  I  won't  be  called  Dr.  Brooks,  and  you  may  stop 
that  for  me  when  and  where  you  can. 

How  I  wish  you  were  here  to-day,  sitting  this  morning,  looking 
out  with  me  on  this  muddy  Canal,  and  seeing  the  Dutchies  go  to 
Church.  It  is  very  odd  and  interesting.  We  would  go  off  some- 
where into  the  country  this  afternoon,  and  get  under  the  shadow 
of  a  windmill,  and  talk  about  all  sorts  of  things,  from  the  day  we 
first  met  in  Philadelphia  to  the  prospects  of  the  next  General 


154  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1877-79 

Convention.  Then  we  would  come  home  to  table  d'hote  and 
spend  the  evening  in  the  big  square  which  they  profanely  call  the 
"Dam,"  looking  at  the  people,  and  seeing  what  queer  things  they 
do.      But  that  mustn't  be.      You  are  in  Salem  and  preparing  to 

preach  the  gospel  to  S to-day.      I  honor  you,  and  I  am  glad  I 

am  not  in  your  place.  Last  Sunday  I  preached  for  Mr.  Stanley  at 
his  church  in  London,  and  William  and  I  were  much  in  the  little 
man's  company  while  we  were  in  his  town.  He  is  very  pleasant 
and  entertaining,  but  much  changed  since  his  wife's  death.  He 
has  grown  old,  and  seems  to  be  fighting  hard  to  keep  up  an  inter- 
est in  things.  The  usual  collection  of  Broad  Churchmen  was 
about  him,  and  convocation  was  sitting  in  Westminster  School 
almost  under  his  roof.  I  heard  a  long  debate  one  day  on  "The 
Priest  in  Absolution."  On  the  whole.  London  was  delightful  and 
I  was  glad  to  get  out  of  it  for  the  Continent,  as  I  always  am.  I 
investigated  all  the  Glass-makers,  and  found  some  very  interest- 
ing men  among  them. 

We  are  at  Holland  now,  and  all  this  week  we  shall  be  here. 
How  I  wish  you  were  here!  William  is  well  and  seems  to  enjoy 
it  all,  and  is  first-rate  company.  My  bestest  love  to  Sally  and 
the  babies,  and  come  and  see  me  in  September  at  175  Marlborough. 

Always  yours,  P.  B. 

Mr.  Brooks  returned  to  Boston  in  September  to  live  there 
henceforth  under  changed  conditions.  His  father  and  mother 
had  given  up  their  house  on  Hancock  Street,  and  had  gone  to 
North  Andover  to  reside  in  the  old  Phillips  homestead. 
Forty-four  years  had  elapsed  since  in  the  same  house,  to 
which  they  now  returned,  they  had  been  married  and  thence 
had  come  to  Boston,  establishing  themselves  in  the  first  home 
on  High  Street.  They  had  seen  six  boys  go  out  from  them 
into  the  world,  four  of  them  still  living,  and  now  that  the 
youngest  had  gone  from  home,  they  looked  to  North  Andover 
as  a  quiet  retreat  in  the  decline  of  life.  Mr.  Brooks  would 
gladly  have  had  them  come  to  live  with  him,  and  would  have 
made  any  arrangements  for  that  end ;  he  had  counted  upon 
it  as  his  pleasure  and  privilege,  but  the  parents  declined  to 
accept  such  an  invitation  from  him  or  any  of  the  other  sons. 
It  was  understood  in  the  family  that  it  was  not  possible.  The 
mother  refused  on  principle  any  such  invitation.  For  many 
years  Mr,  Brooks  had  kept  his  bachelor  quarters  in  boarding 


^T.  41-43]  EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS      155 

houses  and  hotels,  first  on  Mount  Vernon  Street,  and  then  at 
the  Hotel  Kempton  on  Berkeley  Street.  He  now  set  up 
housekeeping  for  the  first  time  at  No.  175  Marlborough  Street, 
taking  into  his  employment  the  servants  who  had  lived  with 
his  mother. 

Mr.  Brooks  had  returned  to  find  the  General  Convention 
of  the  Episcopal  Church  sitting  in  Boston,  but  was  unable  to 
attend  its  sessions  on  account  of  iUness,  —  what  was  called 
a  slow  fever,  which  confined  him  for  a  time  to  the  house.  He 
had  at  this  time  also  some  difficulty  in  walking,  owing,  it  may 
have  been,  to  his  increasing  weight.  These  were  not  favor- 
able conditions  for  judging  of  the  work  of  a  General  Conven- 
tion. 

"  Last  Sunday,"  he  writes,  "  I  had  three  bishops  in  Trinity, 
and  went  to  all  the  services,  and  by  night  was  saturated  with 
commonplace." 

175  Maklbobough  Stbbbt,  Boston,  October  8,  1877. 

Dear  old  Cooper,  — A  thousand  thanks  for  your  letter. 
Well,  I  am  home  again,  and  once  more  Europe  is  behind  my  back. 
I  had  a  royal  time,  and  lots  of  places  put  me  in  mind  of  our  sum- 
mer there  which,  after  all,  was  the  best  of  all.  Let 's  see  :  we 
drove  again  up  the  Inn  Valley  starting  from  Innsbruck  (where 
they  have  got  now  a  tremendous  new  hotel).  We  stopped  again 
at  Lancleck  and  Mais  and  Finstermimz,  and  such  an  afternoon 
and  night  as  we  had  at  Trafoi  you  never  saw.  It  is  the  most 
gorgeous  view  and  made  me  think  with  horror  of  what  was  hid 
from  us  on  that  rainy  afternoon  we  passed  there.  The  ride  up 
the  Stelvio  was  superb,  but  at  the  top  we  had  a  driving  snowstorm 
and  went  over  the  ridge  buttoned  up  to  the  chin  and  our  hands 
down  deep  in  our  pockets.  Then  down  to  Bormio  where  was  the 
bath,  and  then  by  Tirano  to  Lake  Como  and  Venice  and  Bologna 
and  Florence.  It  was  all  beautiful,  and  now  seems  like  the  same 
dream  that  those  journeys  always  do  when  they  are  over. 

We  had  a  quiet,  dull  voyage  home,  and  the  day  before  we  landed 
I  was  taken  with  what  the  Doctor  calls  a  slow  fever  which  has 
kept  me  a  good  deal  shut  up  ever  since.  It  is  the  slowest  fever 
that  ever  was  got  up.  The  seat  of  it  is  principally  in  the  back 
of  the  knees  which  give  way  when  you  have  walked  about  a 
square.  Altogether  it  is  an  attack  of  general  good-for-nothing- 
ness  which  I  am  tired  of,  and  which  I  am  glad  to  be  able  to  hope 
is  almost  over  now. 


156  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1877-79 

It  has  allowed  me  to  ignore  the  General  Convention  which  is 
going  on  in  as  miserable  and  useless  a  way  as  you  can  conceive. 
There  is  nothing  for  them  to  do,  and  they  are  trying  hard  to 
make  something  by  bringing  up  all  kinds  of  ridiculous  proposi- 
tions, I  was  glad  once  more  to  sign  the  petition  about  the  Bap- 
tismal service.  It  reminded  me  of  good  old  times,  and  I  hope 
we  shall  have  it  triannually  as  long  as  this  church  stands.  It 
never  will  be  granted  of  course. 

I  can't  come  on  in  November.  I  wish  I  could,  but  1  must  be  at 
work.  The  summer  and  the  sickness  and  the  Convention  together 
have  lost  me  so  much  time,  and  then  I  have  promised  to  go  to 
the  Congress  in  New  York.  I  hope  I  shall  meet  you  there,  for  I 
do  want  to  see  you  ever  so  much.  My  kindest  remembrances  to 
Mrs.  Cooper.      Don't  forget  me. 

Your  old  friend,  P.  B. 

To  Kev.  W.  N.  McVickar,  who  had  become  the  rector  of 
Holy  Trinity  Church  in  Philadelphia,  he  writes :  — 

October  17,  1877. 
Mt  dear  William,  — ...  I  had  a  splendid  summer  and 
hated  to  come  home.  I  always  do.  But  now  that  I  am  here  I 
am  reconciled,  for  is  n't  the  General  Convention  here,  and  doesn't 
it  bring  all  the  good  fellows  from  all  over  the  country  ?  You  and 
Cooper  are  the  only  men  I  want  to  see  that  I  have  n't  seen.  The 
thing  itself,  the  Convention,  is  as  funny  as  possible.  I  have  n't 
been  there  myself  for  I  have  been  sick,  but  I  hear  all  about  it,  and 
I  hope  you  read  your  "Daily  Churchman  "  before  you  go  to  bed. 
They  have  done  literally  nothing.  They  did  one  piece  of  busi- 
ness week  before  last,  and  cackled  over  it  all  about  town  like  a  hen 
over  her  eggs.  But  the  House  of  Bishops  the  next  week  sat  down 
on  it  and  vetoed  it,  and  so  they  have  really  and  literally  not  one 
thing  to  show.  So  they  talk  about  the  beautiful  harmony  that 
prevails.  .  .  .  And  they  swell,  O,  how  they  swell!  And  each 
"  swole  "  a  little  worse  than  the  one  before  him,  if  it  were  pos- 
sible, except  Bishop  "Williams.  He  is  an  old  jewel  and  talks  like 
a  sensible  man. 

The  admiration  of  Mr.  Brooks  for  the  late  Bishop  Wil- 
liams of  Connecticut  was  reciprocated.  Thus  Bishop 
Williams,  who  now  met  him  for  the  first  time,  writes  to 
him:  — 

I  am  not  speaking  empty  words,  but  true  ones,  when  I  say  to 
you,  that  for  myself  I  rejoice  in  the  meeting  at  Boston,  espe- 


^T.  41-43]  EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS      157 

cially  because  it  gave  me  the  opportunity  which  I  had  long  wished 
for  to  see  you.  I  have  very  deeply  felt,  and  I  think  appreciated, 
the  great  work  you  have  done  and  are  doing,  and  I  jiray  God 
may  long  be  spared  to  do  in  Boston.  And  I  have  greatly  wished 
to  take  you  by  the  hand  and  say  something  of  what  was  in  my 
heart.      I  am  very  thankful  for  the  opportunity. 

In  November  he  was  present  at  the  sessions  of  the  Church 
Congress  in  New  York,  and  on  his  return  he  writes :  — 

175  Marlborough  Street,  Boston,  November  7,  1877. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  I  am  glad  to  hear  that  my  coming  away  did 
no  serious  harm  to  the  Congress.  It  seems  to  have  gone  on  most 
swimmingly  to  the  end,  and  I  am  very  glad  I  came  and  thank 
you  most  truly  for  your  kind  welcome  and  hospitality.  I  was  all 
the  better  for  it,  and  am  now  quite  well.  Is  n't  it  good  to  have 
these  show  occasions  done  with  and  settle  down  into  the  steady 
pull  of  Parish  Life.  Last  Sunday  seemed  a  blessed  relief. 
There  was  nobody  to  be  civil  to  in  the  Vestry  Room,  and  you  could 
read  the  service  yourself  and  preach  the  Gospel  which  had  been 
bottled  up  all  the  time.  Now  there  is  a  clear  field  for  the  winter 
and  I  don't  mean  to  have  anybody  preach  for  me,  except  when 
you  come,  before  next  year.  ...  I  have  father  staying  with 
me  for  a  day  or  two.  He  came  down  to  vote  and  to  attend  the 
Historical  Society  to-morrow.  He  seems  capitally  well  and  goes 
out  prowling  around  the  town  in  his  old  fashion,  as  if  Marlbor- 
ough Street  were  quite  as  good  a  place  as  Hancock  Street  to 
start  from.  The  election  does  n't  look  well.^  Massachusetts 
has  gone  all  right,  but  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania, 
seem  to  be  all  wrong.  The  policy  is  right,  and  I  hope  they  will 
stick  to  it.  But  it  would  be  an  awful  thing  to  have  the  country 
thrown  into  the  hands  of  the  starved  Democrats  two  years  hence. 
But  I  suppose  it  is  a  case  of  "doing  right  though  the  heavens 
fall,"  about  as  clear  as  we  often  see. 

Have  you  read  the  new  "  Life  of  Sumner  "  ?  I  have  finished  one 
volume  of  it  and  found  it  interesting.  The  wonderful  reception 
that  he  had  in  England  and  the  sight  of  the  boyhood  of  these  men 
who  are  either  gone,  or  are  old  men  now,  are  very  attractive.  Then 
I  have  been  reading  Bowen's  new  book.^  I  had  forgotten  what  a 
queer,  familiar,  almost  jocose  style  he  has,  but  his  expositions  of 
the  systems  of  philosophy  are  certainly  very  clear,  though  one 
doubts  sometimes  whether  he  has  got  to  the  bottom  of  them. 

^  The  election  of  Hayes  for  President  when  Tilden  was  the  Democratic  can- 
didate. 
2  History  of  Philosophy. 


158  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-79 

In  December  there  was  a  visit  to  Philadelphia.  His  refer- 
ences to  it,  as  in  this  extract  from  a  letter  to  McVickar,  show 
that  his  heart  still  turned  to  it  with  a  yearning  affection  :  — 

December  13, 1877. 
Yes  I  am  coming  to  Philadelphia,  and  am  counting  upon  it  im- 
mensely. It  will  be  the  shortest  visit  possible,  but  then  it  will 
be  Philadelphia.  As  to  preaching,  you  must  speak  to  Charles  D. 
Cooper.  Anything  that  you  and  he  agree  on  I  will  do.  Only 
let 's  not  make  too  terrible  a  rush  of  it.  Of  course  the  pulpit  of 
Trinity  is  the  dearest  spot  on  earth  to  me,  —  in  other  words,  is 
home. 

The  occasion  which  took  him  to  Philadelphia  was  the  tenth 
anniversary  of  the  consecration  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Apostles,  of  which  Mr.  Cooper  was  rector.  When  Mr.  Cooper 
invited  him  to  come,  he  wrote  at  once :  "  Why,  of  course 
I  '11  come.  Do  you  think  I  would  let  the  friends  of  the  Holy 
Apostles  gather  and  I  not  be  there? "  The  visit  was  to  come 
soon  after  his  birthday.  This  letter  to  Miss  Meredith  of 
Philadelphia  strikes  the  usual  keynote  of  the  birthdays :  — 

December  18,  1877. 

Dear  Miss  Meredith, —  ...  It  seems  as  if  everything  out 
of  the  old  times  were  altered  so  and  things  whirl  on  so  fast  now, 
sickness  and  health,  trouble  and  pleasure  chasing  each  other 
quickly.  The  quiet,  smooth,  unbroken  life  is  all  gone.  This  is 
not  perhaps  less  happy,  but  "  the  time  is  short  "  seems  to  ring 
out  of  everything.  And  then  again  the  whole  of  things  seems  of 
so  much  more  consequence  and  the  details  of  things  of  so  much 
less  than  they  used  to.  I  wonder  if  everybody  gets  to  feel  so. 
I  was  forty-two  last  Thursday. 

But  I  am  coming  on  to  Philadelphia  next  month,  and  shall  at 
least  get  in  sight  of  the  old  times  again.  I  am  coming  for  the 
tenth  anniversary  of  the  Holy  Apostles !  Mr.  Cooper  has  sent  for 
me  to  revive  the  memory  of  the  day  when  we  begged  the  money 
together.  I  shall  have  but  a  day  in  the  good  town,  and  am  much 
afraid  that  I  shall  see  my  friends  only  from  the  pulpit. 

Mr.  — -■ —  is  a  curious  creature,  not  at  all  to  be  turned  ofE  in  a 
sentence;  full  of  learning,  with  a  strong  dash  of  genius  and  half 
crazy.  One  vision  of  him  in  a  city  where  he  is  not  known  must 
be  amazing  and  bewildering. 

A  happy  Christmas  to  you  all,  and  may  God  bless  you  always. 
Your  sincere  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 


^T.  41-43]  EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS      159 

The  work  in  his  parish  in  the  year  1878  went  on  as  usual. 
The  Lenten  services  grew  deeper  in  their  interest  and  power. 
His  Wednesday  evening  lectures  called  out  very  large  con- 
gregations. His  references  to  the  season  of  Lent  in  his  let- 
ters must  be  interpreted  as  meaning  that  he  put  his  whole 
soul  into  the  frequent  services,  but  did  not  care  that  any 
one  should  know  with  what  deep  feeling  and  with  what  la- 
borious study  he  prepared  himself  for  the  penitential  season. 
His  epistolary  references  to  it  are  in  contrast  with  the  note- 
books, with  the  earnestness  of  his  mood  stamped  upon  every 
page.  He  took  up  large  subjects,  in  courses  of  addresses 
which  called  for  thorough  and  comprehensive  study.  In  his 
Sunday  preaching  the  sermons  followed  each  other  on  the 
same  high  level.  He  did  not  write  many  letters,  and  these 
inclined  to  brevity.  He  writes  to  Mr.  Cooper,  February  8, 
1878  :  — 

Weir  Mitchell  has  been  here  curing  all  the  dilapidated  Bosto- 
nians.  His  coming  makes  a  great  sensation,  for  he  is  a  very  famous 
man.  I  felt  as  though  I  were  a  nerve  doctor  myself  with  all  the 
patients  that  swarmed  about  the  house. 

After  him  came  Dr.  Newton,  —  the  Rev.  Richard  Newton  of 
your  town.  He  stayed  with  Willie,  not  with  me,  and  seemed  to 
be  overcome  with  indignation  at  his  recreant  brother.  How  he 
does  pitch  into  him ! 

So  you  see  we  have  some  excitement  here.  But  on  the  whole 
Boston  is  dull,  and  nothing  but  the  endless  round  of  Church  work 
keeps  me  from  getting  stagnant.  I  think  I  have  never  been 
busier  about  that  since  I  was  in  the  ministry. 

He  asked  the  Proprietors  of  Trinity  Church  for  permission 
to  hold  free  evening  services  during  Lent,  and  the  request 
was  granted  unanimously  without  limit  of  time.  On  these 
occasions  the  great  church  was  filled.  He  made  an  exchange 
with  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks,  at  the  Church  of  the  Incarnation, 
New  York,  on  the  Sunday  after  Easter,  and  then  we  hear 
of  him  again  in  Philadelphia,  where  he  has  gone  for  the  visit 
to  Mr.  Cooper. 

175  Marlborough  Street,  Boston,  March  18,  1878. 

Dear  Arthur, —  .  .  .  Yesterday  was  a  queer  day.  In  the 
morning  I  got  Sankey  to  come  in  and  sing  to  our  Sunday-school 


i6o  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1877-79 

children.  He  made  a  little  speech  to  them  which  was  capital,  as 
simple  and  earnest  and  affectionate  as  possible,  and  then  he  sang 
"Ninety  and  Nine  "  execrably.    .    .    . 

Lent  is  moving  on  quietly  and  seriously.  Next  Sunday  is  our 
Confirmation  Day,  and  then  I  shall  be  easier.  I  have  never  held 
it  quite  so  early  before,  and  I  look  forward  with  much  pleasure  to 
the  weeks  of  Lent  which  will  still  remain  after  the  anxiety  o£ 
Confirmation  is  over.  Now  every  minute  of  every  week  is  busy 
as  has  been  the  case  for  these  seventeen  last  springs.  How  alike 
they  all  are,  and  yet  one  never  gets  tired  of  them.  I  hear  all 
sorts  of  questions  about  a  new  Church  paper  which  is  to  grow  up 
in  New  York.  Heber  has  written  to  Percy  and  to  others  about 
it.  I  am  afraid  that  you  and  I  will  die  without  seeing  what  we 
want,  and  the  last  number  of  "The  Churchman"  will  be  dropped 
into  our  graves.  The  "New  Church  Journal "  I  am  afraid  will 
not  be  very  interesting.  The  perpetual  symposium  business  will 
tire. 

Have  you  ever  seen  Chauncey  Wright's  "Life"?  Did  you  know 
him  in  Cambridge  ?  It  is  very  interesting,  I  think.  His  meta- 
physics are  pretty  steep  and  his  conclusions  often  pretty  bad.  .  .  . 
The  picture  of  a  quiet,  simple,  thoughtful,  unambitious  Cambridge 
life  is  rather  nice.    .    .    . 

Well,  after  Lent  we  must  have  a  meeting  somehow.  The  time 
and  place  will  be  given  on  small  bills.  I  see  as  little  now  of 
Father  and  Mother  or  of  John  as  I  do  of  you.  I  have  n't  been 
to  Andover  since  that  tremendous  Saturday  morning  when  you 
came  down  and  I  went  up,  and  I  have  n't  been  to  John's  at  all. 
He  was  up  at  the  Club  in  fine  spirits  and  seemed  to  like  the  "In- 
stitution," though  he  modestly  held  his  peace  at  his  first  meet- 
ing.   .    .    . 

He  congratulates  his  brother  on  a  proposed  trip  to  Europe, 
and  speaks  for  the  first  time  of  Rev.  Leighton  Parks,  who 
has  just  come  to  Boston  as  Dr.  Vinton's  successor :  — 

May  20,  1878. 

I  picture  to  myself  the  scene  behind  the  smokestack  of  the 
Bothnia  when  you  and  your  fellow  travellers  sit  around  your 
Bishop  and  he  tells  you  what  he  means  to  do  at  the  Pan.  Don't 
let  your  contempt  for  the  whole  affair  prevent  you  from  getting 
just  one  sight  of  walking  with  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury. That  surely  would  be  a  sight  worth  seeing.  I  am  going 
up  to  Andover  to-day  to  see  Father  and  Mother. 

I  find  the  great  Church  sensation  here  is  Parks  at  Emmanuel. 


^T.  41-43]  EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS      161 

He  is  impressing  people  very  much.  Dr.  Vinton  heard  him  yes- 
terday and  says  he  is  a  remarkable  fellow.  I  have  not  heard  him, 
but  called  on  him  the  other  day  and  found  him  bright,  intelligent, 
and  modest,  a  real  good  fellow.  He  is  a  Broad  Churchman 
steeped  in  Maurice  to  the  eyes. 

He  was  taking  an  interest  in  little  things,  snch  as  the  fur- 
nishing of  his  house,  at  a  time  when  antique  colonial  furniture 
was  the  fashion. 

To  Mr.  Cooper  he  writes  :  — 

May  25,  1878. 

Here  I  am  safe  at  home  again  with  all  the  fun  behind  me  and 
full  of  gratefulness  to  you  all  for  all  your  hospitality.  Every- 
thing was  very  delightful  at  the  good  old  town,  the  Breakfasts, 
and  the  Convention,  and  the  talks,  and  the  walks,  and  the  general 
smell  and  taste  of  good  old  times  that  was  about  the  whole. 
Boston  is  sadly  different.  I  feel  after  I  get  back  from  one  of 
my  visits  to  you  as  if  I  had  only  just  moved  here  and  were  a 
stranger  in  the  streets. 

The  clock  and  the  corner  cupboard  came  safely  and  are  both 
up  and  running  most  satisfactorily.  I  know  what  time  it  is  and 
what  day  of  the  month  and  of  the  week  and  of  the  moon.  If  it 
only  gave  the  Golden  Letter  and  the  Dominical  Number  and  the 
First  and  Second  Lessons  I  should  feel  entirely  set  up. 

In  June  he  was  present  at  the  centennial  of  Phillips 
Academy,  Andover,  of  which  he  writes  to  Arthur  Brooks, 
June  10,  1878  :  — 

Yes,  we  did  have  a  good  time.  I  do  not  know  when  I  have 
seen  a  big  display  go  off  so  well  throughout,  and  we  were  a  sort  of 
quiet  centre  to  the  whole  thing,  we  Phillipses,  around  which  it 
all  resolved.  We  had  the  glory  and  they  had  the  work;  and 
that  is  always  fun. 

It  was  very  pleasant,  too,  to  have  you  and  L here.      It  is 

not  often  now  that  all  four  of  us  boys  get  together  in  one  room 
as  we  did  here  in  my  study  the  other  night.  So  let  us  be  proud 
and  happy  for  the  way  the  whole  thing  was  done,  and  hope  for 
another  occasion  soon.    .    .    . 

He  went  soon  after  this  event  to  Phillips  Academy,  Exeter, 
to  deliver  the  address  to  the  graduating  class,  then  to  Vir- 
ginia, where  he  read  an  essay  on  "  The  Pulpit  and  Popular 
Skepticism."     Of  this  last  visit  he  writes,  July  9,  1878  :  — 

VOL.  n 


1 62  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-79 

I  went  down  into  Virginia  with  Jim,  We  visited  the  old 
Seminary  where  I  read  an  Essay  to  the  Alumni,  and  got  quite 
sentimental  about  old  times.  The  old  place  seemed  to  be  full  of 
life  and  turned  out  a  good  many  parsons  of  the  peculiar  Virginia 
kind  which  is  n't  a  bad  sort,  though  one  would  n't  want  a  whole 
church  made  up  of  them.  Then  we  went  down  to  the  Virginia 
Springs  in  the  Blue  Ridge,  where  we  passed  three  very  queer  and 
pleasant  days,  taking  much  sulphur  both  inside  and  out.  Mean- 
time the  heat  had  grown  to  be  something  awful  in  those  Northern 
parts,  but  down  where  we  were  everything  was  as  cool  and  delight- 
ful as  possible.  On  our  way  back  we  stopped  and  spent  two  days 
with  Willie  McVickar,  saw  lots  of  Cooper,  smoked  many  pipes, 
and  talked  the  whole  Church  over. 

He  took  a  house  at  Hingham  for  the  summer,  going  to 
Boston  every  Sunday  to  preach.  Of  the  life  at  Hingham  he 
writes  to  Mr.  Cooper  :  — 

August  3,  1878. 

I  never  had  such  a  profoundly  quiet  summer  as  I  am  having 
now.  I  am  here  in  a  queer  little  cottage  on  an  obscure  back  bay 
of  Boston  Harbor,  where  there  is  nothing  to  do,  or  at  least  where 
I  do  nothing,  no  sailing,  no  fishing,  no  riding,  no  walking. 
Nothing  in  the  world  but  plenty  of  books  and  time  and  tobacco. 
Nobody  to  talk  to  or  to  talk  to  me.  And  I  like  it  first-rate, 
almost  as  well  as  Heiligenblut  and  Bad  Gastein.  But  it  is  very 
different. 

The  only  thing  I  really  do  which  I  can  put  my  finger  on  is  to 
prepare  my  volume  of  sermons  which  is  coming  out  in  September. 
Every  day  some  jiroof  comes  down  which  I  have  to  correct  and 
send  back.  I  doubt  if  they  are  worth  publishing,  and  I  have  had 
a  hundred  minds  about  going  on  or  stopping  them,  but  I  am  in  for 
it  now,  and  will  send  you  a  copy  when  they  come  out.    .    .    . 

In  his  seclusion  at  Hingham,  he  wrote  often  to  his  brother 
Arthur,  in  Europe,  following  his  movements  with  the  sym- 
pathy of  an  old  traveller  :  — 

August  16,  1878. 

I  am  sure  you  will  have  a  delightful  summer,  and  we  shall 
follow  you  through  it  all  with  our  good  wishes.  It  is  about  the 
pleasantest  thing  that  people  can  do  in  this  fallen  world. 

I  don't  think  the  Pan- Anglican  troubled  you  much,  and  from 
all  accounts  it  won't  trouble  anybody  a  great  deal.  I  don't  hear 
of  anything  said  or  done  there  which  was  of  the  slightest  con- 
sequence.     And  it  gets  to  be  very  funny  when  in  General  Con- 


^T.  41-43]    EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS    163 

ventions  and  Pan  Synods  and  all  sorts  of  Assemblies  of  Ecclesias- 
tical people  the  one  thing  they  can  crow  over  when  the  meeting 
breaks  up  is  the  "perfect  harmony  "  of  it  all,  —  as  if  it  is  a  wonder 
to  sing  a  Te  Deum  over,  if  Churchmen  come  together  without  pull- 
ing each  other's  wigs  off  and  tearing  each  other's  eyes  out.  .  .  . 
No  doubt  you  saw  the  little  Dean,  who  is  well  I  hope,  but  who 
certainly  must  have  seemed  to  you  very  much  changed  from  when 
we  saw  him  in  '74.  .  .  .  Have  you  seen  Grant  anywhere?  The 
prospect  of  making  him  our  next  President  is  taking  shape  and 
soon  will  be  a  settled  thing.  All  the  European  tour,  with  its 
receptions  and  parade,  has  been  deliberately  planned  for  this. 
Ben  Butler  is  going  to  try  to  be  Governor  of  Massachusetts  this 
fall,  and  that  will  keep  things  lively  here.  There  has  been  a 
blackguard  named  Kearney  about  here  preaching  low  Irish  Com- 
munism, whom  Butler  has  taken  up,  and  made  an  ugly  mess.  But 
what  do  you  care  for  American  politics  when  you  are  looking  at 
the  Madonna  di  San  Sisto.  .  .  .  You  are  very  good  to  offer  to  do 
anything  for  me.  The  picture  which  I  saw  was  an  etching  from  a 
portrait  of  James  Martineau,  the  portrait,  I  think,  by  Watts.  1 
saw  it  in  Dr.  Peabody's  Study  and  liked  it,  and  should  like  to 
have  it,  but  don't  let  it  trouble  you. 

The  dread  of  an  impending  sorrow  was  hanging  over  Mr. 
Brooks  through  the  summer  in  consequence  of  the  illness  of 
his  father,  whose  health  was  steadily  declining.  He  invited 
both  his  parents  to  Hingham,  and  they  came,  but,  as  the 
change  was  not  beneficial,  they  soon  returned  to  Andover. 
Nothing  could  exceed  the  thoughtfulness  and  tender  devotion 
which  he  showed  in  the  now  changed  relationship,  —  when 
instead  of  the  father  watching  over  the  son  with  anxious 
affection,  it  was  his  privilege  to  care  for  both  father  and  mo- 
ther. He  sent  his  friend  Dr.  Lyman  to  Andover,  in  the 
hope  that  the  best  medical  skill  and  experience  might  be  of 
some  avail.  He  wrote  every  week  to  his  brother  abroad 
giving  an  account  of  his  father's  condition.  He  wrote  often 
to  his  mother  to  encourage  her  ;  he  sent  everything  that  his 
ingenious  thoughtfulness  could  devise  which  would  cheer  or 
help  the  invalid  in  his  weakness,  who,  although  he  continued 
feeble,  and  evidently  would  never  again  be  stronger,  yet  was 
cheerful  and  happy  on  the  whole,  with  only  occasional  moods 
of  discouragement. 


i64  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1877-79 

The  summer  passed,  and  September  brought  an  event  of 
the  highest  interest  to  Mr.  Brooks  as  well  as  to  people 
throughout  the  country,  —  the  visit  of  Dean  Stanley  to  Amer- 
ica. No  Englishman  ever  came  whose  presence  called  forth 
more  enthusiasm,  nor  did  any  one  realize  until  he  came  how 
deep  and  widespread  was  the  feeling  which  prompted  the 
people  out  of  pure  gratitude  to  express  their  sense  of  indebt- 
edness in  every  form  which  could  do  him  honor.  It  was  one 
of  the  important  days  in  the  history  of  Trinity  Church  when, 
on  Sunday,  the  22d  of  September,  he  stood  in  its  pulpit, 
and,  with  his  keen  perception  of  the  romance  of  history  and 
the  picturesque  quality  inhering  in  representative  occasions, 
treated  the  moment  as  a  meeting  of  the  East  with  the  West. 
The  sermon  which  he  preached  was  afterward  printed,  and 
the  manuscript  given  to  Mr.  Brooks,  who  preserved  it  among 
the  things  that  he  valued.  The  visit  to  Boston  came  to  an 
end  with  a  breakfast  given  to  the  Dean  by  Mr.  Brooks,  at 
the  Hotel  Brunswick,  when  the  clergy  of  Boston  and  vicinity 
had  the  opportunity  to  hear  his  pathetic  words  before  he  left 
the  country. 

A  visit  to  Gambler,  Ohio,  which  Mr.  Brooks  had  projected 
as  a  holiday  after  the  summer's  preaching,  was  prevented  by 
his  father's  illness.  To  the  Rev.  George  A.  Strong  he 
wrote :  — 

175  Mablborough  Street,  Boston,  Saturday,  October  5,  1878. 
Dear  George,  —  My  Father  is  very  ill.  He  has  been  failing 
for  a  long  time,  but  there  has  seemed  to  be  every  probability  that 
it  would  go  on  slowly,  and  that  the  end 'was  far  away.  But  day 
before  yesterday  there  came  a  change  which  has  left  him  so  that 
every  day  we  are  compelled  to  look  for  what  may  not  come  for 
months.  But  I  am  afraid  his  death  is  very  near.  His  mind  is 
failing  rapidly,  and  every  day  seems  to  draw  the  veil  a  little  closer 
between  us  and  any  possible  communication  with  him.  I  suppose 
it  is  paralysis,  though  there  has  been  no  recognizable  shock,  only 
a  gradual  benumbing  of  mind  and  body. 

The  year  as  it  came  to  an  end  found  him  in  the  midst  of 
many  occupations,  of  which  the  most  laborious  was  the  prepa- 
ration of  the  Bohlen  Lectures,  to  be  given  in  Philadelphia. 
But  he  found  time  for  loving  attentions  to  his  father.     The 


^T.  41-43]     DEATH  OF  HIS  FATHER         165 

thought  of  his  father  was  uj)permost  in  his  mind,  infusing 
into  his  work  a  new  consecration :  — 

175  Mari^orough  Street,  Boston,  December  7, 1878. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  ...  I  wish  I  was  coming  on  to  see  you  as 
you  so  kindly  ask  me  to  do.  We  would  walk  and  talk  and  look 
at  pictures,  and  I  'd  smoke  and  pei-haps  we  'd  go  and  see  some  of 
the  brethren.  But  it  mustn't  be.  This  is  the  time  to  work. 
"Wednesday  Evening  services  and  Parish  Visitings  and  Sunday 
Sermons  and  Christmas  Carollings,  and  all  these  things  chase  one 
another  too  fast  for  one  to  get  in  a  visit  to  New  York  between 
them.  So  I  've  written  to  the  New  England  Society  that  I  cannot 
help  them  eat  their  dinner,  and  to  the  Christian  Young  Women 
that  I  cannot  associate  with  them.  The  Mexican  League  I 
haven't  heard  from,  but  I  should  have  to  give  them  (or  It)  the 
same  sort  of  an  answer. 

I  have  just  begun  to  write  the  Bohlen  Lectures  which  are  to 
come  off  in  Philadelphia  some  time  before  Ash  Wednesday.  They 
are  a  fearful  invasion  of  the  legitimate  and  regular  work  of  the 
ministry,  and  the  longer  I  am  a  Parson  the  less  I  think  I  like 
special  work,  the  more  I  like  to  keep  down  to  the  steady  hum- 
drum of  the  Parish  Mill.    .    .    . 

I  was  at  Andover  last  week.  It  happened  to  be  rather  a  had 
day  with  Father  and  he  was  a  little  more  blue  and  helpless  than 
usual,  but  on  the  whole  I  think  he  remains  about  the  same.  Mo- 
ther is  well,  and  seems  to  keep  up  her  spirits  wonderfully.  I  feel 
now  as  if  Father  very  possibly  might  go  through  the  winter  about 
as  he  is  now,  unless  some  sudden  shock  or  cold  should  come. 

P. 

The  experience  which  he  had  long  been  dreading,  whose 
import  to  himself  he  had  been  sounding  in  advance,  came  on 
January  7,  1879.  On  the  evening  of  the  day  of  his  father's 
funeral,  which  took  place  at  Trinity  Church,  he  wrote  to  his 
mother.  Other  letters  that  follow  call  for  no  comment. 
They  tell  the  story  in  its  simple  and  natural  pathos. 

175  Marlborough  Street,  Bostok,  Thursday  evening, 
January  9,  1879. 

Dear  Mother,  —  I  am  thinking  about  you  so  much  to-night 
that  I  must  write  you  a  little  after  all,  though  I  said  I  should 
not.  Lizzie  will  have  told  you  how  simply  and  fitly  everything 
was  done  to-day,  and  it  must  surely  be  some  satisfaction  to  us  all 
to  know  how  everybody's  heart  is  full  of  honor  for  dear  Father. 


1 66  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-79 

His  body  was  borne  into  the  church  by  his  old  friends,  Mr. 
Winthrop,  Mr.  Deane,  Mr.  Robert  Mason,  and  Dr.  George  Ellis. 
Dr.  Vinton  read  the  service  with  the  deepest  feeling.  I  have  not 
seen  him  except  to  get  a  pressure  of  the  hand  as  we  came  out  of 
the  church.  He  is  staying  at  Mr.  Snelling's  where  he  will  have 
the  best  of  care  and  will  not  suffer  from  his  kind-hearted  excur- 
sion. At  Mount  Auburn  everything  was  done  just  exactly  as  you 
wished.  As  we  left  they  were  just  going  to  strew  the  branches 
on  the  grave.  The  two  evergreen  crosses  hung  above  the  graves 
of  George  and  Frederick,  and  the  faithful  custodian  promised 
that  this  new  precious  grave  should  have  the  most  sacred  care. 
William  and  Arthur  and  John  and  James  and  I  went  out,  and 
Edward  Brooks  followed  in  a  carriage  by  himself.  Chardon 
Brooks  and  Charles  Francis  Adams  were  in  the  pew  directly 
behind  us.  There  were  a  multitude  of  other  people  in  the  church 
whom  I  did  not  see. 

All  this  is  pleasant  to  all  of  us,  but  it  is  nothing  beside  the 
thought  of  the  new  life  which  Father  has  begun,  and  which  never 
can  be  broken.  When  we  remember  his  weakness  and  restlessness 
a  week  ago,  and  then  think  of  the  perfect  peace  and  joy  and 
knowledge  that  he  is  enjoying  now,  it  is  not  so  hard  to  bear  it  all 
and  even  to  be  thankful.  It  was  a  noble,  faithful,  useful  life 
here,  and  now  he  is  with  Christ.  It  will  not  be  long  before  we 
are  with  him.  Let  us  try  to  be  brave  and  wait  as  he  would  want 
us  to  do. 

My  dearest  mother,  you  do  not  know  how  much  you  are  to  us, 
nor  'how  we  all  long  to  have  you  rest  upon  us,  and  let  us  help  and 
comfort  you  and  make  you  happy. 

May  God  help  us  all  to  live  as  faithfully  and  die  as  peacefully 
as  dear  Father  has. 

Your  loving  son,  Phillips. 

Boston,  January  11,  1879. 

Dear  old  Cooper,  —  You  are  a  good  kind  fellow  to  write  to 
me  about  Father  and  to  speak  of  him  so  kindly.  He  was  one  of 
the  simplest,  truest,  healthiest,  and  happiest  natures  that  God  ever 
made.  All  his  life  long  was  a  perpetual  delight  in  common 
things  and  a  quiet,  faithful  doing  of  the  duties  that  some  men 
make  a  fuss  about,  as  if  they  were  the  most  natural  things  in  the 
world  and  everybody  did  them.  His  religion  was  as  simple  as  all 
the  rest  of  his  life,  always  flowing  on  serenely,  as  if  to  be  a  reli- 
gious man  and  to  love  God  and  trust  Him  were  not  an  exceptional 
and  hard  thing,  but  as  true  a  part  of  human  life  as  breathing. 
And  at  the  last  he  grew  simpler  and  sweeter  as  his  strength  faded 


^T.  41-43]     DEATH  OF  HIS  FATHER  167 

away,  and  died  at  last  with  calm  dignity  such  as  only  a  child  or 
a  strong  man  can  have.  But  we  shall  miss  him  dreadfully. 
Life  will  never  he  again  what  it  has  been  all  these  years  with  him 
behind  us.  And  poor  mother  wanders  about  looking  for  some 
one  to  be  anxious  about  and  to  take  care  of,  and  finding  it  a 
dreadful  pain  that  her  last  anxiety  is  over,  and  that  she  has  only 
to  rest  in  peace  till  her  happiness  comes. 

Yes,  I  shall  come  in  February  and  lecture.  The  lectures  are 
poor  enough  for  they  were  written  in  the  midst  of  all  this  derange- 
ment and  distress,  but  I  shall  fulfil  my  engagement,  and  I  shall 
see  lots  of  you,  old  fellow.  I  promised  McVickar  long  ago  to 
stay  with  him  on  this  official  visit,  but  I  shall  see  you  all  the 
time,  and  I  am  counting  on  it  more  than  ever  now.  My  love  to 
Mrs.  Cooper,  and  I  am 

Always  yours,  P.  B. 

175  Mablborough  Street,  Boston,  January  18,  1879. 

Oh,  my  dear  George,  how  I  wish  I  was  in  Gambler  to-night  and 

sitting  with  you  and  M in  front  of  your  fire,  and  talking  over 

all  these  things  which  it  is  so  unsatisfactory  to  write  about. 
First,  I  want  to  thank  you  for  your  last  letter  about  Father.  I 
have  been  feeling  all  these  last  ten  days  as  I  know  thousands  of 
men  have  felt  before  me  when  their  fathers  have  died,  but  feel- 
ing it  just  as  freshly  as  if  I  were  the  first  man  that  ever  went 
through  it,  and  with  the  strong  belief  that  no  father  ever  was  to 
his  boys  just  what  ours  has  been  to  us.  He  was  so  bright  and 
happy  and  simple  and  strong  through  all  the  long  years  while  our 
lives  revolved  around  his,  and  in  these  last  years  while  he  has 
been  failing  and  we  have  had  the  privilege  that  we  could  do 
something  for  him,  he  has  been  so  sweet  and  gentle  and  childlike 
and  so  full  of  happiness  in  his  constantly  narrowing  life.  And 
at  last  he  lay  down  and  died  with  the  same  quiet  dignity  with 
which  he  had  lived.  There  is  nothing  that  is  not  good  to  remem- 
ber. It  was  as  healthy  and  true  a  life  as  ever  was  seen,  and  now 
I  miss  him  as  I  never  dreamed  that  I  could  miss  anybody,  and  it 
will  be  so  to  the  end,  I  know.  You  knew  him  a  little.  He  always 
felt  that  my  friends  were  his  friends,  and  so  he  always  talked  of 
you  as  if  he  knew  you  well.  I  know  that  he  would  have  been 
glad  to  think  that  even  so  far  away,  and  with  so  slight  a  recollec- 
tion of  him,  you  would  care  something  for  his  death.  And  I 
should  have  felt  more  cast  adrift  than  I  do  now  if  I  had  not  had 
your  words  of  sympathy.  It  sounds  very  stupid  and  cold  to  say 
that  I  thank  you,  but  I  love  you  more  than  ever. 

I  am  sorry  for  all  the  mishap  about  New  Bedford.      No  mat- 


1 68  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-79 

ter;  perhaps  something  else  may  turn  up  soon  and  may  be  better 
managed.  I  want  you  somewhere  here,  and  somehow  feel  more 
than  ever  now  that,  as  our  private  circles  grow  thinner  and  thinner, 
it  would  be  good  if  we  could  each  draw  a  little  more  together  and 
end  our  ministries,  when  the  time  for  it  must  come,  in  something 
of  the  same  snug  and  pleasant  group  in  which  they  began.  All 
we  can  do  is  to  be  upon  the  watch  in  case  that  any  chance  of  such 
a  welcome  thing  turns  up. 

I  am  glad  that  you  welcomed  Casaubon.  He  was  selected  with 
a  little  more  discrimination  than  usual,  for  I  had  just  been  reading 
his  life  myself,  and  had  been  charmed  not  so  much  with  him  as 
with  the  Book,  i  hope  that  you  will  like  it  when  you  read  it. 
...  I  have  been  lame  all  winter  with  a  queer  weakness  of  the 
knee,  which  the  Doctor  don't  seem  to  understand.  It  probably 
is  rebelling  at  the  amount  it  has  to  carry.      But  it  is  about  well 

now.      Give  my  best  love  to  M ,  and  I  am  always. 

Yours,  P.  B. 

February  5,  1879. 

Dear  Paddock,  —  A  thousand  thanks  for  your  kind  and 
thoughtful  letter.  I  have  always  felt  as  if  you  knew  Father  from 
the  memory  of  the  old  meeting  twenty  years  ago  at  Alexandria, 
and  from  knowing  how  you  had  met  him  occasionally  here  since 
then.  What  you  saw  him  at  those  times  he  always  was,  simjjle, 
cordial,  affectionate,  and  full  of  a  desire  that  everybody  should  be 
happy.  Underneath  this  there  was  a  quiet  strength  and  integrity 
and  a  true  Chi'istian  faith,  which  made  his  presence  one  of  the 
healthiest  atmospheres  for  a  lot  of  boys  to  grow  up  in.  And  now 
that  he  is  gone  I  can  thank  God  heartily  for  all  that  he  was  and 
all  that  he  is. 

But  it  makes  life  a  different  thing.  It  makes  the  world  seem 
at  first  very  empty.  And  it  makes  it  all  the  more  to  seem  not 
sad  when  one  looks  forward  to  his  own  going.  But  meanwhile  it 
makes  one  cling  all  the  more  to  old  friends.  And  I  am  full  of 
gratitude  that  you  should  think  of  me.  You  are  a  true,  kind 
friend,  and  have  been  for  these  more  than  twenty  years.  God 
bless  you.  Always  yours,  P.  B. 

Boston,  February  11,  1879. 

Dear  Mother,  —  I  have  hoped  to  come  and  have  another 
pleasant  evening  with  you  this  week,  before  my  departure  for 
Philadelphia,  which  comes  next  Monday.  But  one  by  one  I  have 
had  to  strike  off  my  evenings  for  engagements  which  I  could  not 
escape,  and  now  they  are  all  gone  and  I  must  not  hope  to  see  you 


^T.  41-43]     DEATH  OF  HIS  FATHER         169 

until  I  get  home  again.  I  am  very  sorry,  for  I  enjoy  my  little 
runs  to  Andover  better  than  anything  that  I  do  now,  and  two 
weeks  seems  to  be  a  long  time  to  wait,  but  it  will  pass  and  I  shall 
come  to  you  as  soon  as  I  possibly  can  after  I  get  home.  I  hope 
that  you  are  all  well  and  will  keep  so,  for  we  are  all  thinking 
about  you  all  the  time,  and  by  and  by  we  hope  to  have  you  with 
us  here  in  Boston,  and  in  the  scattered  places  where  the  Brooks 
boys  live.      So  take  the  best  care  of  yourself  for  our  sakes. 

I  send  you  the  remarks  of  Mr.  Winthrop  about  dear  Father, 
which  he  made  at  the  Historical  Society  on  the  day  of  the  Funeral. 
By  and  by  there  will  be  a  longer  tribute  in  their  published  volume. 
But  I  thought  you  would  like  to  see  this  now.  It  is  good  to 
know  how  he  is  valued.  Almost  every  day  some  of  his  old  friends 
tell  me  of  their  respect  for  him,  and  of  how  he  is  missed  in  the  old 
places  where  he  lived  so  long. 

I  send  you  also  Dr.  Stone's  letter  which  I  believe  you  have  not 
seen.  It  is  just  like  him.  Can  you  send  me  within  a  day  or  two 
the  name  and  full  address  of  the  minister  at  North  Andover  who 
held  the  service  at  the  house  ?  I  should  like  to  write  to  him 
before  I  go  away.  ...  A  little  letter  from  John  about  the  visit 
that  I  am  going  to  make  him  in  Lent  to  preach  for  him  on  the 
13th  of  March.  He  is  in  the  full  tide  of  prosperity  and  happi- 
ness. I  shall  not  see  either  him  or  Arthur  on  my  journey  to 
Philadelphia  or  on  my  way  home,  for  I  shall  be  hurried  through 
each  way.  But  I  shall  try  to  visit  both  of  them  after  Easter. 
Perhaps  you  will  go  with  me.  I  am  awfully  disappointed  that  I 
cannot  come  up,  but  I  must  bear  it.  Give  my  love  to  Aunt  Susan 
and  Aunt  Caroline  and  Aunt  Blossom. 

Always  affectionately,  Phillips. 

To  this  letter  his  mother  replied  :  — 

North  Andover,  Febniary  12,  1879. 

My  dear  Phillips,  —  Your  kind  and  loving  letter  deserves 
a  letter  in  return,  and  miserable  as  it  will  be,  I  am  going  to 
write  you  one.  I  sometimes  think  I  '11  write  and  then  thoughts 
of  Father  come  over  me,  and  I  am  too  sick  at  heart  to  attempt  it. 

But  I  want  to  write  to  you  to-day,  for  I  am  overpowered  with 
all  the  marks  of  love  you  show  me,  and  I  want  to  tell  you  how 
much  I  appreciate  it.  But  oh,  I  feel  so  unworthy  of  it  all  that 
it  surprises  me  that  you  can  care  so  much  for  me.  Now  you  must 
not  say  as  you  always  do,  "  Oh,  how  humble  you  are, "  for  I  really 
feel  it  all.  Believe  me,  dear  Phillips,  I  am  as  sorry  as  you  are 
that  you  can't  come  up  this  week,  for  I  do  enjoy  your  visits,  but 
I  have  not  expected  it,  for  I  know  you  must  be  overpowered  with 


lyo  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-79 

•work  all  the  time,  and  have  no  time  to  spare,  for  you  are  in  your 
husiest  season  now.  But  I  shall  dwell  on  the  pleasure  of  your 
promised  visit  after  your  return  from  Philadelphia. 

I  hope  you  will  enjoy  your  little  trip,  and  that  it  will  rest  your 
mind  and  body,  for  both  must  need  rest.  Do  enjoy  all  you  can, 
and  sleep  all  you  can,  for  I  consider  that  sleep  is  our  greatest 
earthly  blessing. 

I  thank  you  for  sending  me  Mr.  Winthrop's  notice  of  dear 
Father.  I  am  glad  his  friends  do  him  honor;  he  deserves  it  all. 
Also  I  thank  you  for  Dr.  Stone's  letter;  it  is  a  comfort  to  me;  he 
was  Father's  first  minister  in  the  Episcopal  Church,  and  he  always 
admired  him. 

I  am  very  sorry  to  see  by  the  paper  the  instant  death  of 
Governor  Gardner's  son  in  Colorado,  by  a  snow  slide.  How  it 
makes  me  think  of  our  poor  Frederick's  sudden  death!  Do  you 
remember  that  Tuesday  of  this  week  was  the  anniversary  of  dear 
George's  death,  sixteen  years  ago !  How  I  long  for  them  all. 
But  I  thank  God  that  he  has  spared  me  so  many  loving  ones. 

Now,  dear  Philly,  please  don't  feel  anxious  about  me  while  you 
are  gone.  I  am  very  well  and  very  comfortably  situated,  near  to 
the  Aunts'  rooms,  who  are  untiring  in  their  kindness  to  me,  night 
and  day,  and  when  their  time  of  trouble  comes  I  hope  I  shall  be 
all  ready  to  serve  and  comfort  them. 

I  wish  I  could  sew  on  some  buttons  or  do  something  to  help  you 
before  you  go.  Be  sure  I  shall  think  of  you  a  great  deal  in  your 
absence;  perhaps  you  will  answer  this  letter  while  you  are  gone. 

Good-by,  and  with  many  thanks  for  all  your  goodness  and 
tenderness  to  me,  remember  I  am  always  your  fond  and  loving 

Mother. 

Among  the  tributes  to  the  memory  of  William  Gray 
Brooks  was  one  from  Dr.  Vinton,  who  was  moved  as  he  re- 
called the  history  of  the  family  with  which  he  had  been  closely 
associated.     He  writes  to  Mrs.  Brooks,  at  North  Andover :  — 

The  solemn  service  to  which  I  was  called  last  week  at  Trinity 
Church  brought  you  to  my  mind  with  an  affectionate  sadness,  and 
awakened  all  the  associations  which  began  with  my  rectorship  at 
St.  Paul's  Church  and  have  continued  ever  since  with  some  of 
your  family.  I  recall  your  anxiety  for  Mr.  Brooks's  religious 
state,  and  how  God  answered  your  prayers  for  him.  I  remember, 
too,  our  many  conversations  about  your  children,  and  how  again 
your  prayers  were  met  by  seeing  them  all  turn  to  Christ,  and  I  have 
often  thought  that  you  ought  to  be  the  happiest  of  Mothers.    .    .    . 


^T.  41-43]     DEATH  OF  HIS  FATHER         171 

At  the  first  meeting  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society  held  after  the  death  of  their  colleague,  words  of 
grateful  appreciation  were  spoken  in  behalf  of  the  society. 
They  are  full  of  meaning,  for  they  are  describing  qualities 
which  reappeared  in  the  son,  with  only  this  difference,  —  an 
adventitious  one,  to  which  the  son  attached  no  importance, 
—  that  he  had  filled  no  exalted  public  station. 

The  president  of  the  society,  the  Hon.  Robert  C.  Win- 
throp,  said,  in  announcing  the  death :  — 

I  cannot  fail  to  make  the  earliest  mention  of  the  loss  which 
comes  nearest  to  us  and  to  allude  first  to  the  death  of  our  esteemed 
and  respected  friend  and  associate,  William  Gray  Brooks,  Esq., 
a  gentleman  to  whom  we  were  all  warmly  attached,  and  whose 
companionship  and  hearty  cooperation  in  our  work  have  been  so 
highly  valued  by  us  all.  Indeed  I  may  say  that  we  have  had  but 
few  more  attentive  or  more  useful  members  during  the  seventeen 
or  eighteen  years  since  he  was  elected.  No  one  certainly  has 
taken  a  warmer  interest  in  our  welfare,  or  rendered  us  more  sub- 
stantial services.  As  repeatedly  a  member  of  our  Standing  Com- 
mittee, and  occasionally  its  Chairman,  and  especially  as  a  leading 
member  of  the  committee  to  which  our  building  was  entrusted 
during  the  process  of  its  reconstruction,  Mr.  Brooks  was  ever 
most  diligent  and  devoted.  I  know  not  how  we  should  have  gone 
through  with  that  protracted  and  often  perplexing  process  without 
his  practical  wisdom  and  his  faithful  and  untiring  supervision. 

Always  prompt  and  punctual  at  our  meetings,  as  long  as  his 
health  permitted  him  to  attend  them,  he  took  also  an  intelligent 
and  eager  interest  in  our  historical  proceedings,  and  from  time  to 
time  made  important  communications  on  genealogical  or  histori- 
cal topics.  Tracing  back  his  ancestry  to  the  famous  minister  of 
old  Boston  and  of  new  Boston,  — John  Cotton,  and  immediately 
connected  with  families  which  have  given  so  many  eminent  men 
both  to  the  ministry  and  to  the  magistracy  of  New  England,  his 
mind  was  naturally  turned  to  inquiries  and  investigations  which 
might  aid  in  the  just  commemoration  of  these  local  worthies,  and 
our  records  bear  frequent  evidence  of  his  success. 

The  Rev.  Robert  C.  Waterston  added  these  discriminating 
words :  — 

He  was  gentle  and  unassuming,  scrupulously  true  to  the  practi- 
cal duties  of  life;  his  courtesy  of  manner,  generosity  of  heart, 
and  integrity  of  purpose  won  for  him  universal  respect  and  love. 


172  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-79 

He  seemed  never  to  be  troubled  by  that  restless  ambition  which 
desires  to  make  itself  prominent.  Cheerfully  he  pursued  the  even 
tenor  of  his  way,  satisfied  with  being  a  kind  neighbor,  an  upright 
citizen,  a  trustworthy  and  honorable  man.  His  sound  sense  and 
clear  judgment  gave  value  to  his  counsel.  There  was  nothing 
morbid  in  his  nature,  and  no  tendency  to  unreasonable  impulse  or 
exaggeration.  Calm  and  considerate,  his  words  carried  with  them 
a  proportionate  weight.  Consistent  in  his  actions,  what  he  did 
he  was  not  obliged  to  undo.  In  his  business  he  had  no  passion 
for  unlimited  accumulation  of  wealth.  A  reasonable  competency 
satisfied  his  desire.  He  was  generous;  but  what  he  imparted  he 
sought  to  distribute  so  that  it  should  result,  as  far  as  was  possible, 
in  permanent  good.  In  his  charities  he  shrank  from  an  appear- 
ance of  display.  Whatever  tended  to  promote  the  public  wel- 
fare found  in  him  an  earnest  response ;  and,  in  carrying  forward 
plans  of  general  enterprise,  according  to  his  means,  he  was  ready 
at  all  times  to  do  his  part. 

But  there  was  yet  a  higher  tribute  which  the  son  was  to 
pay  to  his  father,  when  in  the  human  relationship  he  saw  the 
medium  of  the  divine  revelation.  Such  had  been  the  earthly 
father's  life  that  to  the  son  it  bore  witness  to  the  nature  of 
and  the  evidence  for  the  Fatherhood  of  God.  In  the  year 
before  his  father  died,  Phillips  Brooks  was  speaking  to  the 
students  of  the  Yale  Divinity  School  on  the  best  method  of 
teaching  religion,  or  the  relationship  between  God  and  man 
which  constituted  religion  :  — 

It  is  merely  the  completion,  the  transfiguration  of  that  which 
we  can  see  in  any  healthy  family.  .  .  .  For  myself,  every  year 
that  I  have  preached,  that  sight,  the  child  and  the  father  in  their 
deepest  relationship  to  one  another,  has  grown  an  ever  clearer 
and  richer  revelation  of  the  mystery  of  man  and  God.  In  it  I 
find  the  clearest  exhibition  of  the  highest  and  most  comprehensive 
thought  of  duty,  which  is  loving  obedience  including  in  itself  the 
power  and  effect  of  education. 

At  the  time  of  his  father's  death  he  was  preparing  his 
Bohlen  Lectures  on  "  The  Influence  of  Jesus."  It  was  while 
his  bereavement  was  still  fresh  that  he  wrote  these  words,  in 
illustration  of  the  central  theme  of  his  book,  —  Jesus  as 
revealing  the  Fatherhood  of  God :  — 

Beyond  all  analysis  lies  the  relation  which  every  true  son  holds 


^T.  41-43]     DEATH  OF  HIS  FATHER         173 

to  a  true  father.  It  is  a  final  fact.  You  cannot  dissolve  it  in 
any  abstract  theory.  It  issues  from  the  mysterious  sympathy  of 
the  two  lives,  one  of  which  gave  birth  to  the  other.  It  has  rip- 
ened and  mellowed  through  all  the  rich  intercourse  of  dependent 
childhood  and  imitative  youth  and  sympathetic  manhood.  It  is 
an  eternal  fact.  Death  cannot  destroy  it.  The  grown-up  man 
feels  his  father's  life  beating  from  beyond  the  grave,  and  is  sure 
that  in  his  own  eternity  the  child  relation  to  that  life  will  be  in 
some  mysterious  and  perfect  way  resumed  and  glorified,  that  he 
will  be  something  to  that  dear  life  and  it  to  him  forever.  All 
this  remains.  .  .  .  The  joy  and  pain,  all  the  richness  and  pathos 
of  his  home  life,  while  they  keep  their  freshness  and  peculiar 
sanctity,  have  in  them  and  below  them  all  the  multitudinous  hap- 
piness and  sorrow  of  the  larger  life  in  the  great  household  of  the 
world.  The  child  feels  something  of  this  truth  by  instinct. 
The  thoughtful  man  delights  to  realize  it  more  and  more  as  he 
grows  older  (pp.  184,  185). 


CHAPTER  VII 

1877-1878 

LECTURES  ON  PREACHING.  FIRST  VOLUME  OF  SERMONS. 
THE  TEACHING  OF  RELIGION.  THE  PULPIT  AND  POPU- 
LAR  SKEPTICISM 

The  narrative  of  the  first  ten  years  of  the  ministry  of 
Phillips  Brooks  in  Boston,  which  has  now  been  given,  will 
serve  to  confirm  the  impression  of  a  change  or  difference  when 
compared  with  that  of  his  ministry  in  Philadelphia.  What, 
we  may  ask,  had  become  of  that  intense  mysterious  force, 
evoked  by  the  war,  by  which  he  rose  even  above  the  high  level 
of  his  work  as  a  preacher  ?  What  is  there  in  these  years  that 
corresponds  with  his  wonderful  power  as  a  platform  speaker 
or  public  orator  when  he  was  advocating  reforms  whose  neces- 
sity stirred  the  lowest  deeps  of  his  soul  ?  That  passionate 
vehemence  had  not,  like  some  transient  flame,  been  extin- 
guished, but  transmuted  into  some  other  manifestation  of 
power.  These  years  whose  record  has  been  traced  are  quiet 
years  compared  with  what  went  before  or  what  came  after- 
wards, —  a  time  of  silent  preparation,  of  study,  and  of  inward 
ferment,  of  which  but  little  evidence  is  apparent  in  his  letters. 
But,  as  has  been  so  often  remarked,  the  traces  of  his  work  are 
concealed.  We  must  then  turn  to  his  published  writings, 
which  now  began  to  multiply,  wherein  will  be  seen  the  man 
in  other  aspects,  in  new  phases  of  his  personality.  They  will 
show  that  he  had  been  concentrating  his  mind  on  the  study 
of  his  age,  and  on  the  message  which  that  strange  and  troubled 
world  was  demanding. 

It  was  in  the  early  part  of  the  year  1877,  when  the  build- 
ing committee  of  Trinity  Church  were  making  strenuous 
efforts  to  hasten  its  completion,  that  Phillips  Brooks  went  to 


MT.  41-42]    LECTURES  ON  PREACHING    175 

New  Haven  to  deliver  his  lectures  on  Preaching  before 
the  students  of  the  Yale  Divinity  School.  It  was  a  time  of 
unusual  excitement  for  his  parish  and  for  himself  when  he 
was  writing  the  lectures,  an  excitement  and  enthusiasm 
which  culminated  in  their  delivery.  So  deeply  was  he  moved 
that  for  some  reason  he  could  not  bear  to  make  the  journeys 
to  New  Haven  alone,  and  took  with  him  one  of  his  relatives. 
The  event  stirred  him  the  more  deeply  because  for  the  first  time 
he  was  unveiling  his  own  personal  experience,  as  he  had  felt 
compelled  to  review  it  when  he  sought  to  explain  the  secret 
and  power  which  made  the  pulpit  effective.  The  greatest 
charm  of  the  Yale  Lectures,  from  a  literary  point  of  view,  is 
that  they  constitute  the  autobiography  of  Phillips  Brooks,  — 
the  confessions  of  a  great  preacher.  The  book  is  personal 
throughout ;  he  speaks  often  of  himself  freely  in  the  first  per- 
son, and  at  other  times  veils  the  revelation.  Always  he  is 
giving  the  result  of  his  own  reflection  and  observation  of  life. 
It  is  a  book  which  owes  nothing  to  predecessors  in  the  same 
field,  of  which  there  are  many.  He  confines  himself  to  preach- 
ing as  he  had  experienced  its  workings,  or  studied  its  method, 
or  observed  its  power.  In  this  review  of  his  life  he  went 
back  to  his  days  at  the  Virginia  seminary. 

I  can  remember  how,  before  I  began  to  preach,  every  book  I 
read  seemed  to  spring  into  a  sermon.  It  seemed  as  if  one  could 
read  nothing  without  sitting  down  instantly  and  turning  it  into  a 
discourse.  But  as  I  began  and  went  on  preaching,  the  sermons 
that  came  of  special  books  became  less  and  less  satisfactory  and 
more  and  more  rare.  Some  truth  which  one  has  long  known, 
stirred  to  peculiar  activity  by  something  that  has  happened  or 
by  contact  with  some  other  mind,  makes  the  best  sermon 
(p.  159). 

He  recalls  how  he  had  come  very  early  to  the  conclusion 
that  what  was  desired  in  the  ministry,  as  the  condition  of 
effective  preaching,  was  the  combination  of  learning  and  in- 
tellectual force  with  the  capacity  for  devout  and  deep  and 
intense  feeling.  "  In  many  respects  an  ignorant  clergy,  how- 
ever pious  it  may  be,  is  worse  than  none  at  all "  (p.  45). 
He  was  wont  to  say  that  he  had  not  worked  as  hard  as  he 


176  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

should  have  done  in  college,  but  he  did  not  make  this  admis- 
sion regarding  his  time  in  the  theological  seminary. 

Most  men  begin  really  to  study  when  they  enter  on  the  prepa- 
ration for  their  profession.  Men  whose  college  life,  with  its  gen- 
eral culture,  has  been  very  idle,  begin  to  work  when,  at  the  door 
of  the  professional  school,  the  work  of  their  life  comes  before 
them.  It  is  the  way  in  which  a  bird  who  has  been  whirling 
vaguely  hither  and  thither  sees  at  last  its  home  in  the  distance 
and  flies  toward  it  like  an  arrow  (p.  43). 

He  speaks  of  the  first  sermon  which  he  preached,  "  which 
it  was  at  once  such  a  terror  and  such  a  joy  to  preach."  As 
he  compares  the  earlier  with  the  later  sermons,  he  finds  sen- 
tences written  years  ago,  containing  meanings  and  views  of 
truth  which  he  perceives  in  them  now,  but  had  not  seen  in  those 
early  days.  The  truth  was  there,  but  he  had  not  fully  appro- 
priated it.  It  has  been  shown  that  he  had  no  taste  or  capac- 
ity for  mere  abstract  ideas  apart  from  their  concrete  rela- 
tionships. So  far  as  he  studied  philosophies,  metaphysical 
systems  or  their  history,  it  was  to  catch  their  bearing  on  the 
practical  issues  of  life.  Ideas  moved  him  as  they  did  because 
and  only  in  so  far  as  he  could  trace  this  connection. 

The  disposition  to  watch  ideas  in  their  working,  and  to  talk 
about  their  relations  and  their  influence  on  one  another,  simply 
as  problems  in  which  the  mind  may  find  pleasure  without  an 
entrance  of  the  soul  into  the  ideas  themselves,  this,  which  is  the 
critical  tendency,  invades  the  pulpit,  and  the  result  is  an  immense 
amount  of  preaching  which  must  be  called  preaching  about  Christ 
as  distinct  from  preaching  Christ.  There  are  many  preachers 
who  seem  to  do  nothing  else ;  always  discussing  Christianity  as  a 
problem,  instead  of  announcing  Christianity  as  a  message  and 
proclaiming  Christ  as  a  Saviour.  .  .  .  It  is  good  to  be  a  Herschel 
who  describes  the  sun ;  but  it  is  better  to  be  a  Prometheus  who 
brings  the  sun's  fire  to  the  earth  (p.  20). 

Here  is  a  passage  which  is  the  climax  of  self -revelation. 
He  veils  himself,  it  is  true,  to  a  certain  extent,  and  puts  what 
he  has  to  say  in  impersonal  form,  but  the  description  corre- 
sponds to  no  one  but  himself  :  — 

There  is  something  beautiful  to  me  in  the  way  in  which  the 
utterance  of  the  best  part  of  a  man's  own  life,   its  essence,  its 


^T.  41-4^]    LECTURES  ON  PREACHING    177 

result,  which  the  pulpit  makes  possible  and  even  tempts,  is  wel- 
comed by  many  men,  who  seem  to  find  all  other  utterance  of 
themselves  impossible.  I  have  known  shy,  reserved  men  who, 
standing  in  their  pulpits,  have  drawn  back  before  a  thousand  eyes 
veils  that  were  sacredly  closed  when  only  one  friend's  eyes  could 
see.  You  might  talk  with  them  a  hundred  times,  and  you  would 
not  learn  so  much  of  what  they  were  as  if  you  once  heard  them 
preach.  It  was  partly  the  impersonality  of  the  great  congrega- 
tion. Humanity,  without  the  offence  of  individuality,  stood 
there  before  them.  It  was  no  violation  of  their  loyalty  to  them- 
selves to  tell  their  secret  to  mankind.  It  was  a  man  who  silenced 
thfem.  But  also,  besides  this,  it  was,  I  think,  that  the  sight  of 
many  waiting  faces  set  free  in  them  a  new,  clear  knowledge  of 
what  their  truth,  or  secret  was,  unsnarled  it  from  the  petty  cir- 
cumstances into  which  it  had  been  entangled,  called  it  first  into 
clear  consciousness,  and  then  tempted  it  into  utterance  with  an 
authority  which  they  did  not  recognize  in  an  individual  curiosity 
demanding  the  details  of  their  life.  Our  race,  represented  in  a 
great  assembly,  has  more  authority  and  more  beguilement  for 
many  of  us  than  a  single  man,  however  near  he  may  be.  And  he 
who  is  silent  before  the  interviewer,  pours  out  the  very  depth  of 
his  soul  to  the  great  multitude.  He  will  not  print  his  diary  for 
the  world  to  read,  but  he  will  tell  his  fellow  men  what  Christ  may 
be  to  them,  so  that  they  shall  see,  as  God  sees,  what  Christ  has 
been  to  him  (pp.  121,  122). 

The  "  Lectures  on  Preaching "  possess  a  further  literary 
charm  because  they  connect  the  pulpit  with  life,  and  with  the 
^highest,  richest  manifestations  of  life.  The  book  took  its 
place  as  an  important  contribution  to  literature,  apart  from 
its  value  as  a  treatise  on  homiletics.  It  abounds  with  literary 
allusions  and  illustrations  new  and  effective,  showing  at  once 
the  scholar  and  the  man  widely  read  in  the  world's  best  books. 
The  work  that  he  had  done  in  the  Virginia  seminary,  as 
seen  in  the  note-books  that  he  had  kept,  is  constantly  re- 
appearing. The  movement  is  rapid  ;  there  is  no  lingering  by 
the  way  ;  every  page  is  full  of  condensed  purpose.  There  is 
nothing  artificial,  no  posing  for  effect;  but  plainness  and 
great  directness  of  speech,  perfect  naturalness  and  simplicity. 
The  book  captivates  the  reader,  simply  for  this  reason  alone, 
—  the  transparency  of  the  soul  of  its  writer,  between  whom 
and  the  reader  there  intervenes  no  barrier.     And  further  it 

VOL.  u 


lyS  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

is  redolent  with  happiness  and  hope  for  the  world,  as  if 
at  last  the  new  day  had  dawned  for  humanity,  and  mankind 
might  enter  on  its  heritage,  long  promised  and  seen  from 
afar,  but  now  ready  to  be  ushered  in.  It  set  the  standard 
high,  yet  it  did  not  discourage  ;  it  rather  stimulated,  begetting 
an  enthusiasm  which  overrode  all  obstacles.  It  abounded  in 
sentences  which  linger  in  the  mind,  —  the  perfection  of  expres- 
sion in  words. 

There  must  be  a  man  behind  every  sermon. 

The  intercourse  with  God  in  history. 

The  intelligent  speculations  of  the  learned  become  the  vague 
prejudices  of  the  vulgar. 

The  real  power  of  your  oratory  must  be  your  own  intelligent 
delight  in  what  you  are  doing. 

You  grow  so  familiar  with  the  theory  of  repentance  that  it  is 
hard  for  you  to  know  that  you  have  not  yourself  repented. 

If  you  could  make  all  men  think  alike,  it  would  be  very  much 
as  if  no  man  thought  at  all,  as  when  the  whole  earth  moves  to- 
gether all  things  seem  still. 

To  be  dead  in  earnest  is  to  be  eloquent. 

The  personal  interest  of  the  preacher  is  the  buoyant  air  that 
fills  the  mass  and  lifts  it. 

The  sermon  is  truth  and  man  together.  ,  It  is  the  truth  brought 
through  the  man. 

The  temptation  from  being  messengers  to  be  witnesses  of  the 
faith. 

Say  nothing  which  you  do  not  believe  to  be  true,  because  you 
think  it  may  be  helpful.  Keep  back  nothing  which  you  know  to 
be  true  because  you  think  it  may  be  harmful. 

This  value  of  the  human  soul  is  something  more  than  a  mere 
sense  of  the  soul's  danger.  It  is  a  deliberate  estimate  set  upon 
man's  spiritual  nature  in  view  of  its  possibilities. 

Never  allow  yourself  to  feel  equal  to  your  work.  If  you  ever 
find  that  spirit  growing  on  you,  try  to  preach  on  your  most  exact- 
ing theme,  to  show  yourself  how  unequal  to  it  you  are. 

Pray  for  and  work  for  fulness  of  life  above  everything;  full 
red  blood  in  the  body;  full  honesty  and  truth  in  the  mind;  and 
the  fulness  of  a  grateful  love  for  the  Saviour  in  your  heart. 

Success  is  always  sure  to  bring  humility.  "  Recognition, "  said 
Hawthorne, "makes  a  man  very  modest." 

In  addition  to  their  literary  merit,  or  their  value  as  the  con- 
fessions of  a  soul  speaking  to  men  but  always  speaking  before 


^T.  41-42]    LECTURES  ON  PREACHING     179 

God,  the  "  Lectures  on  Preaching  "  have  another  significance 
in  the  assertion  of  theological  or  religious  principles  never 
quite  so  emphatically  uttered  before.  The  leading  idea  is  that 
truth  and  moral  eJBficiency  in  the  will  are  contagious,  and  pass 
from  man  to  man  through  the  medium  of  personality.  Per- 
sonality is  defined  as  a  conscious  relationship  to  God,  which 
through  the  spirit  of  obedience  to  the  divine  will  unfolds  and 
expands  all  human  powers  and  brings  out  the  revelation 
of  man.  The  subject  had  been  before  his  mind  from  the 
moment  he  turned  his  thought  to  the  ministry.  He  had  asked 
himself  at  once  the  leading  question,  how  the  power  which 
existed  in  abundance  was  to  be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  will 
so  as  to  issue  in  conduct.  So  early  as  1862,  in  an  address 
before  the  Evangelical  Educational  Society,  he  gave  the  an- 
swer, —  training  for  the  ministry  meant  the  development  of 
personal  power,  which  as  an  agency  for  moral  regeneration 
was  mightier  than  any  other,  as  bringing  the  power  of  God  to 
bear  directly  on  human  souls.  He  took  up  the  same  subject 
when  he  went  to  Providence  in  1865,  to  give  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  Oration  at  Brown  University.  His  subject  was  "  The 
Personality  of  the  Scholar."  On  both  these  occasions  we 
know  from  contemporary  testimony  that  he  was  listened  to 
with  absorbing  attention,  and  the  atmosphere  was  full  of 
the  magnetism  of  his  presence  as  he  expounded  his  vision, 
that  all  which  the  minister  or  the  scholar  knows  or  loves  must 
go  out  with  him  into  all  his  life.  If  personal  character  were 
thus  sought  for  the  service  of  humanity,  then  the  world  would 
be  uplifted  to  a  higher  plane,  and  belief  in  human  progress 
would  rest  upon  sure  foundations,,  for  it  would  be  nothing  else 
than  belief  in  God.  With  this  same  message  he  had  gone  to 
the  dedication  of  the  Bradford  Academy  in  1870,  and  to  the 
students  of  the  Andover  Theological  Seminary  in  1874.  What 
he  said  was  received  as  new  truth,  so  vividly  did  he  feel  his 
force  and  urge  it  with  such  effect  upon  those  who  listened. 
His  eloquence  was  at  the  highest  point  when  he  touched 
upon  this  theme.  Thus  his  motive  had  for  years  been  slowly 
accumulating  in  momentum  when  he  went  to  Yale  in  1877, 
to  deliver  his  lectures  on  Preaching. 


i8o  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1877-78 

How  far  was  his  doctrine  new  ?  Can  it  be  called  the  con- 
tribution of  some  important  discovery  to  the  cause  of  religious 
progress  ?  In  one  sense  the  issue  was  as  old  as  the  history  of 
the  Christian  church.  It  was  what  the  Roman  mind  was 
thinking  of  when  it  devised  the  theory  of  apostolic  succes- 
sion, that  power  was  handed  down  in  the  church  by  verbal 
commission  from  apostles  to  their  successors.  It  came  up 
again  when  the  question  was  broached  whether  purity  of 
character  was  an  indispensable  requisite  in  administering  the 
sacred  rites,  or  whether  the  power  which  had  been  imparted 
in  ordination  was  sufficient  for  their  validity.  It  haunted 
the  Middle  Ages  as  a  disturbing  theory  at  a  time  when  it 
was  the  prevailing  opinion  that  the  power  given  in  ordination 
was  sufficient  whatever  the  character  of  the  officiating  priest. 
It  was  the  issue  which  underlay  the  rise  of  the  papacy,  that 
disobedience  to  the  papal  will  was  a  moral  defect  which  viti- 
ated ecclesiastical  acts.  When  the  spiritual  enthusiasm  of  the 
first  age  of  the  Protestant  Reformation  was  declining  the  old 
issue  turned  up  again  in  new  form,  —  whether  it  were  neces- 
sary that  a  preacher  should  have  felt  the  power  of  the  truth 
he  proclaimed  in  order  to  make  it  effective  by  his  preaching. 
It  constituted  the  weakness  of  the  eighteenth  century,  —  the 
tacit  assumption  that  character  had  little  connection  with 
the  work  of  a  Christian  preacher.  It  was  characteristic  of 
the  Evangelical  Awakening  that  it  called  for  conversion  in 
those  who  should  minister  to  the  salvation  of  others.  But 
in  the  homiletic  method  of  the  time,  the  conversion  of  the 
preacher  was  mainly  important  as  securing  the  presentation 
from  the  pidpit  of  the  pure  gospel,  thus  constituting  an  occa- 
sion of  which  God  might  avail  himself  in  acting  on  the  souls 
of  the  hearers. 

When  we  review  the  history  of  this  issue  with  which  Phil- 
lips Brooks  was  now  concerned,  it  is  evident  that  he  had 
penetrated  directly  to  the  heart  of  the  difficulty  which  had 
beset  the  ages.  His  book  on  Preaching  would  not  have  been 
the  event  it  was  for  arousing  a  new  life  in  the  churches  if  it 
had  not  been  that  he  placed  his  finger  upon  the  sensitive  spot 
in  the  body  ecclesiastic,  and  pointed  out  the  remedy.     No 


^T.  41-42]    LECTURES  ON  PREACHING     i8i 

such  utterance  had  been  heard  before  because  the  principle 
he  now  asserted  was  placed  in  the  foreground  of  the  long 
perspective  and  given  the  emphasis  its  importance  demanded. 
Others  may  have  said  it  before,  many  had  illustrated  it  in 
living  ways,  but  it  was  left  to  him  to  give  it  the  final  expres- 
sion. He  struck  the  dominant  note  in  his  first  lecture,  which 
sounded  throughout  the  course :  — 

Preaching  is  the  communication  of  truth  by  man  to  men.  It 
has  two  essential  elements,  truth  and  personality.  .  .  .  Preach- 
ing is  the  bringing  of  truth  through  personality.  .  .  .  Jesus 
chose  this  method  of  extending  the  knowledge  of  himself  through 
the  world.  However  the  gospel  may  be  capable  of  statement  in 
dogmatic  form,  its  truest  statement  is  not  in  dogma  but  in  a  per- 
sonal life.  Christianity  is  Christ.  A  truth  which  is  of  such 
peculiar  character  that  a  person  can  stand  forth  and  say  of  it,  "I 
am  the  truth, "  must  always  be  best  conveyed  through  personality. 
"As  My  Father  has  sent  me  into  the  world,  even  so  have  I  sent 
you  into  the  world."  It  was  the  continuation  out  to  the  minutest 
ramifications  of  the  new  system  of  influence,  of  that  personal 
method  which  the  incarnation  itself  had  solved.  Nothing  can 
ever  take  the  place  of  preaching  because  of  the  personal  element 
that  is  in  it  (p.  7). 

In  the  assertion  of  this  principle  that  truth  in  order  to  its 
effective  presentation  must  come  through  personality,  PhiUips 
Brooks  was  planting  himself  upon  a  psychological  motive, 
whose  latent  working  had  been  manifest  in  history.  Nothing 
could  take  the  place  of  preaching  because  of  the  personal 
element  in  it ;  no  multiplication  of  books  could  ever  supersede 
the  human  voice  ;  no  newly  opened  channel  of  approach  to 
man's  mind  and  heart  could  do  away  with  man's  readiness  to 
receive  impressions  through  his  fellow  man.  "  It  is  strange 
how  men  will  gather  to  listen  to  the  true  preacher.  It  is 
to-day  as  it  was  in  past  ages,  when  Chrysostom  preached  at 
Constantinople,  or  Bishop  Latimer  at  St.  Paul's  Cross  in  Lon- 
don." But  this  principle  had  even  a  wider  and  more  signifi- 
cant application.  It  was  related  to  the  movements  of  reli- 
gious life  and  thought  in  the  nineteenth  century.  It  met 
that  instinct  which,  amid  the  confusions  of  the  time,  or  what 


i82  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

seemed  the  shifting  foundations  of  religious  belief,  called  out 
for  a  return  to  "  historic  Christianity." 

This  conception  of  preaching  puts  us  into  right  relations  with 
all  historic  Christianity.  The  message  can  never  be  told  as  if  we 
were  the  first  to  tell  it.  It  is  the  same  message  which  the  church 
has  told  in  all  the  ages.  He  who  tells  it  to-day  is  backed  by  all 
the  multitude  who  have  told  it  in  the  past.  He  is  companied 
by  those  who  are  telling  it  now. 

The  message  is  his  witness,  but  a  part  of  the  assurance  with  which 
he  has  received  it  comes  from  the  fact  of  its  being  the  identical 
message  which  has  come  down  from  the  beginning.  Men  find  on 
both  sides  how  difficult  it  is  to  preserve  the  true  poise  and  pro- 
portion between  the  corporate  and  the  individual  conceptions  of 
the  Christian  life.  But  all  will  own  to-day  the  need  of  both. 
The  identity  of  the  Church  in  all  times  consists  in  the  identity  of 
the  message  which  she  has  always  had  to  carry  from  the  Lord  to 
man.  All  outward  utterances  of  the  perpetual  identity  of  the 
Church  are  valuable  only  as  they  assert  this  real  identity.  This 
is  the  real  meaning  of  the  perpetuation  of  old  ceremonies,  the  use 
of  ancient  liturgies,  the  clinging  to  what  seem  to  be  apostolic 
types  of  government  (p.  18). 

And  again,  this  principle  that  truth  must  come  through 
personality,  through  the  man  who  has  himself  been  moved 
and  conquered  by  the  truth,  was  urged  as  specially  needed  in 
a  New  England  community,  or  wherever  the  later  develop- 
ment of  Calvinism,  as  by  Hopkins  and  Emmons,  had  para- 
lyzed the  pulpit  as  well  as  the  hearer.  That  man  must  wait 
till  God  chose  to  act  in  the  process  of  conversion,  that  the 
preacher  might  give  a  message,  but  bore  in  himself  no  con- 
tagious witness  to  the  truth,  —  this  fatal  assumption  had 
acted  like  a  subtle  poison  in  every  New  England  community. 
It  had  made  religion  something  exceptional  in  its  working, 
out  of  harmony  with  natural  laws,  something  unreal  also,  and 
intangible,  without  relation  to  real  life,  and  therefore  tending 
to  vanish  away.  Against  this  tendency,  which  he  had  recog- 
nized in  his  own  experience  and  observation,  Phillips  Brooks 
made  most  efPective  opposition.  He  brought  religion  down 
from  the  clouds  to  an  actual  reality,  communicated  from  man 
to  man,  not  only  in  the  pulpit,  but  in  the  daily  course  of  life. 
The  religion  of  Christ  had  been  first  implanted  as  a  leaven 


^T.  41-42]    LECTURES  ON  PREACHING    183 

in  humanity  by  the  personality  of  its  founder,  and  from  that 
time  had  never  been  without  its  witnesses,  —  the  children  of 
God  in  every  generation. 

We  get  here  some  explanation  of  Phillips  Brooks's  power 
as  a  preacher,  and  of  the  comprehensiveness  of  his  appeal. 
He  satisfied  the  High  Anglican  in  his  own  communion  as  well 
as  the  descendant  of  the  Puritans.  He  did  justice  alike  to 
the  human  and  the  divine  aspects  of  religion,  as  coming 
through  man,  but  coming  also  from  God,  who  worked  in  and 
through  the  human  personality.  Thus  was  solved  the  pro- 
blem of  the  schools  which  had  given  rise  to  controversy  and 
inward  perturbation  and  distress,  —  whether  the  will  of  man 
was  free,  and  he  were  able  in  and  by  himself  to  accomplish 
the  work  of  his  salvation,  or  whether  that  work  were  solely 
of  God,  and  man  was  so  much  helpless  material  in  His  hands 
to  be  galvanized  into  life. 

Upon  this  point  he  was  emphatic  and  uncompromising,  — 
the  absolute  necessity  of  character  in  the  preacher,  the  im- 
portance of  impressing  his  audience  with  the  conviction  that 
he  possessed  the  character  which  comes  from  association  with 
Christ.  "  Personal  piety  is  the  deep  possession  in  one's  own 
soul  of  the  faith  and  hope  and  resolution  which  are  to  be  offered 
to  one's  fellow  men  for  their  new  life."  "Nothing  but  fire 
kindles  fire."  He  wishes  that  he  could  find  words,  new  and 
overwhelming,  with  which  to  enforce  his  conviction  that  to 
live  in  Christ  and  to  be  Hjs,  and  not  our  own,  makes  preach- 
ing a  perpetual  privilege  and  joy.  He  cannot  believe  that 
any  one  will  find  it  hard  to  talk  about  these  things  for  two 
half  hours  every  week  who  lives  with  God,  whose  delight  it 
is  to  study  God's  word,  in  the  Bible,  in  the  world,  in  history, 
in  human  nature. 

From  this  point  of  view  he  considers  the  pulpit  problem  of 
preaching  old  sermons,  and  of  the  relative  merit  of  extempo- 
raneous and  written  discourse.  No  one  complained  when  he 
preached  old  sermons,  but  the  criticism  often  was  that  the  old 
were  better. 

I  think  that  every  earnest  preacher  is  often  more  excited  as  he 
writes,  kindles  more  then  with  the  glow  of  sending  truth  to  men, 


1 84  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

than  he  ever  does  in  speaking;  and  the  wonderful  thing  is,  that 
that  fire,  if  it  is  really  present  in  the  sermon  when  it  is  written, 
stays  there,  and  breaks  out  into  flame  again,  when  the  delivery 
of  the  sermon  comes.  The  enthusiasm  is  stowed  away  and  is 
kept.  ...  As  you  preach  old  sermons,  I  think  you  can  always 
tell,  even  if  the  history  of  them  is  forgotten,  which  of  them  you 
wrote  enthusiastically  with  the  people  vividly  before  you.  The 
fire  is  in  them  still  (p.  173). 

He  objected  to  quotations  in  a  sermon,  whether  of  poetry  or 
4^  prose,  because  they  weakened  the  power  of  personality.  He 
thought  that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  the  gift  for  preaching, 
capable  of  cultivation,  to  some  extent  an  innate  j)ower  in  every 
man,  —  it  might  be  called  also  enthusiasm,  or  eloquence,  or 
magnetism.  Whether  or  no  it  existed  in  all,  or  could  be 
cultivated,  he  defined  it,  and  in  defining  it  described  him- 
self, —  the  quality  that  kindles  at  the  sight  of  men,  the  keen 
joy  at  the  meeting  of  truth  and  the  human  mind,  the  power 
by  which  a  man  loses  himself  and  becomes  but  the  sympa- 
thetic atmosphere  between  the  truth  on  one  side  of  him  and 
the  man  on  the  other  side  of  him.  It  was  the  possession  of 
this  gift  of  kindling  at  the  sight  of  men  which  enabled  him 
to  write  the  last  chapter  of  his  book,  where  his  eloquence 
culminates  as  he  describes  "  the  value  of  the  human  soul." 
He  attached  the  highest  importance  to  his  exposition  of  this 
point.  To  a  friend  who  once  spoke  to  him  of  his  lectures  on 
Preaching,  saying  that  the  last  lecture  was  the  most  signifi- 
cant, he  replied  that  out  of  all  the  comment  made  on  his 
book,  this  was  the  first  time  it  had  been  mentioned ;  that  he 
wrote  for  the  sake  of  enforcing  this  truth ;  that  in  the  love 
and  the  reverence  for  human  souls  lay  the  deepest  secret  of 
power  in  the  ministry.  The  doctrine  of  the  value  of  the  hu- 
man soul  was  not  new.  It  had  been  one  of  the  stock  expres- 
sions of  the  Evangelical  school  that  the  Christian  minister 
must  be  possessed  with  "  the  love  of  souls."  He  heard  it  at 
St.  Paul's  Church  in  Boston  and  at  the  Virginia  seminary. 
But  he  inherited  it  in  his  blood,  from  a  father  who  had  an 
untiring  interest  in  all  that  was  human  and  personal,  from 
a  mother  whose  heart  went  quickly  out  to  every  one  with 


^T.  41-42]    LECTURES  ON  PREACHING    185 

whom  she  came  in  contact,  where  there  was  the  possibility 
of  exerting  a  moral  influence.  It  was  this  motive  which 
attracted  him  to  teaching  as  a  profession,  because  in  it  the 
contact  of  soul  with  soul  was  more  intimate  and  powerful 
than  in  any  other  relationship.  The  culminative  force  of  all 
his  generations  was  behind  him,  till  it  burst  forth  in  him  in 
complete  and  unprecedented  expression.  He  loved  places 
and  things,  he  loved  nature,  but  above  all  he  loved  humanity. 
It  was  this  gift  which  made  his  heart  leap  up  when  he  beheld 
the  waiting  congregation.  No  one  can  forget  the  look  that 
he  gave  when  he  had  ascended  the  pulpit,  as  if  to  draw  in 
the  inspiration  for  the  effect  that  was  to  follow  before  he 
bent  himself  with  the  fervor  and  tumult  of  his  powerful  soul 
to  the  communication  of  his  message. 

We  shall  see  that  this  power  of  valuing  the  human  soul, 
this  reverence  for  man  as  such,  increased  in  such  proportion 
in  his  later  years  as  almost  to  defeat  the  purpose  of  the  great 
preacher,  creating  a  multiplicity  of  demands  upon  his  time 
to  which  he  was  no  longer  equal.  But  for  many  years  he 
held  himself  in  restraint,  till  the  work  he  had  been  given  to 
do  was  accomplished.  This  lecture,  therefore,  on  the  value  >:  a  <  * 
of  the  human  soul  is  in  some  ways  more  characteristic  of 
Phillips  Brooks  than  anything  else  he  has  written.  To  this 
result  everything  in  his  reading,  his  study,  his  experience, 
contributed.  From  being  a  conviction,  it  grew  into  a  pas- 
sion. He  was  full  of  reverence  for  those  whom  he  met.  He 
grew  in  humility  as  his  reverence  for  others  increased. 
There  was  stamped  upon  his  manner  a  lofty  yet  tender  cour- 
tesy. The  traditional  bearing  of  the  clergy,  distant  and 
conscious  of  their  own  importance,  wherein  might  be  read 
the  impression  of  constant  deference  or  adulation,  all  this 
was  totally  foreign  to  him. 

The  "  Lectures  on  Preaching  "  constitute  an  event  in  the     i4  "^    . 
history  of  the  pulpit.     No  similar  treatise  ever  met  with  such         c^ 
a  reception.     It  became  at  once  a   manual   for    the  clergy 
and  for  theological  students.     Some  books  are  so  thoroughly 
done  that  they  pass  at  once  into  the  life  of  a  people,  to  reap- 
pear again   in   many  ways.     This  book   has  influenced   the 


1 86  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

whole  mass  of  Christian  sentiment  in  America,  leaping  the 
bounds  of  denominationalism.  It  carried  with  it  hope  and 
vitality,  inspiration  and  enthusiasm,  the  expansion  of  life  and 
of  religion.  "  It  is  the  best  word  about  preaching  that  has 
been  uttered,"  was  one  of  the  comments  upon  it,  "  and  its 
wise  sayings  deserve  to  pass  into  proverbs  of  the  profession." 
"  I  can  hardly  tell  you,"  writes  a  Western  bishop,  "  how  de- 
lighted, charmed,  and  helped  I  have  been  in  its  perusal." 
An  eminent  Unitarian  divine  bore  witness  :  "  It  seems  to  me 
that  it  will  make  ministers  from  serious  young  men  now  try- 
ing the  shifts  of  the  meaner  crafts  and  not  entering  the  min- 
istry because  of  the  glamour  and  unreality  about  it.  This 
unreality  your  book  will  certainly  remove."  One  who  heard 
the  lectures,  a  professor  of  homiletics,  wrote,  "  They  read  bet- 
ter than  they  sounded  when  delivered,  which  is  saying  a  great 
deal,  and  we  rejoice  in  the  wide  sale  the  volume  is  having 
and  the  expressions  of  satisfaction  with  it  which  we  hear  on 
every  side."  Another  bishop  in  the  Episcopal  Church 
thanked  him  for  the  blessing  the  book  had  brought  him,  "  It 
has  met  certain  wants  and  touched  experiences  which  seem 
hidden  from  every  one  but  God."  A  distinguished  professor 
of  Sacred  Rhetoric  in  a  Congregational  seminary  wrote, 
"  You  do  not  need  words  of  commendation  from  me,  but  I 
gratify  myself  more  than  you  in  telling  you  how  helpful  the 
book  is  to  me  in  my  work,  every  page  of  it.  My  pupils  are 
aU  reading  it  with  great  avidity."  An  eminent  historical 
scholar,  who  listened  to  the  lectures  and  knew  of  their  recep- 
tion, says,  "  I  have  never  heard  of  a  lisp  of  dissent  from  the 
judgment  of  those  who  heard  them  with  admiration  and  de- 
light." "  The  charm  of  your  book,"  writes  an  Episcopal  clergy- 
man, himself  known  as  a  pulpit  orator,  "  is  that  it  makes  us  all 
forget  you  and  leads  our  thoughts  up  to  the  Lord,  who  gives 
the  words  and  makes  great  the  company  of  the  preachers." 
A  Harvard  professor  speaks  of  it  as  "  the  very  word  that  I 
want  to  carry  to  the  many  students  in  the  College  and  the 
Divinity  School  who  turn  to  me  with  their  plans  and  their 
hesitations."  A  Baptist  clergyman  wishes  him  to  know  of 
"  what  he  is  doing  for  a  multitude  of  the  Baptist  ministers  of 


^T.  41-4^]    LECTURES  ON  PREACHING    187 

the  generations  coming."     From  a  Presbyterian  theological 
seminary  in  the  South  came  this  tribute  :  — 

My  mind  sprang  to  the  truths  contained  therein  as  if  there  had 
been  an  affinity  between  the  two.  My  crude  notions  found  ade- 
quate expression  and  a  fuller  and  wider  development  than  I  had 
imagined  possible.  So  that  while  sadly  conscious  of  my  failure 
to  attain  or  even  realize  the  high  standard  you  set  up,  I  rejoice 
in  more  definite  and  vivid  conception  of  my  work.  The  lofty 
ground  on  which  through  the  entire  course  you  tread  fills  me 
with  new  hope,  new  joy,  and  imparts  a  very  inspiration  at  the 
thought  of  the  holy  work  before  me.  ...  I  gladly  confess  my 
obligation  to  you  for  instructions  which  will  color  my  future  min- 
istry and  to  the  operation  of  which  any  good  I  may  accomplish 
will  be  largely  due. 

Dr.  Stone,  of  the  Episcopal  Theological  School  in  Cam- 
bridge, instead  of  wi'iting  to  Mr.  Brooks  himself,  wrote  to 
his  mother,  whose  way  he  had  guided  into  the  Episcopal 
Church  :  — 

I  have  just  finished  the  reading  of  Phillips's  "Lectures  on 
Preaching, "  and  I  wish  you  to  join  me  in  giving  God  thanks  for 
such  a  book  and  for  such  a  writer.  His  Lectures  must  have  been 
a  great  blessing  to  those  who  heard  them,  and  they  must  be  a 
great  blessing  to  all  who  read  them,  specially  to  all  young  preach- 
ers who  read  them.  And  if  it  were  in  my  power  I  would  put 
them  in  the  hands  of  every  young  preacher  in  the  land.  They 
could  find  no  better  human  helper  in  the  great  work  before  them. 

The  following  estimate  is  by  the  Rev.  H.  C.  Badger  of 
New  Haven  :  — 

I  believe  neither  the  English  language  nor  any  other  has  any- 
thing worthy  to  stand  beside  them,  treating  such  a  theme, — 
judging  the  wide  reading,  the  wit,  the  wisdom,  the  mental  grasp 
of  the  problem,  the  keenness  of  the  analysis,  the  profoundness  of 
the  insight,  or  the  perfect  comprehension  of  the  problems  of  our 
day.  .  .  .  That  book  I  would  lay  beside  the  Bible  of  every 
young  minister  to-day.  I  would  have  every  preacher  read  it 
every  year  as  long  as  he  lives. 

These  testimonies,  which  might  be  greatly  multiplied,  are 
sufficient  to  show  that  Phillips  Brooks  had  made  another 
conquest  of  theological  students  and  theological  seminaries 


1 88  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1877-78 

throughout  the  land.     He  had  set  the  standard  of  preaching 
for  his  age. 

Phillips  Brooks  had  been  preaching  for  nearly  twenty 
years  before  he  gave  to  the  world  a  volume  of  his  sermons. 
He  had  been  tempted,  in  1863,  only  four  years  after  his  ordi- 
nation, to  prepare  a  volume  for  the  press,  and  had  withdrawn 
it  when  half  printed.  From  that  time  he  had  resisted  the 
pressure  to  publish,  and  when  he  finally  yielded  it  was  with 
reluctance.  The  first  volume  of  his  sermons,  which  appeared 
in  1878,  met  with  an  extraordinary  reception,  attaining  a  sale 
of  twenty-five  thousand.  They  were  welcomed  as  literature, 
as  a  new  poem  or  as  the  newest  book.  But  they  were  also 
received  as  a  special  religious  message  in  an  age  of  trial  and 
doubt  and  weakness.  The  reception  accorded  by  the  press 
in  public  criticism  was  favorable,  often  eulogistic  in  the  high- 
est degree,  with  hardly  a  dissenting  voice.  One  curious 
expression  of  dissent  was  given  in  an  English  newspaper, 
where  his  sermons  were  compared  among  others  with  Bishop 
Butler's,  and  to  Butler  was  awarded  the  superiority.  Others 
compared  him  with  Robertson  of  Brighton,  giving  them  equal 
honor.  We  have  seen  how  he  was  regarded  by  those  who 
heard  him  preach,  in  the  many  reports  which  were  constantly 
appearing  in  the  newspapers.  How  he  was  now  regarded 
when  he  was  put  to  the  test  of  the  printed  book,  where  the 
competent  judge  could  weigh  his  words,  is  shown  in  a  criti- 
cism that  may  be  taken  as  representative  :  — 

Unlike  Robertson,  Phillips  Brooks  constantly  reminds  us  of 
him.  He  has  the  same  analytical  power;  the  same  broad  human 
sympathy;  the  same  keen  knowledge  of  human  nature,  toned  and 
tempered  and  made  more  true  by  his  sympathies ;  the  same  mys- 
terious and  indefinable  element  of  divine  life,  so  that  his  message 
comes  with  a  quasi  authority,  wholly  unecclesiastical,  purely  per- 
sonal ;  and  the  same  undertone  of  sadness,  the  same  touch  of 
pathos,  speaking  low  as  a  man  who  is  saddened  by  his  own  seem- 
ing success. 

The  "  Lectures  on  Preaching  "  had  brought  to  Mr.  Brooks 
many  letters,  calculated  to  flatter  the  vanity  of  an  author,  if 


^T.  41-42]    LECTURES  ON  PREACHING     189 

it  had  been  in  him  to  be  ministered  to  by  flattery.  But 
this  volume  of  sermons  was  followed  by  a  flood  of  letters, 
which  did  not  speak  so  much  of  his  eloquence  or  intellectual 
gifts  as  of  the  good  he  was  doing  for  human  souls.  We  are 
listening  in  them  to  the  secrets,  as  it  were,  of  a  confessional, 
where  people  are  pouring  into  his  ear  their  sorrows,  and  are 
telling  him  of  the  relief  he  has  given.  What  the  public 
press  said  of  his  sei'mons  was  one  thing,  what  the  people  were 
saying  to  him  was  another.  From  every  part  of  the  country 
the  letters  came,  from  those  who  had  never  heard  or  seen 
him,  as  well  as  from  those  who  found  a  special  pleasure  in 
associating  his  voice  and  presence  with  the  reading  of  the 
printed  page. 

The  principle  which  had  guided  the  author,  in  selecting 
twenty  sermons  for  publication  out  of  some  six  hundred  he 
had  written,  it  would  be  difficult  to  tell.  It  was  no  easy  task 
to  make  the  selection,  and  we  know  that  it  was  made  with 
scrupulous  care.  What  strikes  the  reader  as  he  glances  over 
the  titles  of  the  sermons  is  the  large  proportion  assigned  to 
topics  of  comfort  and  consolation.  The  volume  opens  with 
a  sermon  on  "  The  Purpose  and  Use  of  Comfort ;  "  other 
titles  are, "  The  Withheld  Completions  of  Life,"  "  The  Soul's 
Refuge  in  God,"  "  The  Consolations  of  God."  One  other 
sermon  similar  in  tone  is  from  the  text,  "  Brethren,  the  time 
is  short."  There  seems  something  incongruous  between  the 
prevailing  tone  of  the  sermons  and  the  man  who,  as  we  have 
seen  him  in  his  letters,  or  as  he  appeared  in  his  familiar  con- 
versation, abounded  in  humor,  in  mirth  and  vitality,  as  if  he 
had  known  neither  trouble  nor  sorrow.  One  of  the  letters  he 
received  was  from  a  person  who  had  found  consolation  by  the 
reading  of  the  sermons,  and  who  goes  on  to  speak  of  the 
trials  he  had  gone  through,  and  the  depths  to  which  he  had 
descended :  — 

What  I  wished  to  say  is  this,  —  that  I  found  in  your  first  two 
sermons  that  which  touched  and  threw  new  light  or  better  light 
upon  the  crucial  points  of  my  experience  and  trial ;  for  instance, 
when  you  argue  the  fact  and  why  God  sometimes  withholds  evi- 
dence for  a  few  years.     It  did  me  good  as  a  medicine,   but  I 


I90  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

asked,  "  How  did  toy  brother  find  this  out  ?  "  "With  a  great  sum 
obtained  I  this  freedom."  Are  you  freeborn,  or  have  you  passed 
all  through  that  way  that  even  He  trod,  made  perfect  through 
suffering?  .  .  .  Not  since  Robertson's  beautiful  sermons  has 
anything  found  me,  and  found  me  in  such  deep  places  (as  Coleridge 
said  of  the  Bible),  as  your  sermons. 

The  question  which  this  unknown  correspondent  put  to 
him  was  also  put  by  many  others.  But  lie  generally  turned 
it  off  with  the  remark  that  it  was  possible  to  enter  into  these 
things  by  the  imagination.  However  it  may  be,  he  had  made 
a  study,  a  scientific  study,  if  it  may  be  so  called,  of  the  art  of 
consolation.  In  his  large  parishes,  as  well  as  in  the  outer 
world,  he  was  constantly  confronted  with  the  problem  of  sor- 
row and  suffering.  His  own  personality  attracted  as  by  a 
magnet  those  who  were  in  trouble.  He  suffered  with  them 
through  the  immeasurable  tenderness  of  his  own  soul  and  his 
vast  outflow  of  sympathy.  What  the  meaning  of  it  all  might 
be,  in  a  world  which  was  beautiful,  which  God  had  created 
and  loved,  was  the  problem  that  haunted  him.  He  did  not 
undertake  to  solve  it  by  any  dogmatic  principle.  He  waited 
for  the  growing  light.  But  of  one  thing  he  was  sure,  that  the 
only  consolation  was  in  God. 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  letters  that  came  to  him  that, 
taking  them  together,  not  one  sermon  in  the  volume  but  was 
mentioned  by  some  one  as  having  met  some  special  need,  or 
brought  inspiration  or  joy  or  courage.  One  of  the  writers 
speaks  of  the  sermon  on  the  "  Trinity  "  as  having  "  broken 
down  all  misgivings,  so  that  I  can  now  say  I  believe  in  God  the 
Father,  God  the  Son,  and  God  the  Holy  Ghost."  That  is 
one  of  the  finest  sermons  in  the  volume,  showing  the  capacity 
of  insight  into  theological  distinctions,  —  a  sermon  such  as 
would  have  delighted  the  heart  of  Athanasius.  The  sermon 
on  "  The  Symbol  and  the  Reality,"  which  had  charmed  Dean 
Stanley,  when  he  heard  it  at  Westminster  Abbey,  appears  to 
have  been  a  general  favorite.  It  placed  a  common  principle 
beneath  the  symbols  of  religion  and  the  symbols  of  common 
life.  The  sermon  on  "Humility"  seemed  to  reveal  a  new 
cultus  for  the  highest  of  Christian  virtues,  "  It  came  upon 


^T.  41-42]    LECTURES  ON  PREACHING     191 

me  like  a  flood  of  light,"  wrote  a  venerable  divine  in  whose 
character  humility  was  the  crowning  attribute.  The  sermon 
on  the  "  Positiveness  of  the  Divine  Life  "  brought  out  anew, 
and  with  the  preacher's  own  peculiar  force,  the  truth  which 
Chalmers  announced  and  Dr.  Bushnell  had  reiterated,  —  "  the 
expulsive  power  of  a  new  affection."  The  sermon  for  All 
Saints'  Day  is  the  only  one  chosen  for  publication  out  of  his 
Philadelphia  preaching,  the  rest  of  the  sermons  belonging  to 
the  years  from  1873  to  1878.  But  though  one  of  his  earliest, 
this  sermon  for  All  Saints'  Day  is  perhaps  the  most  beautiful 
of  all.  It  gives  the  modern  conception  of  sainthood  as  com- 
pared with  the  Catholic  or  mediaeval  ideal. 

Saints,  as  we  often  think  of  them,  are  feeble,  nerveless  crea- 
tures, silly  and  effeminate,  the  mere  soft  padding  of  the  uni- 
verse. I  would  present  true  sainthood  to  you  as  the  strong  chain 
of  God's  presence  in  humanity  running  down  through  all  history. 
.  .  .  That  is  the  true  apostolical  saintly  succession,  the  tactual 
succession  of  heart  touching  heart  with  fire.  .  .  .  These  saints 
who  help  us  on  our  way  were  incorporations  not  of  the  power,  nor 
of  the  truth,  but  of  the  spirit  and  the  character  of  God. 

A  few  testimonies  may  be  given  in  the  words  of  their 
writers,  for  they  are  living  touches  in  the  portraiture  of 
Phillips  Brooks.  They  may  stand  for  the  conviction  of 
thousands  of  others  in  the  church  universal  which  he  was 
then  addressing.  They  come  from  young  and  old,  from  men 
and  from  women,  from  clergymen  and  from  laymen,  from 
all  the  walks  of  life  :  — 

I  am  sure  you  will  rejoice  to  hear  how  my  life  has  been  made 
richer  and  fuller  through  your  aid,  and  my  poor  blurred  sight  of 
men  as  trees  walking  exchanged  for  clear  outlines  and  effulgent 
day. 

You  are  speaking  to  men  as  no  one  else  can. 

No  book  save  the  Bible  gives  me  so  much  strength  and  holy 
ambition. 

I  covet  your  method  of  presenting  the  truth  of  the  Gospel  more 
than  that  of  any  man  living. 

The  volume  has  become  my  vade  mecum.  Your  sermons  are 
the  highest  interpretations  of  Christian  philosophy  ever  uttered 
from  an  American  pulpit. 


192  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

You  seem  to  me  a  person  who  understands  human  nature  through 
a  close  study  of  yourself,  having  thoroughly  tested  all  natural  and 
acquired  tendencies  and  resistances,  and  with  sympathetic  tender- 
ness can  tell  others  how  to  live  and  be  victorious. 

They  have  helped  me  in  a  great  and  almost  nameless  trial 
through  which  I  am  now  passing.  Do  you  know  there  are  trials, 
compared  with  which  even  that  of  a  lifetime  of  bodily  pain  and 
prostration  seems  almost  trivial  ?  I  cannot  understand  how  you, 
who  have  perfect  health  and  happiness,  can  know  so  much  about 
the  condition  of  those  who  have  neither. 

To  young  ministers  of  all  our  tribes  they  are  invaluable.  I 
suppose  that  scarcely  a  man  among  our  students  will  fail  to  read 
them,  and  all  who  can  will  own  them.  To  me  they  are  a  refresh- 
ment for  the  cheer  they  give  in  the  assurance  that  the  pulpit  is 
not  waning. 

Among  the  sermons  in  this  volume  is  one  entitled  "  The 
Present  and  the  Future  Faith,"  from  the  text,  "  When  the 
Son  of  Man  cometh,  shall  he  find  faith  on  the  Earth  ?  "  which 
has  an  historical  value.  When  the  future  historian  of  reli- 
gious thought  turns  back  to  the  nineteenth  century  he  will 
find  that  religious  faith  and  hope  reached  their  lowest  point 
at  this  moment,  and  were  then  at  their  furthest  ebb.  It  is 
this  circumstance  which  may  explain  in  part  the  predomi- 
nance of  religious  comfort  and  consolation  which  prevails  in 
the  volume.  The  sermon  above  mentioned  was  preached  on 
Thanksgiving  Day,  in  1874,  when  the  hall  of  the  Institute  of 
Technology  was  fiUed  with  an  audience  that  listened  in  intense 
silence,  for  the  preacher  had  gathered  himself  up  for  a  repre- 
sentative utterance.  He  describes  the  religious  situation  from 
within  with  deep  sympathy  and  the  tenderest  pathos.  There 
is  no  complaint  or  condemnation  for  any  agency  which  may 
be  responsible  for  the  dark  eclipse  through  which  the  church 
is  passing.  He  refers  to  it  as  existing,  but  as  sure  to  disap- 
pear. He  offers  no  panacea  to  cure  the  evil ;  it  has  gone  too 
deep  for  any  special  remedy.  When  Tennyson  had  been 
writing  in  the  fifties  there  was  a  battle  waging  for  intel- 
lectual freedom,  for  escape  from  the  limitations  and  crude 
interpretation  of  a  traditional  theology.  The  battle  was  over, 
the  freedom  had  been  gained,  but  with  it  had  come  sadness 


^T.  41-42]    THE   TRIAL   OF   FAITH  193 

and  uncertainty,  the  misery  of  religious  doubt.  The  freedom 
seemed  to  be  of  no  avail,  the  "  larger  truth  "  did  not  follow 
in  its  wake.  It  was  the  moment  which  Matthew  Arnold  has 
described  in  his  poems,  in  "  Obermann  Once  More,"  or  the 
lines  on  "  Dover  Beach,"  —  "  the  wandering  between  two 
worlds,  one  dead,  the  other  powerless  to  be  born."  This  was 
the  preamble  of  the  sermon  ;  — 

I  should  like  to  say  a  few  words  upon  the  religious  conditions 
with  which  we  are  all  more  or  less  familiar.  I  am  led  to  think 
and  to  speak  of  the  disturbed  condition  of  faith  in  our  time.  No 
subject  is  more  pressing.  Even  the  most  careless  man's  thoughts 
rest  very  much  upon  it.  It  is  discussed  and  talked  of  every- 
where. 

He  proposes  to  trace  some  of  the  forces  which  have  pro- 
duced the  disaster.  It  is  owing  chiefly  to  the  wonderful 
increase  of  men's  knowledge  of  second  causes,  which  inter- 
feres with  or  overclouds  their  belief  in  first  causes,  in  provi- 
dences, in  a  personal  and  loving  care,  which  is  back  of  every- 
thing. There  is  some  truth  in  the  statement  that  ages  of 
ignorance  are  ages  of  faith,  in  the  common  saying  that  much 
knowledge  and  elaborate  life  are  dangerous  to  faith  in  final 
principles  and  forces.  It  is  a  magnificent  story  how  natural 
science  has  brought  out  the  starry  host  of  second  causes  from 
their  obscurity  and  shown  how  He  who  works  everything  works 
by  everything  in  the  world.  This  profuse  discovery  of  means, 
however,  has  clouded  thought  regarding  the  Creator.  With 
the  religion^  derangement  is  associated  corruption  in  political 
life  and  formalism  in  the  church.  These  are  really  one,  at  bot- 
tom, with  the  scientific  skepticism  of  the  time.  If  one  looks  at 
them  philosophically  he  must  see  that  it  is  truly  so.  The 
magnifying  of  machinery  in  church  or  state  follows  from  the 
loss  of  first  principles  of  government.  "  Dogmatism  and 
ritualism  are  all  wrong  when  they  think  themselves  supremely 
believing.     Both  are  really  symptomatic  forms  of  unbelief." 

Another  feature  of  the  age,  making  it  a  "transition 
time,"  lies  in  the  contradictions  with  which  it  is  full.  Chief 
among  the  contradictions  is  the  conflict  between  individual 


194  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

freedom  and  authority.  It  is  a  time  that  takes  its  character 
from  its  relation  to  what  has  gone  before  and  what  is  to  come 
after  rather  than  from  what  it  contains  in  itself.  This  gives  it 
an  aspect  of  restlessness  and  unquiet.  It  is  full  of  the  sense 
of  having  broken  with  the  past  and  of  having  not  yet  appre- 
hended the  future  that  is  to  come.  But  to  go  back  is  impos- 
sible. "  The  man  who,  tired  of  the  freedom  of  individual 
thought,  wants  to  push  the  church  back  into  the  peace  of 
mere  authoritative  and  traditional  religion,  and  the  man  who, 
tired  of  the  noise  and  confusion  of  popular  government,  wishes 
to  push  back  into  feudalism,  both  are  mistaken  and  will  not 
succeed.  Confusion  is  to  be  escaped,  not  by  being  repressed 
into  stagnation,  but  by  being  developed  into  peace."  But 
for  the  passing  moment  the  age  is  dark  and  hopeless,  those  to 
whom  we  look  for  guidance  are  silent,  and  the  best  and  wisest 
do  not  speak. 

The  most  pathetic  sign  of  such  a  transition  time  is  the  posi- 
tion in  which  it  places  the  best  individuals  who  live  in  it.  The 
best  men  in  the  more  fixed  and  stationary  ages  speak  out  the 
loudest.  They  stand  on  certainties,  and  speak  with  clear  and  con- 
fident tones.  The  most  noticeable  and  touching  thing  about  such 
times  as  ours  is  the  way  in  which  so  many  of  the  best  men  are 
silent  and  will  not  speak.  It  is  so  both  in  politics  and  religion. 
The  most  thoughtful  men  are  always  tending  to  withdraw  from  a 
political  confusion  which  they  cannot  understand  and  which 
makes  them  mere  spectators.  And  how  many  of  the  purest  and 
devoutest  people  whom  we  know  refuse  to  speak  a  word  in  all  the 
tumult  of  religious  and  ecclesiastical  debate  that  always  is  so  loud 
around  us.  To  take  again  the  words  of  a  very  remarkable  poem 
of  that  most  representative  poet  of  our  time  whom  I  have  twice 
quoted  already :  — 

Achilles  ponders  in  his  tent, 
The  kings  of  modern  thought  are  dumb, 
Silent  they  are  though  not  content. 
And  wait  to  see  the  future  come. 
Silent  while  years  engrave  the  brow- 
Silent,  the  best  are  silent  now. 

But  the  highest  quality  in  this  sermon  for  the  times  is  the 
spirit  of  inextinguishable  hope.  His  optimism  is  everywhere 
apparent.     He  is  an  optimist  because  he  believes  in  God. 


^T.  41-42]      THE  TRIAL  OF  FAITH  195 

It  is  not  a  shallow  optimism,  repeating  empty  phrases,  but 
comes  from  one  who  was  competent  to  interpret  the  motives  of 
despair.  "  I  do  not  certainly  say  that  such  a  time  is  best, 
though  really  in  my  heart  I  do  not  think  the  world  has  ever 
seen  a  better.  There  must  be  better  ones  to  come.  The 
story  of  the  world  is  not  yet  told.  '  We  are  ancients  of  the 
earth  and  in  the  morning  of  the  times.'  "  The  sermon  con- 
cludes with  suggestions  as  to  how  a  man  is  to  get  the  best 
out  of  his  time  and  shun  the  worst.  He  offers  no  solution 
of  the  conflict  between  religion  and  science.  From  that  snag 
he  held  aloof.  He  does  not  depreciate  nor  denounce  the 
men  of  science.  But  he  advises  his  hearers  in  the  first  place 
to  cling  to  the  solidity  and  persistency  of  nature,  the  calm- 
ness and  oldness  and  orderliness  of  this  world  of  growth  and 
matter.  It  means  something  that,  in  the  disorder  of  thought 
and  feeling,  so  many  men  are  fleeing  to  the  study  of  orderly 
nature.  And  it  is  rest  and  comfort,  whatever  men  are  feel- 
ing, that  the  seasons  come  and  go.  Whatever  men  are  doubt- 
ing, the  rock  is  firm  under  their  feet,  and  the  steadfast  stars 
pass  in  their  courses  overhead.  And  in  the  second  place  he 
urges  them  to  make  much  of  the  experiences  of  life  which 
are  perpetual,  —  joy,  sorrow,  friendship,  work,  charity,  rela- 
tions with  one's  brethren,  for  these  are  eternal.  And  in  the 
last  place,  it  is  not  religion  itself  that  is  unsettled,  but  it  is 
only  the  thoughts  about  religion  that  are  not  clear.  Love  is 
at  the  root  of  everything.  The  human  soul  responds  to  the 
appealing  nature  and  life  of  Jesus  Christ.  Here  is  the  great 
last  certainty.  Be  sure  of  God  and  nothing  can  overthrow 
or  drown  you. 

Everything  indicates  that  during  these  years,  that  is,  from 
the  time  he  came  to  Boston,  he  had  concentrated  his  strength 
on  the  study  of  the  religious  situation,  —  why  it  was  that 
faith  had  grown  weak,  and  what  was  the  best  method  of  meet- 
ing the  difficulty.  As  during  the  war  he  had  thrown  himself 
into  the  vindication  of  its  great  issues,  so  now  he  identified 
himself  with  the  religious  conflict,  watching  the  phases  it 
assumed,  brooding  over  the  subject  in  his  hours  of  solitude ; 


196  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

in  his  walks  also  among  men,  as  he  listened  to  the  casual 
conversation  or  the  tacit  assumptions,  which  implied  so  much 
more  than  was  said.  At  the  meetings  of  the  Clericus  Club 
these  questions  formed  the  staple  element  in  every  discussion. 
He  contributed  his  share  to  the  talk  on  these  occasions,  but 
among  his  other  endowments  he  had  the  capacity  of  being 
the  best  of  listeners.  Every  meeting  of  the  club  formed  a 
picture  which  he  studied  in  silence.  He  neglected  no  source 
of  information,  and  preeminently  he  studied  his  own  soul  in 
deep  sincerity.  He  was  preparing  for  some  larger  expression 
of  himself  than  he  had  yet  given,  not  seeking  the  opportunity 
to  make  it,  but  waiting  till  some  call  should  come  when  he 
should  be  moved  to  say  what  was  uppermost  in  his  heart. 

In  1878  Mr.  Brooks  went  a  second  time  to  New  Haven, 
giving  two  lectures  before  the  students  of  the  Yale  Divinity 
School  on  the  "  Teaching  of  Religion."  In  the  summer  of 
the  same  year  he  made  an  address  before  the  alumni  of  the 
theological  seminary  of  Virginia,  when  he  took  for  his  sub- 
ject, "The  Relation  of  the  Pulpit  to  Popular  Skepticism." 
The  two  themes  are  closely  allied ;  in  both  he  was  dealing 
with  the  question,  —  how  best  to  meet  the  spirit  of  modern 
unbelief.  The  lectures  on  the  "  Teaching  of  Religion  "  are 
specially  significant  as  showing  that  he  still  maintained  the 
superiority  of  the  intellectual  powers,  giving  to  them  the 
leadership  in  the  approach  to  religious  truth.^ 

Again  we  go  back  to  his  early  years  for  that  first  hint  of 
the  task  whose  accomplishment  he  was  now  maturing.  Then 
he  had  recorded  in  his  note-book  the  conviction  that  there  was 
adequate  power  in  life  for  the  transformation  of  humanity 
into  the  divine  ideal,  but  the  practical  question  was  how  to 
bring  the  power  to  bear  upon  the  will.  He  had  now  reached 
the  conclusion  that  the  power  of  the  pulpit  was  identical  with 
the  power  of  the  teacher.    The  same  method  which  made  the 

^  The  first  of  these  two  lectures  on  the  "  Teaching  of  Religion  "  has  been  pub- 
lished in  Essays  and  Addresses,  the  second  is  still  in  manuscript.  The  essay 
on  the  "  Pulpit  and  Popular  Skepticism  "  was  printed  in  the  Princeton  Review, 
March,  1879,  and  is  also  included  in  Essays  and  Addresses. 


^T.  41-42]     TEACHING  OF   RELIGION       197 

teacher  effective  could  be  applied  by  the  preacher.  It  was 
an  encouraging  fact  in  an  age  of  religious  doubt  that  the 
remedy  might  be  found  in  the  principle  that  Christianity 
could  be  taught.  As  the  teacher  developed  the  capacities 
latent  in  the  pupil,  so  there  was  in  every  man  the  capacity 
for  religion,  which  must  be  evoked  by  the  teacher's  methods. 
But  the  conviction  that  religion  was  capable  of  being  taught 
met  with  opposition  in  a  vague  and  general  sentiment  that  it 
was  a  thing  that  could  not  and  ought  not  to  be  taught.  In 
meeting  this  objection,  it  was  necessary  to  give  a  definition 
of  religion.  Among  the  many  attempts  to  define  it,  all  of 
them  containing  elements  of  truth,  that  which  Phillips 
Brooks  now  gave  deserves  attention :  "  Religion  is  the  life  of 
man  in  gratitude  and  obedience  and  gradually  developing 
likeness  to  God ;  "  and  "  the  Christian  religion  is  the  life  of 
man  in  gratitude  and  obedience  and  growing  likeness  to  God 
in  Christ.  Religion  is  not  service  simply,  nor  is  it  grate- 
ful love  alone,  but  gratitude  assured  by  obedience,  obedience 
uttering  gratitude."  ^ 

Having  given  his  definition  of  religion,  he  further  clears 
the  way  for  his  purpose  by  criticising  three  methods  of  teach- 
ing it,  —  the  dogmatic  or  intellectual,  the  emotional,  and  the 
mechanical:  the  first,  holding  that  religion  is  taught  when 
doctrines  or  truths  have  been  imparted ;  the  second,  dwelling 
on  the  importance  of  moving  the  feelings ;  and  the  last,  insist- 
ing on  the  confessional  and  spiritual  directorship.  Or,  as  he 
puts  it  again,  one  teaching  religion  as  truth,  another  as  feel- 
ing, and  another  as  law  or  drill.  But  the  true  method  of 
teaching  religion  is  where  the  personality  of  the  teacher  in- 
vades the  personality  of  the  scholar.  The  largest  idea  which 
covers  every  demand  of  the  ministry,  he  avows  it  in  his  own 
experience,  consists  "  in  bringing  the  personal  Christ  to  the 
personal  human  nature."  He  turns  this  point  over  and  reit- 
erates it  in  many  varying  forms  of  expression :  "  The  object 
of  all  the  teaching  is  to  bring  Christ  to  men."  When  this 
principle  is  recognized  as  fundamental,  other  methods  fall 

^  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  35. 


198  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

into  their  true  relationship ;  doctrine,  emotion,  and  conduct 
cease  to  be  counted  as  valuable  in  themselves,  and  are  valued 
as  avenues  through  which  Christ,  the  personal  Christ,  may 
come  to  the  soul. 

He  has  much  to  say  about  Christianity  considered  as  doc- 
trine. He  recognizes  the  righteousness  of  the  reaction  in  the 
popular  mind  against  the  assumption  that  men  are  to  be  saved 
by  right  opinions.  But  because  men  are  not  saved  by  intel- 
lectual belief  is  no  reason  for  discarding  doctrines.  He  pro- 
tests against  any  tendency  to  "  soften  "  the  truth  or  pare  it 
down  to  meet  men's  wishes.  He  recalls  Tertullian's  words. 
Credo  quia  impossihile,  as  the  expression  of  no  rare  experi- 
ence :  — 

It  is  the  religion  of  most  demands  that  has  most  ruled  the 
world.  The  easy  faiths  have  been  the  weak  faiths.  Men  like  to 
feel  heroic  in  their  faith;  and  always  it  has  been  easier  to  excite 
fanaticism  than  to  build  up  a  quiet,  reasonable  belief.  It  would 
be  a  wretched  falsehood,  and  one  which  would  no  doubt  defeat 
itself,  if  a  preacher  tried  to  take  advantage  of  this  fact  of  human 
nature ;  but  it  may  at  least  come  in  to  help  us  to  resist  the  dis- 
position to  omit  or  soften  truths  in  order  that  men  may  receive 
the  truth  more  easily.  The  hope  of  a  large  general  belief  in 
Christian  truth,  more  general  than  any  that  any  past  age  has  wit- 
nessed, does,  no  doubt,  involve  a  more  reasonable  and  spiritual 
presentation  of  it  than  the  past  has  seen,  but  it  will  never  be 
attained  by  making  truth  meagre.  .  .  .  The  only  real  assurance 
against  unreal,  fantastic,  sensational,  indulgent  teaching  about 
Christ  is  the  teacher's  own  complete  conviction,  from  his  own 
experience,  of  the  perfection  and  sufficiency  of  Christ,  just  as 
Christ  is. 

There  was  much  talk  in  the  days  when  these  lectures 
were  delivered  of  the  necessity  of  doctrinal  preaching.  It 
was  said  of  Phillips  Brooks  that  he  did  not  treat  of  this  or 
that  doctrine.  "  A  man  says  to  me,  '  Why  do  you  not  preach 
this  truth  more?'  and  I  reply  to  him,  'Why  should  I?' 
and  he  answers,  '  Because  it  is  a  truth  which  many  men  are 
denying,  and  many  other  men  are  forgetting.'  But  the  an- 
swer is  not  sufficient.  It  may  be  because  men  are  indifferent 
to  it  that  one  ought  to  preach  it,  or  that  may  be  a  reason  for 


^T.  41-42]     TEACHING   OF   RELIGION       199 

feeling  that  it  is  not  the  truth  most  needed  at  the  moment." 
As  to  religious  controversy  he  has  a  word  to  say.  He  does 
not  condemn  it,  nor  dare  to  wish  that  all  the  great  contro- 
versial voices  of  the  past  or  of  the  present  could  be  silenced 
or  swept  from  the  pedestals  where  the  admiration  of  mankind 
has  set  them.  But  there  are  conditions  of  the  public  mind 
when  a  man  must  set  his  face  against  controversies.  It  is 
bad  to  cry,  "  Peace,  peace !  "  when  there  is  no  peace.  It  is 
just  as  bad,  in  some  ways  it  is  worse,  to  cry,  "  War,  war ! " 
when  there  is  no  war. 

It  seems  to  me  as  if,  were  I  a  layman  in  the  days  when  some 
doctrine  had  got  loose  as  it  were  into  the  wind  and  was  being 
blown  across  the  Common  and  up  and  down  the  streets,  I  should 
go  to  church  on  Sunday,  not  wanting  my  minister  to  give  me  an 
oracular  answer  to  all  the  questions  which  had  been  started  about 
it,  which  I  should  not  believe  if  he  did  give  it,  but  hoping  that 
out  of  his  sermon  I  might  refresh  my  knowledge  of  Christ,  get 
Him,  His  nature.  His  work,  and  His  desire  for  me  once  more 
clear  before  me,  and  go  out  more  ready  to  see  this  disputed  truth 
of  the  moment  in  His  light  and  as  an  utterance  of  Him.  .  .  . 
Preaching  Christ !  That  old  phrase,  which  has  been  so  often  the 
very  watchword  of  cant,  how  it  still  declares  the  true  nature  of 
Christian  teaching!  Not  Christianity,  but  Christ!  Not  a  doc- 
trine, but  a  Person !  Christianity  only  for  Christ !  The  doctrine 
only  for  the  Person !  ^ 

The  first  of  the  lectures  on  the  "  Teaching  of  Religion  " 
was  occupied  with  the  intellectual  aspects  of  Christianity, 
and  how  these  were  related  to  the  personal  Christ  and  to  the 
actual  life  of  man.  He  followed  still  the  customary  division 
of  the  human  powers,  into  intellect,  feeling,  and  will,  while 
he  protested  against  it  as  breaking  up  the  unity  of  man.  His 
own  predominant  tendency  was  intellectual,  as  it  had  been 
from  his  earliest  years.  To  know  for  himself,  to  understand 
in  order  that  he  might  believe,  had  been  his  ambition.  But 
he  recognized  in  himself  other  methods  of  knowing  than 
through  the  intellect  alone.  The  full  perception  of  truth 
must  come  through  the  quickened  feeling,  and  above  all 
through  the  obedient  will.  In  this  threefold  psychological 
^  Essays  and  Addresses,  pp.  49,  54. 


aoo  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

order  Christian  doctrine  or  truth  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  clear 
glass  held  squarely  between  God  and  man  in  order  to  the 
reflection  of  the  pure  reality ;  feeling  is  to  furnish  the  middle 
term  between  truth  and  duty ;  and  duty  is  obedience  to  God's 
will,  which  unites  the  service  of  our  brethren  with  the  culture 
of  ourselves.  But  he  adds :  "  There  is  one  thing  which  I  value 
more  than  this.  What  impresses  us  most  in  the  best,  the 
most  Godlike  men  we  ever  see  is,  I  think,  the  inability  to 
tell  in  them  what  of  their  power  is  intellectual  and  what  is 
moral.  It  is  the  characteristic  of  all  spiritual  advancement 
that  it  asserts  more  and  more  the  unity  of  man,  makes  him 
less  and  less  a  bundle  of  faculties,  more  a  man,  made  in  the 
image  of  God,  who  is  one  God  in  the  complete  harmony  and 
cooperation  of  all  his  life." 

But  the  familiar  classification  he  still  found  convenient,  and 
in  the  second  lecture  he  considered  the  teaching  of  religion  as 
it  is  related  to  the  feeling  and  the  will.  Under  feeling  he  in- 
cludes worship.  He  does  not  restrict  worship  to  the  prayer  and 
praise  of  the  congregation ;  preaching  and  architecture  and 
music  have  their  important  relation  to  worship  as  the  outcome 
of  feeling.  He  dwells  on  the  mystery  of  feeling,  "  We 
talk  about  it  as  if  we  knew  about  it,  yet  what  a  mysterious, 
variable,  and  imponderable  thing  it  is."  There  occurs  a  pas- 
sage here  which  is  so  exact  a  description  of  his  own  preach- 
ing, and  his  own  mysterious  power,  that  it  deserves  quota- 
tion :  — 

A  man  comes  and  stands  before  a  multitude  of  his  fellow  men 
and  tells  them  a  story.  It  is  of  something  which  happened  long 
ago,  yet  which  concerns  them.  It  is  of  something  which  happened 
in  one  special  time  and  set  of  circumstances,  yet  it  is  universal. 
As  he  speaks,  his  fellow  men  who  listen  begin  to  change  before 
him.  They  flush  and  glow;  .  .  .  they  tremble  in  their  seats; 
they  almost  leap  to  their  feet ;  tears  start  into  their  eyes.  It  is  a 
most  attractive  spectacle.  It  fires  the  speaker,  and  he  goes  on  to 
make  yet  more  intense  and  glowing  the  emotion  that  reacts  on 
him.  One  who  stands  by  and  gazes,  though  he  may  not  hear  a 
word,  is  caught  with  the  thrilling,  beating  atmosphere,  and  finds 
himself  trembling  with  mysterious  desires.  The  voice  stops,  but 
the  spell  is  not  broken.      The  people  rise  and  go  away  exalted. 


^T.  41-42]     TEACHING   OF   RELIGION       201 

They  tread  the  pavement  as  if  it  sprang  beneath  their  feet  and 
breathe  the  air  as  if  it  were  alive  with  beautiful  and  serious 
thoughts. 

The  importance  of  feeling  in  religion  is  strongly  urged.  To 
the  lack  of  feeling  is  due  the  defect  in  modern  architecture 
as  compared  with  other  ages,  when  true  feeling  found  expres- 
sion in  every  part  of  the  edifice  :  — 

I  think  it  is  not  wrong,  it  is  not  extravagant,  to  say  that  the 
artistic  element  in  almost  all  of  it  (our  present  ecclesiastical  art) 
comes  in  as  a  stranger.  It  claims  a  place  purely  for  its  own 
beautiful  conception  or  skilful  conception.  Whether  it  be  an 
imitation  of  something  old,  something  which  once  uttered  truths 
which  men  do  not  now  believe  or  which  they  realize  in  other  ways 
...  or  whether  it  be  original  and  new  embodying  the  sense  of 
beauty  which  belongs  to  our  own  time,  the  reason  of  its  unsatis- 
f actoriness  is  still  the  same,  —  it  does  not  stand  genuinely  between 
truth  and  duty,  the  truth  and  duty  of  the  present  day,  interpret- 
ing one  to  the  other.  The  architect  draws  a  plan  for  a  church 
building,  so  far  as  its  artistic  element  is  concerned,  because  as  a 
student  he  admires  that  type  of  a  church  in  some  past  age,  or 
because  simply  as  an  artist  he  feels  its  absolute  beauty,  and  not 
because  it  is  the  form  in  which  he  finds  the  natural  utterance  of 
the  Christian  thought  of  which  his  soul  is  full,  nor  because  he  is 
thinking  of  the  power  and  inspiration  which  it  ought  to  exercise 
upon  the  men  who  are  to  worship  within  its  walls.  And  the 
decorator  draws  dreadful  mechanical  patterns  or  paints  his  artifi- 
cial saints  upon  your  walls  with  the  same  imperfection  of  purpose, 
and  so  with  the  same  failure  of  result.  But  none  the  less  is  it 
true  that  the  architect  who  builds  the  perfect  Christian  church 
for  any  age  must  be  a  man  who  believes  in  the  Christian  truth 
which  that  age  realizes,  and  who  is  enthusiastic  in  the  desire  that 
the  Christian  men  and  women  of  the  age  shall  do  the  Christian 
duty,  outward  and  inward,  which  the  conditions  of  their  age 
demand  and  make  possible.  .  .  .  He  must  be  neither  the  pious 
mediaevalist  nor  the  modern  skeptic.  He  must  be  the  modern 
Christian. 

He  takes  the  opportunity  of  speaking  about  music,  and 
especially  music  in  the  churches.  Here  are  the  thoughts  which 
were  running  through  his  mind  as  he  stood  in  church  or  pulpit 
while  the  service  of  song  was  performed :  — 

I  think  that  many  of  the  disputes  about  its  methods  are  seen 


202  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

to  be  of  little  consequence,  and  many  of  the  dogmatic  decisions 
about  those  methods  appear  shallow  and  false.  Disputes  about 
methods  always  grow  loud  and  positive  in  proportion  as  the  con- 
ception of  purpose  is  vague.  Shall  all  the  people  sing,  or  shall 
the  trained  and  gifted  voices  of  a  few  declare  the  praises  of  the 
Lord?  I  believe  in  congregational  singing.  I  believe  it  should 
altogether  be  the  chief  and  preponderant  method  of  our  worship. 
But  remember  that  the  question  altogether  should  come  first, 
what  is  the  purpose  of  singing  at  all?  I  suppose  it  is  twofold. 
First,  church  music  is  the  general  utterance  of  the  melodiousness, 
the  joy,  the  poetry  of  religion.  And  second,  it  is  the  special 
means  by  which  a  special  truth  is  fastened  on  the  soul,  and  a 
special  duty  made  winning  and  authoritative.  Now  there  are  two 
ways  in  which  any  strong  feeling  finds  satisfaction  and  increase. 
One  is  by  the  man,  in  whose  heart  it  is,  uttering  it  himself  in 
what  best  way  he  can ;  the  other  is  by  his  hearing  its  ideal  utter- 
ance from  the  lips  most  gifted  to  declare  it.  .  .  .  When  a  great 
congregation  is  to  praise  the  Lord  and  to  learn  truth  and  duty 
by  the  melody  of  song,  I  for  one  should  be  sorry  to  have  it  lose 
either  of  the  two  exaltations,  either  that  which  comes  of  the  great, 
simple,  sublime  utterance  of  its  own  emotion,  or  that  which  comes 
from  listening  while  voices  which  the  Lord  has  filled  with  the 
gold  and  silver  of  His  choicest  and  most  mysterious  harmony 
reveal  to  us  the  full  beauty  of  truth  and  the  full  sweetness  and 
sacredness  of  duty. 

There  is  another  passage  in  this  lecture  in  which  he  speaks 
of  the  music  of  preaching,  and  throws  light  upon  his  own 
work  in  the  pulpit :  — 

What  I  have  said  of  music  applies,  I  think,  to  all  the  graces  and 
appealing  tones  of  the  preacher's  art.  There  is  a  music  of  preach- 
ing. What  the  melody  of  a  hymn  is  to  its  words,  that  the  elo- 
quence of  the  preacher  is  to  his  truth.  .  .  .  The  Quaker  hushes 
the  sacrilegious  chant,  and  then  listens  to  the  hymn  of  the  inner 
life.  The  Puritan  breaks  the  window,  and  then  paints  in  soft  or 
lurid  words  a  picture  from  his  pulpit  which  tempts  or  scares  the 
souls  who  listen  and  believe,  and  weep  or  tremble.  Where  is  the 
difference?  .  .  .  Words  like  notes  or  colors  may  lead  from  truth 
to  duty,  or  they  may  stand  helpless,  leading  from  nothing  to 
nothing.  We  are  afraid  of  eloquence  nowadays,  and  no  doubt  our 
fear  of  it  has  borne  good  fruit.  There  never  was  a  time  when 
so  many  men  wrote  and  spoke  good  English.  .  .  .  The  only  mis- 
giving which  one  has,  I  think,  the  only  want  which  one  allows 
himself  to  feel  in  reading  the  great  abundance  of  good  writing 


^T.  41-4^]     TEACHING   OF   RELIGION       203 

which  he  meets  with  everywhere,  is  in  a  certain  absence  of  that 
glow  and  richness,  whose  absence  he  knows  is  the  price  he  pays 
for  the  crystal  purity  of  the  pages  he  reads.  He  sees  that  elo- 
quence of  style  or  gesture  has  acquired  a  suspicion  of  unreality. 
It  has  gone  out  of  favor  in  our  colleges.  It  only  lingers  in  our 
pulpits  here  and  there.  The  fact  that  there  is  where  it  lingers 
makes  us  sometimes  hope  that  there  is  where  it  shall  be  born  into 
new  power.  We  wonder  whether  it  may  not  be  for  the  pulpit, 
having  learnt  with  all  the  other  writing  and  speaking  of  the  age 
that  the  primary  necessity  of  written  or  spoken  words  is  clearness, 
then  to  assert  that  clearness  is  more,  not  less,  clear  for  the  warm 
glow  of  earnest  feeling,  and  to  give  back  to  the  best  writing  and 
speaking  of  the  age  to  come  a  power  of  personal  appeal  and  legit- 
imate attractiveness  in  return  for  the  necessity  of  careful  thought 
and  clear  expression  which  no  doubt  the  pulpit  has  learned  from 
the  best  writing  and  speaking  of  this  accurate  but  uninspired  age. 

Having  treated  of  the  place  of  the  intellect  and  of  the  feel- 
ing in  the  teaching  of  religion,  he  comes  to  the  will,  and  to 
obedience  he  pays  high  tribute.  To  the  will  as  to  the  goal 
and  termination  come  the  intellect  and  the  feeling.  In 
his  definition  of  religion  he  puts  obedience  as  the  crowning 
glory  of  the  whole,  —  obedience,  in  gratitude  for  what  we 
know  of  God  in  Christ.  No  ancient  Roman,  whether  pagan 
or  Christian,  ever  asserted  more  strongly  the  claims  of  obedi- 
ence to  be  the  highest  virtue.  A  most  impressive  catena  of 
passages  might  be  selected  from  his  sermons  in  which  he 
glorifies  obedience.  It  is  not  the  badge  of  servitude,  but 
of  freedom  and  equality.  It  is  the  mightiest  of  words,  be- 
cause it  stands  for  the  final  expression  of  the  man  in  whom 
the  knowledge  of  Christ  has  entered,  taking  possession  of 
the  whole  range  of  being.  The  obedience  of  Christ  was  the 
crown  of  his  glory,  the  badge  of  his  divinity.  And  in  order  to 
obedience  the  freedom  of  the  will,  in  every  sense  of  the  word 
"  freedom,"  is  the  inalienable  prerogative  of  man. 

The  point  of  view  from  which  he  treated  the  subject  of 
obedience  in  this  second  of  his  lectures  on  the  "  Teaching 
of  Religion  "  was  its  importance  and  relationship  in  a  system 
of  ethics.  It  was  possible  to  conceive  the  service  of  others  as 
the  motive  of  duty,  or  duty  might  be  urged  as  a  means  of 
self-culture.    He   accepted  both  theories  as  legitimate,  but 


204  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

subordinated  both  to  duty  conceived  as  obedience  to  the  will 
of  God.  The  hard  sense  of  obligation  in  the  one,  or  the 
danger  of  self -consciousness  in  the  other,  disappeared  when 
duty  sprang  from  gratitude  and  love  to  a  person,  —  to  God 
revealed  in  Christ.  This  was  the  ground  on  which  Christ 
rested  when  inculcating  the  seemingly  ungracious  duties  of 
life,  "  I  say  unto  you,  love  your  enemies,  bless  them  that 
curse  you,  do  good  to  them  that  hate  you,  and  pray  for  them 
that  spitefully  use  you  and  persecute  you ;  "  and  not  merely 
that  His  disciples  would  thus  engage  in  the  service  of  men,  or 
attain  higher  reaches  in  self-culture,  although  these  objects 
are  implied,  but  "  that  ye  may  be  the  children  of  your  Father 
which  is  in  heaven." 

The  lectures  on  the  "  Teaching  of  Religion  "  were  aimed  to 
meet  the  conditions  of  the  hour,  — "  times  like  these  when 
men's  power  of  believing  seems  to  be  weak  and  sickly."  He 
comes  to  the  subject  more  directly  in  the  essay  on  "  The  Pul- 
pit and  Popular  Skepticism."  The  prevailing  type  of  skepti- 
cism differs  from  that  of  other  ages,  in  that  it  is  marked  by 
its  completeness  and  its  despair.  It  does  not  merely  reject 
this  or  that  doctrine,  but  the  whole  body  of  the  Christian  faith. 
It  goes  so  deep  that  it  has  a  perpetual  tendency  to  defeat 
itself.  Because  it  offers  no  substitute  for  the  discarded  reli- 
gion, it  leaves  men's  religious  natures  unprovided  for  and 
hungry,  and  in  this  there  is  hope,  for  it  gives  to  Christian- 
ity the  perpetual  advantage  of  human  nature.  In  speaking 
of  the  deeper  sources  of  unbelief  he  says :  — 

It  is  not  the  difficulty  of  this  or  that  doctrine  that  makes  men 
skeptics  to-day.  It  is  rather  the  play  of  all  life  upon  the  funda- 
mental grounds  and  general  structure  of  faith.  It  is  the  meeting 
in  the  commonest  minds  of  great  perpetual  tides  of  thought  and 
instinct  which  neutralize  each  other,  such  as  the  tides  of  faith  and 
providence,  the  tides  of  pessimism  and  optimism,  the  tides  of  self- 
sacrifice  and  selfishness. 

Let  this  not  seem  too  large  or  lofty  an  explanation  of  the  com- 
monplace phenomena  of  doubt,  which  are  thick  around  us  in  our 
congregations  in  the  world.  The  reason  why  my  hearer,  who  sits 
moodily  or  scornfully  or  sadly  before  me  in  his  pew,  and  does  not 


^T.  41-42]     PULPIT   AND   SKEPTICISM     205 

cordially  believe  a  word  of  what  I  preach  to  him,  the  reason  why 
he  disbelieves  is  not  that  he  has  found  the  evidence  for  inspiration 
or  for  Christ's  divinity  or  for  the  Atonement  unsatisfactory.  It 
is  that  the  aspect  of  the  world,  which  is  fate,  has  been  too  strong 
for  the  fundamental  religion  of  the  world,  which  is  Providence. 
And  the  temptation  of  the  world,  which  is  self-indulgence,  has 
seemed  to  make  impossible  the  precept  of  religion,  which  is  self- 
surrender;  and  the  tendency  of  experience,  which  is  hopelessness, 
has  made  the  tendency  of  the  gospel,  which  is  hope,  to  seem 
unreal  and  unbelievable. 


Because  this  is  the  character  of  the  skepticism  of  the  time 
it  cannot  be  overcome  by  any  special  skill  in  proving  this 
truth  or  disproving  that  error.  "  The  main  method  of  meet- 
ing it  must  be  not  an  argument,  but  a  man.  The  method 
which  includes  aU  other  methods  must  be  in  his  own  man- 
hood, in  his  character,  in  his  being  such  a  man,  and  so  appre- 
hending truth  himself  that  truth  through  him  can  come  to 
other  men."  Among  the  most  needed  and  the  rarest  quali- 
ties that  such  a  man  must  have  is  candor.  The  mind  of  the 
people,  and  of  the  clergy  also,  is  confused  and  doubtful 
about  the  once  received  doctrine  of  "  verbal  inspiration." 
Another  doctrine  called  in  question  is  that  of  everlasting 
punishment ;  there  are  those  who  reject  it,  while  others  are 
timidly  asking  whether  a  man  can  be  a  Christian  and  yet 
keep  a  hope  for  all  God's  children.  Let  the  clergy  be  candid 
in  dealing  with  these  points.  "  A  large  acquaintance  with 
clerical  life  has  led  me  to  think  that  almost  any  company  of 
clergymen  gathering  together  and  talking  freely  to  one  an- 
other will  express  opinions  which  would  greatly  surprise  and 
at  the  same  time  relieve  the  congregations  who  ordinarily 
listen  to  these  ministers."  A  venerable  preacher  standing  in 
his  own  pulpit  had  said  not  long  before  that  no  man  was  a 
Christian  who  did  not  believe  that  this  world  was  made  in 
six  literal  days.  Such  a  statement  should  not  be  allowed  to 
pass  without  most  clear  and  earnest  disavowal.  The  old  talk 
about  holding  the  outworks  as  long  as  possible  before  retreat- 
ing to  the  citadel  is  based  upon  a  metaphor  than  which  none 
could  be  more  mischievous.     It  is  a  dangerous  experiment 


2o6  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1877-78 

for  parents  to  try  with  their  children,  teaching  them  what 
they  themselves  have  long  since  ceased  to  believe. 

The  true  man  must  also  escape  from  partisanship,  and 
from  the  reproach  of  it.  What  hurts  the  clergy  is  the  idea 
in  the  popular  mind  that  they  are  committed  to  these  things, 
and  are  no  longer  seekers  for  truth,  biit  advocates  of  certain 
accepted  positions.  Let  the  clergy  at  least  cease  to  use  ques- 
tionable arguments,  and  at  any  rate  prevent  their  ministry 
from  seeming  like  a  scramble  for  adherents  rather  than  a 
Christlike  love  for  souls. 

He  repeats  what  he  had  already  said  in  his  lectures  on  the 
"  Teaching  of  Religion,"  that  it  is  a  foolish  and  base  idea  to 
suppose  that  in  days  like  these  men  want  to  have  Christian 
truth  made  slight  and  easy  for  them  :  — 

In  times  of  staggering  faith,  as  is  shown  in  Christian  history, 
men  need  the  whole  truth.  They  should  not  be  asked  to  believe 
just  as  little  as  possible  and  told  that  the  most  exacting  articles 
of  faith  may  be  cast  away.  ...  It  would  be  no  strange  issue  of 
such  times  as  we  are  living  in  if  out  of  them  should  come  a  great 
demand  for  difficult  doctrine,  a  time  of  superstition,  a  fever  to 
succeed  the  chill ;  for  the  spirit  that  cries,  "  Credo  quia  impos- 
sibile, "  the  heroic  spirit  of  faith,  is  too  deep  in  our  human  nature 
for  any  one  century  to  have  eradicated  it.  That  we  may  guard 
against  such  reaction  into  superstition,  as  well  as  meet  the  present 
infidelity,  what  we  need  is  not  more  easiness,  but  more  simplicity 
in  the  doctrine  which  we  preach,  and  in  our  way  of  preaching  it. 
In  other  words,  it  is  not  a  smaller  amount  of  doctrine,  but  it  is  a 
larger  unity  of  doctrine.  It  is  a  more  profound  entrance  into  the 
heart  of  doctrine,  in  which  its  unity  and  simplicity  reside,  a  more 
true  grasp  and  enforcement  of  its  spiritual  meaning. 

He  illustrates  his  meaning  by  reference  to  the  doctrine  of 
endless  punishment.  The  best  way  of  meeting  the  subject  is 
to  cease  to  preach  about  it,  and  to  seek  to  bring  the  power  of 
the  person  of  Christ  to  bear  on  the  lives  of  men,  awakening 
in  them  a  dread  of  sin  and  a  desire  for  holiness.  "  I  will  not 
care  nearly  so  much  that  a  man  should  hold  what  I  believe 
to  be  the  truth  about  future  punishment  as  that  he  should 
be  deeply  convinced  of  the  enormity  and  persistency  of  sin." 
It  is  vitally  important  that  all   religious  truths  should   be 


iET.  41-42]     PULPIT  AND   SKEPTICISM     207 

shown  to  have  some  necessary  connection  with  righteousness 
of  character.  Only  in  this  way  can  they  be  established  in  the 
minds  of  men. 

There  are  doctrinal  statements,  which  puzzle  and  bewilder, 
which  are  in  reality  excrescences  on  the  faith  and  must  be  cast 
away  by  the  natural  and  healthy  action  of  the  system.  There  are 
doctrinal  statements,  which  once  were  true  and  did  vast  good 
and  yet  were  only  temporary  aspects  of  the  truth.  There  are  men 
living  by  them  still,  as  men  are  still  seeing  the  light  of  the  stars 
extinguished  in  the  heavens  long  ago.  The  time  will  come  when 
these  temporary  statements  will  disappear,  and  when  their  light 
goes  out  it  will  be  of  all  importance  that  they  recognize  the  sun 
by  whose  light  these  accidental  and  temporary  points  of  its  exhi- 
bition have  been  shining. 

This  sun  of  all  truth  is  the  person  of  Christ.  The  characteris- 
tic of  our  modern  Christianity,  which  correlates  it  with  all  apos- 
tolic times,  is  the  substitution  of  loyalty  to  a  person  in  place  of 
belief  in  doctrines  as  the  essence  and  test  of  Christian  life.  This 
is  the  simplicity  and  unity  by  which  the  Gospel  can  become  effec- 
tive. These  are  the  ideas  of  Christianity  which  are  in  conflict 
to-day,  —  one  magnifying  doctrine  whose  great  sin  is  heresy ;  the 
other  magnifying  obedience.  To  follow  the  latter  is  in  these 
days,  I  think,  the  best  method  of  dealing  in  the  pulpit  with 
popular  skepticism.  The  superiority  of  this  method,  whose  essence 
is  the  personal  relationship  with  Christ,  lies  in  this  —  that  it 
offers  "the  highest  picture  of  the  combination  of  stability  with 
progress  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  intellectual  conception  is 
always  sacrificing  stability  to  progress  or  progress  to  stability." 

In  this  connection  he  takes  occasion  to  speak  of  the  subject 
of  Christian  Unity :  — 

I  do  not  see  the  slightest  promise  in  any  dimmest  distance  of 
what  is  called  the  organic  unity  of  Christendom  on  the  basis  of 
episcopacy  or  any  other  basis.  I  do  not  see  the  slightest  chance 
of  the  entire  harmonizing  of  Christian  doctrine  throughout  the 
Christian  world,  —  that  dream  which  men  have  dreamed  ever  since 
Christ  ascended  into  Heaven,  that  sight  which  no  man's  eye  has 
seen  in  any  age.  But  I  do  see  signs  that,  keeping  their  different 
thoughts  concerning  Him  and  His  teachings,  men,  loyal  to  Christ, 
owning  His  love,  trusting  His  love,  may  be  united  in  the  only 
union  which  is  really  valuable  wherever  His  blessed  name  is 
known.     In  that  union,  and  in  that  alone,  can  I  find  myself  truly 


ao8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1877-78 

one  alike  with  Peter  and  with  Paul,  alike  with  Origen  and  Atha- 
nasius  and  Augustine,  alike  with  Luther  and  with  Zwingle  and 
with  Calvin  and  with  St.  Francis  and  with  Bishop  Andrews  and 
with  Dr.  Channing,  alike  with  the  prelate  who  ordains  me  and 
with  the  Methodist  or  Baptist  brother  who  is  trying  to  bring  men 
to  the  same  Christ  in  the  same  street  where  I  am  working.  And 
no  union  which  will  not  include  all  these  ought  wholly  to  satisfy 
us,  because  no  other  will  wholly  satisfy  the  last  great  prayer  of 
Jesus. 

The  essay  offers  some  practical  suggestions.  Since  the 
popular  skepticism  is  one  in  character  with  the  skepticism  of 
the  scholars  and  of  the  schools,  therefore  the  Christian  min- 
ister should  keep  himself  acquainted  with  the  newest  develop- 
ments of  thought.  He  urges  the  importance  of  preaching 
Christ,  but  would  enlarge  its  range.  There  must  be  no  sacri- 
fice of  the  intellect. 

The  Christian  minister  should  be  so  familiar  with  what  men 
are  thinking  and  believing  that  he  can  know  the  currents  of  pre- 
sent thought,  see  where  they  cross  and  oppose,  where  they  may 
be  made  to  harmonize  with  the  thought  of  Christ.  This  familiar- 
ity is  something  which  must  be  constantly  kept  up  in  the  active 
ministry.  But  its  foundations  ought  to  be  laid  in  the  theological 
school. 

And  so  he  concludes  with  this  statement  of  his  attitude :  — 

My  one  great  comprehensive  answer  then  to  the  question,  What 
is  the  best  method  of  dealing  in  the  pulpit  with  popular  skepti- 
cism ?  is  really  this  :  Make  known  and  real  to  men  by  every  means 
you  can  command  the  personal  Christ,  not  doctrine  about  Him, 
but  Him ;  strike  at  the  tyranny  of  the  physical  life  by  the  power 
of  His  spiritual  presence.  Let  faith  mean,  make  faith  mean, 
trusting  Him  and  trying  to  obey  Him.  Call  any  man  a  Chris- 
tian who  is  following  Him.  Denounce  no  error  as  fatal  which 
does  not  separate  a  soul  from  Him,  Offer  Him  to  the  world  as 
He  offered  and  is  forever  offering  Himself. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

1879 

THE  BOHLEN  LECTUEES  ON  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS 

The  Bohlen  Lectures  on  the  "Influence  of  Jesus"  were 
published  in  1879.  This  work  must  be  regarded  as  one  of 
Phillips  Brooks's  most  important  contributions  to  the  develop- 
ment of  theological  science.  More  even  than  his  lectures 
on  Preaching  may  it  be  said  to  be  his  autobiography.  He 
has  here  expressed  himself  most  fully  in  describing  his  own 
inner  life  and  the  deeper  motives  which  inspired  his  preach- 
ing. Incidentally,  also,  he  has  spoken  upon  many  important 
points  correlated  to  his  main  theme.  The  treatise  is  a  small 
one,  allowing  little  opportunity  for  expansion,  but  the  expan- 
sion will  be  found  in  his  sermons. 

It  is  now  nearly  the  lifetime  of  a  generation  since  this 
treatise  was  given  to  the  world.  Issues  then  living  have 
been  determined  and  new  ones  have  arisen.  The  book  has 
fulfilled  its  true  mission  in  meeting  a  widespread  popular 
need  and  in  changing  the  trend  of  religious  thought.  Its  large 
circulation  bears  witness  to  its  influence.  But  it  requires 
some  comment  here  in  order  to  bring  out  its  full  significance, 
to  show  wherein  its  power  lay  in  meeting  the  age, — in  closing 
a  chapter  of  confusion  and  contradiction  in  religious  thought 
as  well  as  introducing  a  new  era  in  religious  life.  To  those 
who  are  passing  through  the  mood  of  the  last  generation  the 
book  has  still  a  special  mission.  But  it  has  also  certain  en- 
during qualities  which  secure  its  permanent  place  in  religious 
literature. 

And  in  the  first  place,  to  touch  upon  its  autobiographical 
value,  it  shows  this  to  have  been  the  main  characteristic 
of  Phillips  Brooks,  whether  as  a  man  or  as  a  preacher  and 
theologian,  —  that   he   was   from   the   first   in   search   of   a 

VOL.  n 


2IO  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

stronger  religion  and  a  stronger  Christ  than  the  age  pre- 
sented. He  needed  it  first  for  himself  and  then  for  others. 
His  powerful  tumultuous  nature  cried  out  for  strength,  for 
some  one  to  obey,  whose  will  would  subdue  him  and  bring 
him  into  the  captivity  wherein  lies  perfect  freedom.  There 
is  a  passage  in  his  essay  on  the  "  Pulpit  and  Popular  Skep- 
ticism "  which  must  be  taken  not  only  as  his  appeal  to 
others,  but  as  the  outcry  of  his  own  soul,  where  he  calls  for  a 
powerful  Christ,  "  a  Christ  so  completely  powerful  that  once 
perfectly  present  with  a  human  soul  He  must  master  it  and 
it  must  yield  to  Him.  If  the  reason  why  men  doubt  Him  is 
that  they  do  not,  cannot,  will  not,  see  Him,  then  I  think  it 
must  be  certain  that  what  they  need  is  a  completer,  more 
living  presentation  of  His  personality,  so  that  He  shall  stand 
before  them  and  claim  what  always  was  His  claim, '  Believe 
in  Me,'  —  not  'Believe  this  or  that  about  Me,'  but  '  Believe 
in  Me.'"^  Like  all  great  men  and  strong  natures,  Phillips 
Brooks  could  live  only  in  contact  with  strength  and  greatness. 
For  this  reason  he  had  been  fascinated  by  Carlyle,  by  the 
study  of  Mohammed  and  Luther  and  Cromwell,  —  men  to 
whom  he  had  first  been  introduced  in  "  Heroes  and  Hero 
Worship."  But  as  Carlyle  had  been  disappointed  in  his 
search  for  great  men  in  history,  so  also  did  Phillips  Brooks 
become  disenchanted  with  Carlyle.  For  Carlyle  had  passed 
over  in  silence,  we  need  not  here  discuss  for  what  reason,  the 
strongest  man  in  history.  There  is  one  passage  in  his  writ- 
ings where  one  would  have  expected  at  least  some  allusion 
to  the  Founder  of  Christianity,  but  it  is  not  made.  The 
passage  may  be  given  as  indicating  the  point  where  Phillips 
Brooks  made  his  departure  from  the  famous  teacher.  It  is 
a  passage  significant  also  as  showing  how  men  were  content 
with  talking  about  a  situation  without  explaining  it :  — 

How  did  Christianity  arise  and  spread  abroad  among  men? 
Was  it  by  institutions  and  establishments  and  well-arranged  system 
of  mechanism  ?  Not  so ;  on  the  contrary,  in  all  past  and  existing 
institutions  for  those  ends,  its  divine  Spirit  has  invariably  been 
found  to  languish  and  decay.      It  arose  in  the  majestic  deeps  of 

^  Cf.  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  75. 


JET.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS       211 

man's  soul;  and  was  spread  abroad  by  the  "preaching  of  the 
word, "  by  simple,  altogether  natural  and  individual  efforts,  and 
flew,  like  hallowed  fire,  from  heart  to  heart,  till  all  were  purified 
and  illuminated  by  it;  and  its  heavenly  light  shone,  as  it  still 
shines,  and  as  sun  or  star  will  ever  shine,  through  the  whole  dark 
destinies  of  man.^ 

It  is  interesting  to  note  at  how  early  a  period  Phillips 
Brooks  fastened  upon  the  truth  which  was  to  underlie  and 
control  his  thinking.  He  had  begun  his  studies  for  the 
ministry  with  some  grave  misgivings  as  to  whether  the 
preacher  could  wield  the  power  which  the  times  demanded. 
He  soon  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  preacher's  influence 
depended  on  his  character  as  a  man,  that  truth  was  conta- 
gious through  personality.  Thus  in  a  sermon  preached  so 
early  as  1861,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  on  the  text,  St.  John 
xiv.  6 :  "  I  am  the  way  and  the  truth  and  the  life,"  he  had 
expressed  his  conviction  that  the  defect  of  the  age  was  its 
tendency  to  seek  after  abstract  truth  divested  of  personal 
relations  :  — 

I  maintain  that  all  such  impersonal  truth,  when  it  is  acquired, 
however  much  it  may  do  for  the  sharpening  and  stocking  the 
brains  and  improving  the  outward  conditions  of  mankind,  is  as 
bad  as  useless  as  far  as  any  immediate  effect  upon  the  character 
and  temperament  is  concerned.  All  truth  must  be  brought,  in 
order  to  be  effective,  through  a  personal  medium.  Which  of  us 
can  dare  to  say  that  he  would  hold  the  most  effective  truths  that 
he  believes  in  just  as  much  and  just  in  the  same  way  as  he  does 
now,  if  they  had  come  to  him  anonymously,  if  they  had  reached 
him  so  that  he  could  not  doubt  their  truth, but  resting  on  no  fellow 
man's  authority;  if  some  night  the  stars  had  spelt  out  the  story 
in  their  ordered  courses,  or  it  had  woven  itself  in  the  filmy  tissues 
of  a  dream,  or  the  morning  winds  had  awaked  us  with  it,  as  they 
blew  their  message  across  our  sleep  ?  We  have  some  personality 
behind  them  all;  a  mother's  voice  yet  trembles  in  them,  a  father's 
authority  makes  them  solemn,  a  teacher's  enthusiasm  will  not  let 
us  count  them  trivial,  and  so  they  first  have  gained  and  so  they 
still  hold  their  great  power  over  us. 

Yes,  it  is  the  personal  power  that  is  mighty  in  the  world.  It 
is  not  merely  a  difference  between  different  orders  of  minds,  that 
the  higher  are  more  moved  by  abstract  truth,  while  the  lower,  the 

^  Carlyle,  Miscellanies,  vol.  ii.  p.  242. 


212  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

great  mass  of  mankind,  are  open  only  to  the  more  palpable  touch 
of  personal  power.  That  is  the  conceit  of  culture.  All  men  are 
influenced  mostly  by  ernbodied  truth,  by  truth  coming  to  them 
through  some  relation  of  a  fellow  man.    .    .    . 

The  trouble  which  so  many  have  in  finding  any  power  in  the 
truths  that  they  believe  is,  that  strange  as  it  may  seem,  Chris- 
tianity is  to  multitudes  of  people  a  purely  abstract  system.  It 
has  lost  its  personal  aspect.  But  Christianity  is  what?  The 
service  of  Christ.  Its  very  essence  is  its  personality.  It  is  all 
built  about  a  person.  Take  Him  out  and  it  all  falls  to  pieces. 
Just  because  He  has  been  taken  out  of  the  religion  which  many  of 
us  call  our  Christianity,  just  for  that  reason  is  our  Christianity 
a  poor  thing  of  the  remote  brain,  bringing  no  peace  to  our  hearts, 
and  no  strength  to  our  hands,  no  comfort  to  our  sorrows,  and  no 
benediction  to  our  joy.* 

With  such  a  conviction  in  his  mind  he  had  rejected  the 
conception  of  Christ  offered  by  Strauss  in  his  "  Leben  Jesu," 
where  the  Christ-idea  was  presented  as  the  essential  thing, 
and  His  personality  of  no  account ;  so  that  it  would  have  made 
no  difference  in  the  result  if  Christ  had  been  the  product  of 
a  mythical  tendency,  not  an  actual  personage,  but  a  creation 
of  the  human  mind,  at  a  moment  when  the  tides  of  human 
aspiration  were  flowing  strongly.  All  this  now  seems  remote. 
It  has  become  hard  to  understand  that  such  a  view  should 
have  been  put  forth  by  a  serious  thinker.  But  the  work 
of  Strauss,  in  its  first  form,  and  translated  by  George  Eliot, 
had  great  vogue  in  the  middle  period  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. 

Again,  Phillips  Brooks  felt  repugnance  for  the  conception 
of  Christ  in  Kenan's  "  Vie  de  Jesu,"  where  Christ  is  drawn  as 
an  amiable  creature,  full  of  soft  and  tender  sentiment,  with 
no  strong  definite  purpose  of  a  mission  to  the  world,  acted 
upon  from  without,  changing  His  attitude,  involving  himself 
in  contradiction  and  inconsistency,  full  of  charming  naive 
impressions,  but  in  his  softness  possessing  strength.  It  is 
said  of  the  author  that  when  the  Germans  were  at  the  gates 
of  Paris,  he  stood  at  a  window  watching  the  careless  people 

^  Cf.  The  Message  of  Christ  to  Manhood,  being  the  William  Belden  Noble 
Lectures  for  1898,  p.  12,  where  this  passage  is  referred  to  in  a  study  of  Phillips 
Brooks. 


JET.  431     THE   INFLUENCE   OF  JESUS       213 

as  they  came  and  went,  and  remarked,  "  Voila  ce  qui  nous 
sauvera,  c'est  la  mollesse  de  cette  population." 

It  was  in  1865  that  the  book  "  Ecce  Homo  "  appeared,  by 
the  late  Professor  J.  R.  Seeley,  to  which  no  one  gave  more 
earnest  welcome  than  Phillips  Brooks.  It  may  be  called  the 
English  "  Life  of  Jesus  "  as  compared  with  the  works  of 
Renan  and  Strauss.  It  took  English  ground  in  discussing 
the  subject,  rendering  the  verdict  of  cool  common  sense  by 
an  inquirer  who  brushed  aside  as  irrelevant  the  difficulties 
created  by  Biblical  criticism.  The  author  refused  to  discuss 
the  actuality  or  the  possibility  of  the  miracles,  or  whether 
John  wrote  the  Fourth  Gospel,  whether  Luke  or  Matthew 
borrowed  from  Mark,  or  what  were  the  sources  of  Mark,  or 
when  exactly  these  narratives  were  written.  He  simply 
assumed  that  they  were  in  the  main  trustworthy,  and  that 
the  disciples  believed  that  Christ  worked  miracles.  This 
assumption  was  sufficient  for  his  argument.  One  element  in 
the  strength  of  the  book  lay  in  this,  that  when  the  author 
had  presented  the  picture  of  Christ,  it  so  explained  and 
justified  the  Christ  of  history  that  difficulties  about  the  nar- 
ratives and  sources  no  longer  embarrassed.  A  strong  man, 
the  strongest  man  in  history,  with  a  clear  view  of  His  purpose 
from  the  moment  He  began  to  teach ;  no  mere  teacher  uttering 
placidly  His  sentiments,  but  from  the  first  assuming  the  posi- 
tion of  an  authoritative  lawgiver,  enforcing  His  word  by 
the  most  powerful  of  sanctions,  calling  into  existence  a  society, 
legislating  for  that  society  to  the  end  of  time,  —  this  was  in 
outline  the  Christ  in  the  pages  of  "  Ecce  Homo."  "  The 
achievement  of  Christ  in  founding  by  His  single  will  and 
power  a  structure  so  durable  and  so  universal  is  like  no 
other  achievement  which  history  records.  The  masterpieces 
of  the  men  of  action  are  coarse  and  common  in  comparison 
with  it,  and  the  masterpieces  of  speculation  flimsy  and  unsub- 
stantial. When  we  speak  of  it  the  commonplaces  of  admi- 
ration fail  us  altogether."  ^ 

The  welcome  which  Phillips  Brooks  gave  to  "  Ecce  Homo  " 
did  not  mean  that  he  accepted  its  presentation  of  Christ  as 

1  Cf .  Am.  ed.  p.  354. 


214  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

complete  or  final.  We  shall  see  that  the  total  picture  of 
Jesus  in  his  mind  after  years  of  reflection  was  quite  different. 
But  it  included  at  least  the  conception  of  strength  and 
authority,  and  also  the  method,  which  waived  the  questions 
raised  by  Biblical  criticism  in  regard  to  the  genuineness  and 
authenticity  of  New  Testament  writings,  as  having  no  practi- 
cal bearing  upon  the  final  issue  or  on  the  work  of  the 
preacher.  He  followed  the  conflicts  of  scholarship  on  these 
points,  but  never  allowed  them  to  embarrass  his  mind. 

When  Phillips  Brooks  came  to  Boston  in  1869  he  found 
that  the  New  England  Transcendentalists  had  left  their  in- 
fluence on  the  public  mind.  This  brilliant  group  of  scholars 
and  thinkers  were  asking  the  question.  What  is  truth,  and 
what  are  the  canons  for  determining  its  authority?  The 
answer  uniformly  given  was  that  the  authority  was  within 
the  soul,  and  faith  was  the  direct  vision  of  the  truth.  This 
was  positive  teaching,  but  it  was  accompanied  by  large  nega- 
tions. No  special  unique  authority  was  accorded  to  the  books 
of  Scripture  or  to  the  person  of  Christ.  Christ  was  spoken 
of  with  respect  and  even  reverence  as  a  great  teacher,  but 
it  was  one  of  the  conventionalities  of  transcendental  speech 
to  associate  Him  with  others,  more  particularly  with  Socrates 
or  Plato.  It  became  a  sort  of  commonplace  among  them  to 
speak  of  "  Socrates  and  Jesus  and  Mohammed."  It  is  said  of 
one  of  those  eminent  among  this  brilliant  school  of  thinkers 
and  talkers  that  on  a  certain  occasion,  speaking  before  a 
small  audience,  he  ventured  to  place  himself  in  the  same 
category,  —  "Socrates,  Jesus,  and  myself."  He  even  de- 
clared that  he  was  willing  to  make  the  words  of  Jesus  his 
own,  and  to  proclaim,  "  I  am  the  resurrection  and  the  life." 
When  one  of  his  audience  demurred,  querying  whether  he 
would  be  believed  if  he  made  such  a  proclamation,  his  reply 
was  that  such  a  demurrer  could  only  come  from  an  unregener- 
ate  Calvinist. 

The  Transcendental  school  had  found  its  chief  religious 
exponent  in  Boston  in  Theodore  Parker  (1860).  He  ac- 
cepted its  principle  to  the  fullest  extent,  that  the  inward, 
individual  assurance  of  truth  was  its  highest  and  sole  author- 


^T.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS        215 

ity.  He  was  a  courageous  man,  fighting  his  way  through 
great  difficulties  in  heroic  fashion.  But  he  became  entangled  in 
controversy ;  his  tone  grew  more  aggressive  and  vehement  as 
he  assumed  the  position  of  an  iconoclast.  He  made  no  effort 
to  appreciate  his  opponent's  attitude.  He  did  not  recognize 
that  sober  combination  of  the  transcendental  principle  with 
historic  Christianity  which  gave  distinction  and  influence  to 
Coleridge,  marking  a  new  era  in  the  theology  of  the  Church 
of  England.  In  his  vehement  desire  to  enforce  the  truth  he 
saw  he  made  utterances  which  did  him  injustice,  and  taken 
without  qualification  did  injury  to  others.  Here  are  passages 
from  his  famous  sermon  on  "  The  Transient  and  the  Per- 
manent in  Christianity "  which  reveal  at  once  his  strength 
and  weakness :  — 

That  pure  ideal  religion  which  Jesus  saw  on  the  mount  of  his 
vision  and  lived  out  in  the  lowly  life  of  a  Galilean  peasant ;  which 
transforms  his  cross  into  an  emblem  of  all  that  is  holiest  on  earth ; 
which  makes  sacred  the  ground,  he  trod  and  is  dearest  to  the  best 
of  men,  most  true  to  what  is  truest  in  them, —  cannot  pass  away. 
Let  men  improve  never  so  far  in  civilization,  or  soar  never  so 
high  on  the  wings  of  religion  and  love,  they  never  can  outgo  the 
flight  of  truth  and  Christianity.      It  will  always  be  above  them. 

Yet  in  this  same  sermon  he  denies  that  the  truth  which 
Jesus  taught  depended  on  His  personality  for  its  propagating 
power  in  the  world  :  — 

Almost  every  sect  that  has  ever  been  makes  Christianity  rest 
on  the  personal  authority  of  Jesus,  and  not  the  immutable  truth 
of  the  doctrines  themselves  or  the  authority  of  God  who  sent  him 
into  the  world.  Yet  it  seems  difficult  to  conceive  any  reason  why 
moral  and  religious  truths  should  rest  for  their  support  on  the 
personal  authority  of  their  revealer,  any  more  than  the  truths  of 
science  on  that  of  him  who  makes  them  known  first  or  most 
clearly.  It  is  hard  to  see  why  the  great  truths  of  Christianity 
rest  on  the  personal  authority  of  Jesus  more  than  the  axioms  of 
geometry  rest  on  the  personal  authority  of  Euclid  or  Archimedes. 
The  authority  of  Jesus,  as  of  all  teachers,  one  would  naturally 
think,  must  rest  on  the  truth  of  his  words,  and  not  their  truth  on 
his  authority.^ 

1  Discourse  of  Matters  pertaining  to  Religion,  p.  244,  Boaton,  ed.  1842. 


ai6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

Even  Parker's  friends  and  sympathizers  were  disturbed  by 
this  last  statement.  Mr.  Martineau  called  it  a  "  painful  para- 
dox," intimating  that  he  used  language  in  other  places  incon- 
sistent with  it.  But  Parker  was  on  fire  with  his  conviction 
that  every  soul  should  be  the  judge  and  arbiter  of  truth  in 
virtue  of  the  gift  of  immediate  vision.  Painful  though  the 
paradox  might  be,  he  repeated  it  in  his  later  "  Discourse  of 
Religion,"  and  in  more  intense  and  aggravated  form,  "  If 
Christianity  be  true  at  all  it  would  be  just  as  true  if  Herod 
or  Catiline  had  taught  it." 

Phillips  Brooks  sought  to  avoid  controversy,  and  his  book 
on  the  "  Influence  of  Jesus  "  is  impersonal,  reviewing  the 
religious  situation  of  his  time,  yet  mentioning  no  names  or 
treatises,  although  familiar  with  them  all.  But  the  following 
passage  from  its  opening  pages,  where  he  states  his  purpose, 
shows  that  he  felt  called  upon  to  resist  the  disintegrating 
tendency  in  the  popular  mind,  springing  from  the  belief  that 
the  personal  character  of  the  teacher  may  be  disconnected 
from  the  message :  — 

What  is  the  power  of  Christianity  over  mankind,  its  source,  its 
character,  its  issue?  That  is  the  question  which  I  wish  to  study 
with  you  in  these  four  lectures  I  have  been  invited  to  deliver. 
...  I  have  been  led  to  think  of  Christianity  and  to  speak  of  it, 
at  least  in  these  lectures,  not  as  a  system  of  doctrine,  but  as 
a  personal  force,  behind  which  and  in  which  there  lies  one 
great  and  inspiring  idea,  which  it  is  the  work  of  the  personal 
force  to  impress  upon  the  life  of  man,  with  which  the  personal 
force  is  always  struggling  to  fill  mankind.  The  personal  force  is 
the  nature  of  Jesus,  full  of  humanity,  full  of  divinity,  and  power- 
ful with  a  love  for  man  which  combines  in  itself  every  element 
that  enters  into  love  of  the  completest  kind.  .  .  .  Every  man's 
power  is  his  idea  multiplied  by  and  projected  through  his  per- 
sonality. The  special  actions  which  he  does  are  only  the  points 
at  which  his  power  shows  itself.  .  .  .  The  power  of  Jesus  is  the 
idea  of  Jesus  multiplied  and  projected  through  the  person  of 
Jesus.  .  .  .  The  message  entrusted  to  the  Son  of  God  when  He 
came  to  be  the  Saviour  of  mankind  was  not  only  something  which 
He  knew  and  taught;  it  was  something  which  He  was.  .  .  . 
The  idea  and  the  person  are  so  mingled  that  we  cannot  separate 
them.  He  is  the  truth,  and  whoever  receives  Him  becomes  the 
son  of  God.^ 

1  Influence  of  Jesus,  pp.  12, 13. 


^T.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE  OF   JESUS        217 

And  again,  in  another  passage,  he  makes  this  more  definite 
allusion,  "  Not  from  simple  brain  to  simple  brain,  as  the  rea- 
soning of  Euclid  comes  to  its  students,  but  from  total  charac- 
ter to  total  character,  comes  the  New  Testament  from  God  to 


man 


"  1 


We  are  admitted  behind  the  scenes,  as  it  were,  when  we 
turn  to  the  note-book,  in  which  Mr.  Brooks  is  seen  making 
the  preparation  for  his  book  on  the  "  Influence  of  Jesus." 
He  rarely  changed  his  plan  when  he  had  once  fixed  upon  it ; 
but  in  this  case  he  made  a  notable  change.  He  had  intended 
to  call  his  subject  "  Faith  and  Life."  The  respective  lectures 
were  to  be  entitled  (1)  "  Faith  and  Morals  ;  "  (2)  "  Faith 
and  Society ;  "  (3)  "  Faith  in  Eelation  to  Pain  and  Plea- 
sure ;  "  (4)  "  Faith  and  the  Intellectual  Life."  He  drew  up 
a  synopsis  of  each  lecture,  rich  in  spiritual  suggestiveness. 
His  object  was  a  defence  of  the  spiritual  interpretation 
of  life.  Then  suddenly,  and  as  it  would  seem  at  the  last 
moment,  he  changed  his  subject,  and  hastily  modified  the 
plan  of  treatment.  He  may  have  felt  that  this  first  scheme 
was  weak  in  that  it  put  him  in  controversial  or  defensive 
attitude,  not  the  most  effective  method  of  accomplishing 
his  aim.  As  he  came  closer  to  his  task  the  real  motive  which 
inspired  him  was  growing  more  clear  and  definite.  Behind 
the  Christian  faith  and  life  stood  the  Christ.  To  give 
the  portrait  of  Him  anew  to  the  world  was  better  to  accom- 
plish the  end  in  view.  Here  are  some  of  the  sentences  from 
his  note-book  which  betray  first  the  working  of  his  mind :  — 

For  centuries  the  Christian  faith  has  been  and  still  is  making 
life.  We  have  Life  from  which  to  tell  what  the  faith  is  and 
Faith  to  tell  what  the  life  must  be.  What  is  Christianity  that 
it  makes  such  men  as  these  ? 

How  far  may  we  legitimately  think  that  the  present  condition 
of  the  social  and  personal  life  of  Christendom  is  due  to  Christian 
Faith?  Very  largely.  Point  to  church,  Bible,  uniqueness  of 
Christendom,  and  unwillingness  of  all  men  to  disown  first  Chris- 
tian ideas. 

The  Faith  and  the  Man,  then,  we  want  to  trace  in  relation  to 
one  another.     The  Faith  we  find  in  the  Book  to  which  the  heart 

^  Influence  of  Jesus,  p.  234. 


21 8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

of  man  has  always  returned  more  truly  than  it  thinks.  The  man 
we  find  in  History.  —  Observation  and  consciousness.  —  There  are 
two  questions  —  What  has  Christianity  made  of  man  ?  and  What, 
when  it  is  freed  from  all  hindrance  and  given  its  full  power,  can  it 
make  of  him  ? 

Such  an  inquiry,  it  will  be  seen,  was  too  vast,  and  almost 
beyond  human  capacity  to  execute.  Still  it  is  interesting  to 
know  that  it  was  in  his  mind,  nor  could  it  have  failed  to  pro- 
duce fruit.  It  was  a  larger  background,  vague,  perhaps,  and 
unexplored  in  all  its  subtle  unperceived  relations,  yet  rein- 
forcements came  from  it  at  every  turn.  The  thing  to  do,  the 
simplest  and  yet  the  truest,  the  method  which  could  not  be 
questioned,  was  to  study  the  influence  of  Jesus  as  the  seed 
which  had  been  actually  lodged  in  the  heart  of  humanity. 

The  lectures  were  written  with  the  greatest  rapidity,  for 
the  time  at  his  disposal  was  short.  They  were  begun  at  the 
Christmas  season,  when  the  claims  of  parish  and  social  life 
were  most  pressing,  but  he  brought  to  them  the  preparation 
of  years.  He  wrote  them  out  of  his  own  soul,  full  of 
emotion  and  intellectual  fervor.  Many  of  his  sermons  were 
here  condensed,  a  sermon  in  a  paragraph ;  such,  for  example, 
as  he  preached  when  Principal  TuUoch  was  listening,  with  its 
flash  of  insight  and  reality.  The  constant  study  of  the  Bible 
and  of  the  life  of  Christ,  wherein  he  had  gained  more  than  he 
could  give  in  yearly  Bible  class  or  Lenten  meditations,  or 
Wednesday  evening  lectures,  was  yielding  its  unsuspected 
contributions.  The  book  was  done  in  haste,  but  it  was  the 
product  of  the  long,  slow  processes  of  life. 

And  still  another  circumstance  must  be  mentioned,  most 
important  of  all.  As  he  wrote  his  heart  was  very  tender,  for 
he  was  passing  through  a  great  sorrow  in  the  last  illness  and 
death  of  his  father.  That  event  in  his  experience  left  its 
impression  on  his  theology,  for  his  theology  was  the  reflex  of 
the  revelation  of  life. 

It  is  intended  in  these  remarks  that  follow  to  point  out 
some  features  of  the  book,  in  its  methods  and  conclusions, 
which  will  throw  light  on  the  position  that  Phillips  Brooks 
occupied  in  his  age.     In   the  first  place,  he  attempted  the 


^T.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS        219 

portrayal  of  a  strong  Christ,  whose  mastery  was  capable  of 
dominating  every  soul,  and  of  subduing  all  humanity  to  Him- 
seK.  To  this  end  he  boldly  identified  the  personality  of 
Jesus  with  the  essence  of  His  religion.  By  personality  he 
understood  the  inmost  nature  and  character,  that  within  a 
man  which  rules  the  life.  He  had  brought  out  this  truth 
in  his  "  Lectures  on  Preaching,"  and  elsewhere  in  his  writ- 
ings. But  now  he  drags  it  once  more  into  the  foreground  of 
a  great  picture,  holding  it  up  to  his  hearers  with  tireless 
energy,  and  with  all  the  strength  of  eloquent  conviction. 
Others  had  thought  of  it,  perhaps  only  a  few  would  have  denied 
it.  But  everything  depends  on  the  prominence  which  is  given 
to  a  principle.  This  is  originality,  this  constitutes  power,  to 
make  a  truth  supreme  through  the  setting  which  is  given  it. 
Thus  it  becomes  a  new  truth.  Here  lay  the  distinctive  dif- 
ference between  him  and  his  predecessors.  It  was  not 
enough  to  present  Christ  as  a  moral  Guide,  uttering  ethical 
precepts  worthy  of  obedience  ;  nor  as  the  Master,  imparting 
knowledge  and  conveying  information  about  the  spiritual 
world.  He  was  indeed  the  Way,  and  He  was  the  Truth, 
but  He  was  these  because  He  was  first  the  Life. 

This  principle  of  the  identification  of  the  personality  of  the 
teacher  with  his  message,  the  culmination  of  precept  and  of 
truth  in  a  life,  might  be  in  danger  of  becoming  a  formula, 
another  shibboleth  in  religion,  an  idea  abstract  and  unprofit- 
able, unless  the  secret  of  the  personality  of  Jesus  could  be  un- 
veiled, and  become  the  living  possession  of  humanity.  This  was 
the  task,  undertaken  in  the  "  Influence  of  Jesus,"  to  present 
the  idea  which  inspired  Him,  the  clue  to  His  divine  conscious- 
ness, and  the  motive  of  His  acts.  This  inspiring  idea  is  "  the 
Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  childhood  of  every  man  in  Him." 

Upon  the  race  and  upon  the  individual,  Jesus  is  always  bring- 
ing into  more  and  more  perfect  revelation  the  certain  truth  that 
man  and  every  man  is  the  child  of  God.  This  is  the  sum  of  the 
work  of  the  Incarnation.  A  hundred  other  statements  regarding 
it,  regarding  Him  who  was  incarnate  are  true;  but  all  statements 
concerning  Him  hold  their  truth  within  this  truth,  —  that  Jesus 
came  to  restore  the  fact  of  God's  fatherhood  to  man's  knowledge 
and  to  its  central  place  of  power  over  man's  life  (p.  12). 


220  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

There  is  a  change  in  the  tone  of  the  Bohlen  Lectures  when 
compared  with  the  Yale  Lectures  on  the  "Teaching  of  Reli- 
gion." Then  religion  had  been  defined  to  be  the  life  of  man  in 
gratitude,  obedience,  and  growing  likeness  to  Christ.  Now 
it  is  conceived  as  the  "relation  of  childhood  and  fatherhood 
between  man  and  God." 

Man  is  the  child  of  God  by  nature.  He  is  ignorant  and  rebel- 
lious —  the  prodigal  child  of  God ;  but  his  ignorance  and  rebellion 
never  break  that  first  relationship.  It  is  always  a  child  ignorant 
of  his  Father;  always  a  child  rebellious  against  his  Father. 
That  is  what  makes  the  tragedy  of  human  history,  and  always 
prevents  human  sin  from  becoming  an  insignificant  and  squalid 
thing.  To  reassert  the  childhood  and  fatherhood  as  an  unlost 
truth,  and  to  reestablish  its  power  as  the  central  fact  of  life ;  to 
tell  men  that  they  were,  and  to  make  them  actually  to  be,  the  sons 
of  God  —  that  was  the  purpose  of  the  coming  of  Jesus  and  the 
shaping  power  of  his  life.    .    .    . 

It  is  more  important  than  we  often  think,  that  we  should  grasp 
the  general  idea,  the  general  purpose,  of  the  life  of  Jesus.  The 
Gospels  become  to  us  a  new  book  when  we  no  longer  read  them 
merely  as  the  anecdotes  of  the  life  of  one  who,  with  a  great,  kind 
heart,  went  through  the  world  promiscuously  doing  good  as  oppor- 
tunities occurred  to  Him.  The  drifting  and  haphazard  currents 
gather  themselves  together,  and  we  are  borne  on  with  the  full  and 
enthusiastic  impulse  of  a  great  river  which  knows  itself  and  knows 
the  sea  it  seeks.  And  when  the  ruling  idea  is  this  which  fills  the 
life  of  Jesus,  it  is  doubly  true  that  only  by  clearly  seizing  it  can 
we  get  at  the  heart  and  meaning  of  His  life  (pp.  16,  17). 

It  had  been  the  usage  in  the  Evangelical  school,  in  which 
Mr.  Brooks  was  reared,  to  speak  only  of  the  baptized  or  the 
regenerate  as  the  children  of  God.  The  stress  was  laid  upon 
the  grace  by  which  the  change  was  accomplished  that  made  a 
man  a  child  of  God,  who  before  the  change  was  not  entitled 
to  the  name.  Phillips  Brooks  did  not  deny  the  change,  nor 
its  necessity ;  he  affirmed  it  in  all  his  preaching,  declaring  it 
to  be  wrought  of  God.  But  he  builds  upon  the  antecedent 
truth  that  every  man  is  the  child  of  God  by  nature.  It  is 
because  he  is  the  child  by  nature  that  he  is  capable  of  becom- 
ing the  child  by  grace.  In  making  this  truth  a  first  principle 
in  his  teaching,  he  was  not  departing  from,  but  rather  reaffirm- 
ing what  the  Church  of  England,  followed  by  the  Protestant 


^T.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE   OF  JESUS        221 

Episcopal  Church  in  America,  had  asserted  in  its  standards. 
There  were  those  in  the  Anglican  Church  who  had  preceded 
him  in  building  on  this  truth,  —  Maurice  and  Eobertson, 
Ewing,  the  Bishop  of  Argyle,  and  many  others.  He  differed 
from  them,  if  he  differed  at  all,  in  making  it  the  basis  of  his 
powerful  appeal  in  the  pulpit,  as  also  in  making  it  the  cen- 
tral point  from  which  by  necessary  inference  proceeded  all 
other  religious  teaching.  He  brought  together  nature  and 
grace,  the  creation  and  the  redemption,  in  organic  relation- 
ship. All  men  alike  everywhere  inherited  in  virtue  of  their 
birthright  the  privilege  to  pray,  "Our  Father,  which  art  in 
heaven."  , 

Surely,  we  cannot  be  wrong  if  we  say  positively  that  to  Christ 
himself  the  truth  that  man  was  God's  child  by  nature  was  the 
great  fact  of  man's  existence;  and  the  desire  that  man  might  be 
God's  child  in  reality  was  the  motive  of  His  own  life  and  work 
(p.  20). 

The  merit  and  power  of  this  idea  of  divine  fatherhood 
revealed  in  the  natural  order  and  carried  up  into  the  spiritual 
is  seen  first  in  Christian  morality.  Ethics  have  often  been 
separated  from  religion.     Phillips  Brooks  identifies  them. 

The  difference  between  Christian  morality  and  any  other  which 
the  world  has  seen  does  not  consist  in  the  difference  of  its  pre- 
cepts, —  for  these  can  be  matched  in  no  other  codes ;  the  sub- 
stance and  power  of  moral  law  does  not  lie  in  its  commandments, 
but  in  the  conception  of  the  commander  which  breathes  through  it 
and  gives  it  life.  The  motive  of  all  the  injunctions  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  the  Father,  first  as  the  standard  of 
the  moral  life  enforced,  and  then  as  the  power  by  which  that 
standard  is  pursued  and  attained.  There  is  nothing  abstract  and 
cold.  Everything  shines  and  burns  with  personal  affection.  "Be 
ye  perfect  even  as  your  Father  which  is  in  Heaven."  "Love  your 
enemies,  that  ye  may  be  the  children  of  your  Father."  "Let  your 
light  shine  before  men  that  they  may  glorify  your  Father." 
"  Blessed  are  the  peacemakers,  for  they  shall  be  called  the  children 
of  God."  The  idea  of  God  which  fills  the  great  discourse  is  the 
idea  of  the  father. 

Most  men  have  held  separately  the  principles  of  authority 
and  reasonableness.     Lordship  and  command  have  gone  with 


222  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

kingship,  love  and  care  have  been  associated  with  the  father- 
hood. But  here  they  are  combined  as  organically  one. 
Kingship  in  its  primary  conception  means  fatherhood.  The 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  keeps  the  combination  of  reason  and 
authority,  the  essential  and  the  arbitrary,  which  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  child's  obedience  in  the  earthly  household. 

I  am  sure  that  all  of  us  have  felt,  as  we  have  read  those  sacred 
chapters  of  St.  Matthew,  how  exquisitely  these  two  lights  play 
through  them  and  harmonize  with  one  another,  —  the  light  that 
comes  to  any  duty  from  the  command  of  God  that  we  should  do  it, 
and  the  light  which  the  same  duty  wins  because  we  ourselves  per- 
ceive that  it  is  the  right  thing  to  do  (p.  32). 

Here  is  a  passage  in  which  Phillips  Brooks  is  at  one  with 
those  who  have  asserted  the  arbitrary  sovereignty  of  God,  as 
if  in  its  very  arbitrariness  lay  its  charm,  —  Augustine  and 
Anselm,  Calvin  and  Edwards :  — 

The  essence  of  every  beatitude  is  in  the  human  heart,  and  yet 
the  human  heart  loves  to  hear  the  utterance  of  the  beatitudes  from 
the  mouth  of  God  as  if  they  were  His  arbitrary  enactments 
(p.  32). 

It  is  the  experience  of  the  earthly  home  wherein  is  learned 
the  reconciliation  between  the  arbitrary  will  and  the  awaken- 
ing mind  which  calls  for  the  reason  of  the  enactment :  — 

I  want  you  to  notice  that  this  interplay  of  essentialness  and 
arbitrariness  is  exactly  what  characterizes  every  true  home  life, 
when  the  children  learn  truth  and  receive  commandments  from 
their  father.  The  child's  partial  and  growing  perception  that  it 
must  be  so  chimes  and  harmonizes  with  the  father's  injunction 
that  it  shall  be  so. 

All  this  is  so  simple  and  clear,  and  withal  satisfactory,  that 
one  does  not  at  first  realize  the  width  and  depth  of  the  abyss 
he  is  bridging.  This  had  been  the  question  of  the  ages, 
dividing  the  schools  from  the  time  of  Augustine,  —  whether 
the  arbitrary  will  in  God  takes  the  precedence  or  the  reason- 
ing mind?  Phillips  Brooks,  we  shall  see  it  more  plainly  as 
we  proceed,  tends  to  fuse  intellect  and  will  into  organic  unity ; 
but  yet  if  we  may  distinguish,  where  he  refused  to  make  the 


^T.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE   OF   JESUS       223 

distinction,  at  the  heart  of  the  mystery  of  the  universe,  it  is 
will,  not  idea,  always  the  loving  will  of  the  Father. 

The  motive  of  ethics  is  the  filial  sense;  and  the  standard  is 
likeness  to  God.  The  question  is  raised  whether  this  stan- 
dard be  intelligible  and  practicable.  The  answer  is  derived 
from  the  first  great  principle  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God  and 
the  sonship  of  every  man. 

It  is  in  the  fact  that  He  is  your  Father,  and  that  you  are  His 
Child,  that  the  possibility  of  likeness  lies  and  that  the  kind  of 
possible  likeness  is  decreed.  You  are  to  be  like  Him  as  the  child 
is  like  the  father,  by  the  attainment  of  that  echo  of  the  Father's 
nature  which  is  the  child's  essential  inheritance.  You  are  to  be 
like  him  by  coming  to  that  expression  of  Him  which  is  the  true 
idea  of  your  child  life.  You  are  to  fulfil  the  unfulfilled  pro- 
gramme of  your  own  life,  which  is  involved  in  the  fact  that  you 
are  a  child  of  God.  .  .  .  Man  is  to  return  into  the  idea  of  his 
own  life  as  the  son  of  God.  He  is  to  be  equal  to  his  own  concep- 
tion, as  that  conception  is  written  in  the  nature  of  the  Holy  Be- 
ing from  whom  he  came  and  to  whom  he  belongs.  At  least,  that 
is  a  standard  whose  perpetual  presence  shaped  our  Lord's  treat- 
ment of  the  men  and  women  whom  He  was  trying  to  restore  (p.  36). 

He  sums  up  his  treatment  of  the  ethical  life  by  dwelling 
on  some  of  the  perpetual  marks  of  a  morality  which  is  the 
outgrowth  of  such  a  faith.  First,  there  is  the  duty  of  senti- 
ment, —  thou  shalt  love.  He  notes  the  exaltation  of  senti- 
ment over  action,  —  the  action  valuable  as  the  utterance  of 
sentiment.  There  is  danger  of  weakness  here  and  of  senti- 
mentality, but  in  the  end  is  vitality  and  permanence.  No 
Christian  should  be  ashamed  of  this  quality  of  love  and  duty. 
Second,  the  harmony  between  the  absolute  standard  of 
goodness  and  the  various  responsibilities  of  men,  discrimina- 
tions which  yet  do  not  tamper  with  the  unchangeable  sanctity 
of  righteousness.  Third,  the  attainment  of  humility  by 
aspiration  and  not  by  depression.  And  fourth,  the  morality 
of  Jesus  as  involving  the  only  true  secret  of  courage  and  of 
the  freedom  that  comes  from  courage.  Courage  is  a  positive 
thing,  not  merely  the  absence  of  fear,  but  "that  compactness 
and  clear  coherence  of  all  a  man's  faculties  and  powers  which 
makes  his  manhood  a  single  operative  tmit  in  the  world." 


224  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

What  is  now  known  as  "sociology"  had  not  then  attained 
the  prominence  which  it  has  since  reached.  The  late  F.  D. 
Maurice  had  been  the  leader  in  England  of  a  movement  called 
Christian  socialism,  destined  to  become  popular  among  the 
English  clergy  and  laity;  but  with  this  movement  Phillips 
Brooks  never  identified  himself.  He  noted  with  some  sur- 
prise and  regret,  in  his  later  visits  to  England,  that  the  rising 
generation  of  clergy  were  turning  aside  from  Maurice's 
theology  in  order  to  devote  themselves  more  exclusively  to 
social  studies  and  methods  of  social  reform.  He  deprecated 
the  change,  for  it  seemed  to  him  as  if  it  waived  the  more 
vital  method,  out  of  which  alone  social  progress  must 
come,  —  a  confession,  also,  that  the  theological  and  religious 
problem  was  insoluble.  His  own  conception  of  social  develop- 
ment is  here  given :  — 

The  character  of  Christ's  own  reforming  spirit  was  clear 
enough.  He  said  that  he  wanted  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil  the 
agencies  which  he  here  found  in  the  world.  He  never  cared  to 
reshape  circumstances  until  he  had  regenerated  men.  He  let  the 
shell  stand  as  he  found  it  until  the  new  life  within  it  could  burst  it 
for  itself.  It  is  very  wonderful  to  me  to  see  how  thoroughly  His 
disciples  caught  His  method.  They  could  not  have  caught  it  so 
completely  and  so  soon  if  it  had  not  been  that  it  was  based  on  a 
large  principle,  if  it  had  not  been  more  than  a  special  method  or 
trick.  Almost  instantly,  as  soon  as  the  disciples  began  their  work, 
they  seem  to  have  been  filled  with  a  true  conception  of  its  divine 
method,  —  that  not  from  outside,  but  from  inside;  not  by  the 
remodelling  of  institutions,  but  by  the  change  of  character ;  not  by 
the  suppression  of  vices,  but  by  the  destruction  of  sin,  the  world 
was  to  be  saved.  That  truth  with  whose  vitality  all  modern  life 
has  flourished,  with  its  forgetfulness  of  which  all  modern  history 
has  always  tended  to  corruption,  that  truth  only  dreamed  of  by  a 
few  spiritual  philosophers  in  the  ancient  world,  —  it  is  one  of  the 
marvellous  phenomena  of  human  thought,  that  it  should  have 
leaped  full  grown  to  life  with  the  first  of  Christianity.  A  few 
faint  flutterings  about  the  old  methods  of  repression,  and  the  dis- 
ciples of  Jesus  settle  at  once  to  the  new  methods  of  development 
(p.  253). 

But  Phillips  Brooks  was  alive  to  the  importance  of  the 
social  aspect  of  Christianity,  as  is  seen  in  his  treatment  of 


^T.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE   OF  JESUS       225 

the  "Influence  of  Jesus  on  the  Social  Life."  He  takes  the 
Madonna,  prominent  in  ecclesiastical  art,  as  the  true  type  of 
the  Christian  religion,  rather  than  the  Sphinx,  calm  and 
eternal  in  its  solitude.-'  Both  recognize  the  feminine  nature 
of  the  religious  instinct;  but  the  first  is  Christian  because 
so  truly  human;  "it  has  not  lost  humanity  in  trying  to 
interpret  Deity."  "A  father,  a  mother,  and  a  child  are 
there  in  the  scene  at  Bethlehem.  No  religion  which  began 
like  that  could  ever  lose  its  character."  The  first  unit  of 
human  life  is  the  personality  of  the  newborn  child,  the  second 
unit  is  the  family.  In  showing  what  Jesus  was  to  his  fellow 
men,  it  is  most  important  to  recognize  the  growth  in  his 
consciousness  from  childhood  to  manhood  mediated  by  the 
human  family. 

I  think  that  it  is  a  most  happy  sign  of  the  healthy  reality  which 
the  life  of  Jesus  is  gaining  in  men's  thoughts  in  these  modern 
days,  that  this  idea  of  the  development  of  His  consciousness,  the 
gradual  growth  into  the  knowledge  and  the  use  of  His  own  nature, 
is  no  longer  an  idea  that  bewilders  and  shocks  the  believer  in  our 
Lord's  divinity.  It  is  felt  to  be  a  necessary  part  of  the  belief  in 
His  humanity.  .  .  .  The  seventeenth  century  believed  the  divinity 
of  Christ,  but  its  belief  in  the  divine  Christ  was  weak,  and  the 
belief  in  the  human  Christ  was  well-nigh  lost,  and  with  this  loss 
I  cannot  but  feel  that  we  must  in  some  way  connect  the  dislike  of 
Christmas  and  its  observance  which  then  arose  and  which  is  but 
just  now  passing  entirely  away.  .  .  .  The  whole  idea  of  child- 
hood, with  its  necessary  concomitant  idea  of  growth,  was  a  be- 
wilderment and  almost  an  offence  to  that  theology  whose  Christ 
was  a  mysterious  and  unaccountable  being,  a  true  spiritual  Mel- 
chisedec,  without  vivid  and  real  human  associations,  without  age, 
without  realized  locality,  a  dogma,  a  creed,  a  fulfilment  of  pro- 
phecy, an  adjustment  of  relations,  not  a  man.  It  is  because 
Jesus  to-day  is  intensely  real,  intensely  human  to  us,  that  we 
welcome  and  do  not  dread  the  truth  of  increase  and  development 
from  childhood  to  the  full  strength  and  stature  of  a  man  (pp. 
78,  79). 

This  chapter  on  the  "  Influence  of  Jesus  on  the  Social  Life 
of  Man  "  is  written  with  the  conviction  that  the  key  to  all 
Christ's  treatment  of  men  is  the  constant  desire  to  foster  the 

^  Cf .  vol.  i.  p.  570,  for  the  first  form  which  is  given  to  this  striking  compar- 
ison.   See,  also,  Influence  of  Jesus,  pp.  73,  74. 
VOL.  n 


226  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

consciousness  of  divine  sonsliip  by  intercourse  with  those  who 
are  fellow  sons  of  the  same  Father.  The  incidents  in  the  life 
of  Christ  are  brought  together  with  singular  felicity  in  illus- 
tration of  this  truth,  that  the  social  nature  of  man  is  the  pro- 
vision at  once  for  his  most  complete  self -consciousness  and 
for  his  fullest  activity  and  efficiency.  So  important  is  the 
social  life  in  the  constitution  of  humanity  that  it  must  needs 
have  its  analogue  in  Deity. 

It  was  by  losing  His  life  in  the  multitude  and  mass  of  lives,  in 
the  body  of  humanity  to  which  He  belonged,  that  Jesus  at  once 
found  His  own  life  and  found  the  lives  of  the  lost,  whom  He  had 
come  to  seek.  At  the  very  outset  He  bore  witness  that  not  in 
absolute  singleness,  not  in  elemental  unity  and  perfect  solitude  of 
being,  is  the  highest  existence  to  be  found.  He  recognized  at  once 
in  man  that  multiplicity  and  power  of  relationshij)  within  the  unit 
of  humanity  which  makes  the  richness  of  our  human  life.  If  it 
be  so,  as  we  believe  it  is,  that  in  the  constitution  of  humanity  we 
have  the  fairest  written  analogue  and  picture  of  the  Divine  exist- 
ence, then  shall  we  not  say  that  the  human  Christ  gave  us,  in  the 
value  which  He  set  on  human  relationships,  in  His  social  thought 
of  man,  an  insight  into  the  essentialness  and  value  of  that  social 
thought  of  God,  which  we  call  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  ?  May 
it  not  be  that  only  by  multiplicity  and  interior  self-relationship 
can  Divinity  have  the  completest  self-consciousness  and  energy  ? 
Surely,  the  reverent  and  thoughtful  eye  must  see  some  such  mean- 
ing when  Jesus  himself  makes  the  eternal  companionship  of  the 
life  of  Deity  the  pattern  and  picture  of  the  best  society  of  the 
souls  of  the  earth,  and  breathes  out  to  His  Father  these  deep  and 
wondrous  words,  "As  thou  Father  art  in  Me  and  I  in  Thee  that 
they  all  may  be  one  in  us." 

The  subject  of  the  social  life  of  man  leads  him  to  the  con- 
sideration of  its  relation  to  the  individual  life.  This  is  an 
ancient  and  familiar  problem  whose  adjustment  varies;  the 
issue  clear,  but  the  application  of  the  principle  uncertain. 
Throughout  the  nineteenth  century  there  have  not  been  want- 
ing those  who  have  condemned  what  they  call  "individual- 
ism "  as  the  "source  of  all  our  woe."  This  has  been  one  of 
the  motives  which  has  strengthened  the  ecclesiastical  reactions 
of  the  century.  Upon  this  point  Phillips  Brooks  held  a  very 
definite  opinion,  and  he  has  expressed  it  in  no   uncertain 


^T.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE   OF  JESUS       227 

words.  He  asserts  as  the  fundamental  truth  that  "society 
does  not  exist  for  itself,  but  for  the  individual ;  and  man  goes 
into  it  not  to  lose,  but  to  find  himself  "  (p.  98).  He  then 
proceeds  to  arraign  his  age  for  having  lost  the  true  principle. 
His  words  have  significance  in  themselves,  an  added  interest 
in  coming  from  him :  — 

The  ancient  society,  the  heathen  society  of  to-day,  whether  in 
some  savage  island  or  in  some  fashionable  parlor,  is  ready  always 
to  sacrifice  the  personal  nature,  the  individual  soul.  As  if  society 
itself  were  an  object  worthy  of  perfecting  for  its  own  value;  it 
overwhelms  individual  character  and  pitilessly  sees  lives  lost  in  its 
great  whirlpool.  I  think  the  great  charge  that  Jesus,  if  He  spoke 
to-day,  would  bring  against  our  modern  social  life,  our  present 
society,  as  it  in  large  part  exists,  would  be  this :  He  would  see 
its  impurity;  He  would  recognize  the  falseness  that  pervades  it; 
He  would  turn  away  from  its  sordidness  with  disappointment; 
but,  most  of  all.  He  would  miss  in  it  that  power  to  cultivate  the 
personal  life  of  the  individual  by  the  revelation  of  the  divine  side 
of  human  existence  which  is  everywhere  His  ideal  of  social  living. 
It  is  not  always  so.  There  are  small  groups  of  men  gathered  on 
such  high  ground  that  each  of  them  becomes  aware  of  himself,  of 
his  capacities  and  duties,  in  the  association  with  his  brethren. 
Especially  there  are  friendships,  the  sympathetic  meeting  of  man 
and  man,  in  which  each  knows  himself  as  he  could  not  in  soli- 
tude. But  our  ordinary  life  with  one  another,  what,  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  world,  we  call  society,  has  so  left  and  lost  the  sponta- 
neousness  of  natural  impulse  and  so  failed  to  attain  the  highest 
conception  of  itself  as  the  family  of  God,  it  so  hangs  fast  in  the 
dull  middle  regions  of  conventional  propriety  and  selfish  expedi- 
ency, that  it  becomes  not  the  fountain,  but  the  grave,  of  individ- 
uality. Men  go  to  it  to  escape  themselves.  Men  dread  it,  as 
they  grow  older,  for  younger  men,  because  its  Influences  seem  to 
be  fatal  to  original  and  positive  character.  Men  flee  to  solitude 
to  recruit  their  personality.  Nowhere  do  we  find  on  earth  that 
picture  of  society  reconstructed  by  the  idea  of  Jesus,  society 
around  the  throne  of  God,  which  shines  out  upon  us  from  the 
mysterious  promises  of  the  Apocalypse ;  the  glory  of  which  society 
is  to  be  this,  —  that  while  the  souls  stand  in  their  vast  choruses 
of  hundreds  of  thousands,  and  all  chant  the  same  anthems  and  all 
work  together  in  the  same  transcendent  duties,  yet  each  bears  the 
sacred  name  written  on  the  flesh  of  his  own  forehead,  and  carries 
in  his  hand  a  white  stone,  on  which  is  written  a  new  name  which 
no  man  knoweth  saving  he  that  receiveth  it.     It  is  individuality 


228  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

emphasized  by  company,  and  not  lost  in  it,  because  the  atmosphere 
in  which  the  company  is  met  is  the  idea  of  Jesus,  which  is  the 
fatherhood  of  God  (pp.  98,  99). 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  more 
especially  in  the  decade  of  the  seventies,  there  was  one  sub- 
ject uppermost  in  the  consciousness  of  all  thoughtful  minds, 
—  how  to  maintain  the  goodness  of  the  existing  order  of 
things  against  pessimistic  tendencies  which  were  stimulated 
by  the  teaching  of  Schopenhauer  and  Hartmann.  For  al- 
though this  teaching  came  from  speculative  thinkers  and  was 
presented  as  a  system  of  philosophy,  yet  it  somehow  found  a 
response  in,  or  we  may  say  penetrated  in  some  mysterious 
way  into  the  stratum  of  the  common  consciousness.  Its  influ- 
ence may  be  traced  in  the  pulpit,  in  modifying  the  tone  of 
the  preaching,  leading  to  more  emphatic  and  continuous 
assertions  of  the  goodness,  the  love,  the  beneficent  providence 
of  God.  Among  the  confusing  contradictory  currents  of  the 
time,  this  tone  of  preaching  seemed  to  some  as  though  it  were 
an  effort  to  soften  the  religion,  to  avoid  the  severer  aspects 
of  the  gospel.  But  its  real  motive  lay  in  some  more  posi- 
tive purpose,  —  the  justification  of  the  ways  of  God  with 
men.  The  quickened  sensitiveness  of  an  age  in  which  human- 
itarian sentiment  had  been  so  dominant  as  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  where  sentiment  was  constantly  degenerating  into 
sentimentality,  proved  a  congenial  soil  for  pessimistic  theories 
of  the  universe.  Men  were  becoming  more  keenly  alive  to 
the  evil  in  nature  and  in  the  moral  order,  so  that  the  balance 
was  easily  disturbed  in  individual  minds  to  whom  the  total 
picture  of  the  universe  presented  the  seeming  predominance 
of  evil.  To  meet  this  kind  of  doubt,  which  was  generically 
different  from  the  form  of  doubt  which  preceded  it,  required 
a  different  tone  in  the  message  of  the  pulpit. 

To  the  new  necessity  Phillips  Brooks  responded.  Long 
before  he  knew  of  Schopenhauer  and  Hartmann  he  had 
become  sensitive  to  the  issue.  His  subtle  spirit  divined  the 
coming  mood  because  his  own  life  was  deeply  rooted  in  his 
age.  He  encountered  the  pure  pleasure  of  living  more  than 
most  men,  but  he  had  also  encountered  human  suffering  on 


^T.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE   OF   JESUS       229 

a  large  scale  in  the  ministrations  of  the  pastoral  charge,  as 
well  as  in  his  own  experience.  Out  of  this  experience  had 
been  born  the  discourses  of  comfort  and  consolation  which, 
it  has  been  remarked,  form  so  large  a  proportion  in  the  first 
volume  of  his  sermons.  To  this  subject  he  now  comes  anew, 
with  a  more  scientific  aim,  with  the  qualifications  of  years  of 
self -observation  and  of  association  with  men,  with  a  rare 
power  of  psychological  insight  and  analysis.  His  third 
lecture  was  entitled  the  "Influence  of  Jesus  on  the  Emotional 
Life  of  Man."  He  had  before  him  the  life  of  Christ  as  the 
ideal  expression  of  humanity;  he  must  enter  into  the  ex- 
perience of  Jesus  by  the  open  door  of  the  common  experience 
of  humanity. 

It  tells  us  nothing,  he  remarks,  about  a  life  to  say  that  it 
is  made  up  of  joy  and  pain.  We  discover  very  early  that 
happiness  may  mean  much  or  little ;  that  before  we  can  deter- 
mine the  quality  of  a  life  we  must  penetrate  the  consciousness 
that  lies  beneath  the  sorrow  or  the  joy.  The  joy  and  the  pain 
are  simply  the  expressions  of  emotion.  Here  is  a  passage 
bearing  on  this  point,  which  is  also  self-descriptive :  — 

The  man  who  lacks  emotion  lacks  expression.  That  which  is 
in  him  remains  within  him,  and  he  cannot  utter  it  or  make  it 
influential.  And  on  the  other  hand  the  man  who  lacks  emotion 
lacks  receptiveness.  That  which  other  men  are,  if  it  does  not 
make  him  glad  or  sorry,  if  it  gives  him  neither  joy  nor  pain,  does 
not  become  his.  The  emotion  of  lives  is  the  magnetism  that  they 
emit,  something  closely  associated  with  their  substance  and  yet 
distinct  from  it,  in  which  they  communicate  with  one  another. 
There  is  a  condition  conceivable  in  which  the  emotions  should  be 
so  delicately  and  perfectly  true  to  the  quality  of  him  from  which 
they  issue,  that  they  should  furnish  a  perfect  medium  of  expres- 
sion. .  ,  .  Can  any  true  connection  be  reliably  traced  between 
the  way  that  a  man  lives  and  the  joy  or  sorrow  his  life  emits  ? 

There  is  something,  then,  that  lies  behind  the  phenomena 
of  pleasure  and  pain,  and  that  is  experience  without  regard 
to  emotions.  He  now  repeats  what  he  had  been  impressed 
with  as  a  student  years  before :  — 

The  words  which  have  become  exclusively  appropriated  to  pain 
belonged  originally  to  experience  without  reference  to  the  distress 


230  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1879 

or  pleasure  it  might  bring.  The  old  Greek  and  Latin  words  for 
suffering  simply  meant  "to  undergo."  The  very  word  "suffering" 
itself,  and  "patience"  and  "submission,"  and  that  hard  word 
"bear  "  all  mean  nothing  but  experience.  The  first  step  in  study- 
ing the  life  of  Jesus  is  to  get  back  into  the  actual  experience  of 
His  life.  His  power  over  men  to-day  lies  in  His  experience  not 
essentially  because  He  was  happy  or  sad.  His  life  in  a  world  like 
this  involved  the  cross.  Yet  would  His  life  have  still  been  the 
influential  power  of  the  world  if  His  years  had  passed  in  sunny 
joy?  The  experience  is  separable  from  the  pain,  and  in  the 
experience,  not  in  the  pain,  His  true  life  abode. 

He  takes  another  step  in  this  analysis.  The  mere  expe- 
riences considered  by  themselves  do  not  constitute  life.  "  Our 
histories  are  not  our  lives.  The  idea  of  life  is  unity.  Expe- 
riences are  manifold."  Behind  the  experiences  lies  the  law 
of  life  —  God  wills  these  things.  God's  will,  not  his  own 
choice,  underlies  the  acts  and  contacts  that  fill  up  the  days 
of  Jesus.  "My  meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  Him  that  sent  Me." 
That,  in  the  deeper  meaning,  was  the  life  of  Jesus,  —  the  law 
by  which  He  lived,  the  will  of  God. 

There  is  one  step  more  in  this  analysis  of  the  consciousness 
of  Jesus. 

A  law  is  not  the  final  life.  It  cannot  be.  Law  is  external, 
but  life  is  something  which  may  fill  every  inmost  part  of  a  man's 
being.  ...  A  law  cannot  do  that.  It  is  not  intimate  enough. 
There  must  be  some  inspiring  idea,  moving  the  intelligence,  firing 
the  affections,  and  so  possessing  the  whole  man.  .  .  .  That  idea 
is  the  fatherhood  of  God  to  man,  which  Jesus  made  known  through 
the  manifestation  of  His  sonship.  .  .  .  Ideas  make  for  themselves 
laws  by  their  own  inherent  and  divine  creativeness.  The  law  of 
Christ  is  obedience  to  God,  but  this  obedience  is  fed  by  the  idea 
of  His  sonship.  In  that  idea  is  the  real  life  of  Christ.  Behind 
this  no  analysis  can  go. 

All  this  is  beautiful  and  true.  But  the  writer  has  a  remoter 
purpose.  He  is  laying  foundations  with  a  view  to  ultimate 
inferences.  He  is  not  only  meeting  for  himself  and  for  his 
time  the  passing  tendency  to  pessimism,  but  also  theories  of 
the  Atonement  which  do  not  satisfy,  and  those  forms  of 
mediaeval  asceticism  whose  temporary  reappearance  was  char- 
acteristic of  the  time. 


^T.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS       231 

Jesus  always  thinks  of  Himself  as  undergoing  the  will  of  God, 
because  God  is  His  father.  The  pain  and  pleasure  which  come  to 
Him  in  undergoing  that  will  come  not  simply  with  their  own 
inherent  qualities  of  comfort  or  discomfort,  but  with  the  values 
they  get  from  that  obedience  of  which  they  are  the  signs  and  con- 
sequences. This  is  the  key  to  all  His  attitude  towards  them. 
Jesus,  with  all  His  sensitiveness  to  pain  and  joy,  never  allows 
pain  or  joy  to  be  either  the  purpose  of  life  or  the  test  of  life. 

The  sensitiveness  of  Jesus  to  pain  and  joy  never  leads  Him  for 
a  moment  to  try  to  be  sad  or  happy  with  direct  endeavor;  nor 
is  there  any  sign  that  He  ever  judges  the  real  character  of  Himself 
or  any  other  man  by  the  sadness  or  the  happiness  that  for  the 
moment  covers  His  life.  He  simply  lives,  and  joy  and  sorrow 
issue  from  His  living,  and  cast  their  brightness  and  their  gloomi- 
ness back  upon  His  life;  but  there  is  no  sorrow  and  no  joy  that 
He  ever  sought  for  itself,  and  He  always  kept  self-knowledge 
underneath  the  joy  or  sorrow,  undisturbed  by  the  moment's  hap- 
piness or  unhappiness.  They  were  like  ripples  on  the  surface  of 
the  stream,  made  by  its  flow,  and,  we  are  ready  to  imagine,  en- 
joyed by  the  stream  that  made  them,  not  sought  by  the  stream 
for  themselves,  nor  ever  obscuring  the  stream's  consciousness  of 
its  deeper  currents.  The  supreme  sorrow  of  the  cross  was  never 
sought  because  it  was  sorrowful,  and  even  while  He  hung  in  agony 
it  never  obscured  the  certainty  of  His  own  holiness  in  the  great 
Sufferer's  soul.  These  are  the  perpetual  characteristics  of  the 
emotional  life  of  Jesus,  which  our  theology  has  often  conjured  out 
of  sight,  but  which  are  of  unspeakable  value,  as  I  think;  for  a 
clear  understanding  of  them  puts  the  Man  who  suffered  and  en- 
joyed more  than  any  other  man  that  ever  lived  in  a  noble  and 
true  relation  to  His  suffering  and  joy,  and  makes  His  pain  and 
pleasure  a  gospel  to  men  in  their  sadness  and  their  gladness  every- 
where (pp.  156,  157). 

The  greater  part  of  this  chapter  is  occupied  with  a  sug- 
gestive and,  though  complete  in  its  outline,  all  too  brief  an 
analysis  of  the  experiences  of  Jesus  in  the  pleasure  and  the 
suffering  they  involved.  But  it  is  a  careful  study,  too  con- 
densed to  be  summarized  without  injury.  The  plan  of 
treatment  leads  to  the  consideration  (1)  of  the  pain  and 
pleasures  which  come  inevitably  through  the  medium  of  the 
human  body;  (2)  of  the  joys  and  sorrows  which  have  their 
roots  not  in  the  senses,  but  in  the  affections ;  (3)  of  the  pleasures 
and  the  sufferings  which  belong  to  all  devoted  ideal  natures, 


232  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

which  come  from  the  acute  perception  of  right  and  wrong,  of 
moral  fitness  or  unfitness  in  the  things  about  us.  Under  the 
third  head  is  the  remark  that  we  cannot  think  of  Jesus  as  a 
mere  moral  enthusiast,  because  with  Him  everything  is  per- 
sonal :  — 

It  is  this  personalness  of  all  His  moral  enthusiasms,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  that  keeps  us  from  ever  feeling  or  fearing  in  Jesus  any  of 
that  moral  pedantry  —  or  what,  with  a  word  that  has  no  dignified 
equivalent,  we  call  that  priggishness  —  which  haunts  the  words  of 
the  moral  enthusiasts  who  kindle  at  the  harmonies  and  discords  of 
abstractions,  whether  they  talk  as  utilitarians  or  as  transcenden- 
talists  (p.  194). 

Under  this  same  head  is  raised  the  interesting  question 
whether  there  was  anything  in  Christ  of  what  we  call  the 
sense  of  artistic  beauty,  or  whether  He  found  delight  in  the 
fitness  which  the  aesthetic  nature  recognizes  and  loves.  In 
the  treatment  of  this  question  is  hardly  given  the  answer  to 
have  been  expected  from  one  with  his  own  aesthetic  tastes. 
AH  the  more,  therefore,  is  his  attitude  remarkable,  showing 
how  carefully  he  preserved  the  balance  of  a  true  judgment, 
and  responded  to  the  finest  instincts.  He  mentions  the  judg- 
ments that  men  have  given  on  this  point  and  their  reasons : 
"One  who  was  walking  towards  Calvary  had  no  time  in  the 
in  tenseness  of  His  moral  life  for  art  and  its  luxuriousness ;  " 
or  again,  "He  was  a  Jew  in  whose  nature  it  was  not  to  gather 
happiness  from  beautiful  things;"  and  still  further,  "We 
may  say  that  though  Jesus  has  made  nothing  of  artistic 
beauty,  yet  His  religion  has  made  much  of  it,  and  out  of 
Christianity  the  highest  artistic  life  has  come."  While  there 
is  truth  in  all  these  statements :  — 

Still  the  great  impression  of  the  life  of  Jesus  as  it  seems  to  me 
must  always  be  the  subordinate  importance  of  those  things  in 
which  only  the  aesthetic  nature  finds  its  pleasure.  There  is  no 
condemnation  of  them  in  that  wise,  deep  life.  But  the  fact 
always  must  remain  that  the  wisest,  deepest  life  that  was  ever 
lived  left  them  on  one  side,  was  satisfied  without  them.  And 
His  religion,  while  it  has  developed  and  delighted  in  their  cul- 
ture, has  always  kept  two  strong  habits  with  reference  to  art 
which  showed  that  in  it  was  still  the  spirit  of  its  Master.     It  has 


^T.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE   OF  JESUS       233 

always  been  restless  under  the  sway  of  any  art  that  did  not 
breathe  with  spiritual  and  moral  purpose.  Never  has  Christian 
art  reached  the  pure  aestheticism  of  the  classics.  And  in  its  more 
earnest  moods,  in  its  reformations,  in  its  puritanisms,  it  has 
always  stood  ready  to  sacrifice  the  choicest  words  of  artistic 
beauty  for  the  restoration  or  preservation  of  the  simple  majesty 
of  righteousness,  the  purity  of  truth,  or  the  glory  of  God  (p.  201). 

The  Bohlen  Lectures  culminate  with  the  last  chapter,  in 
which  is  treated  the  influence  of  Jesus  on  the  intellectual  life 
of  man.  To  understand  Phillips  Brooks  one  must  dwell  upon 
what  he  here  tells  us ;  for  while  his  tone  is  still  impersonal, 
none  the  less  is  he  disclosing  his  own  method  of  self -culture 
and  his  distinctive  attitude  towards  the  theologies  of  his  time. 
All  through  the  chapter  we  move  in  the  atmosphere  of  great- 
ness. Only  from  a  great  soul  could  it  have  proceeded.  But 
it  is  the  atmosphere  of  poetry  and  beauty  as  well.  The  ease, 
the  grace,  the  repose,  the  transparency  of  the  style,  the  con- 
sciousness of  mastery,  the  sense  of  finality,  the  irresistible 
appeal,  —  these  are  the  accompaniments  of  a  strain  of  divine 
melody.  This  chapter  must  be  read,  it  cannot  be  described. 
But  some  things  may  be  said  about  it. 

In  the  first  place  he  refuses  to  give  the  intellect  in  man  the 
supremacy  when  taken  by  itself.  He  has  said  this  before, 
but  now  repeats  it  with  deeper  conviction.  In  speaking  of 
the  Person  of  Christ,  he  asks  the  questions,  How  does  Christ 
compare  in  intellectual  power  with  other  men?  How  did  He 
estimate  the  intellect?  Was  His  intellect  sufficient  to  ac- 
count for  the  unique  position  He  holds  in  the  world's  history 
as  the  mightiest  force  that  has  controlled  the  development  of 
humanity  ? 

He  finds  the  answer  by  turning  to  the  Fourth  Gospel,  which 
gives  us  most  that  we  know  about  the  mind  of  Jesus.  It  is 
to  the  other  Gospels  what  Plato  is  to  Xenophon.  He  does 
not  pause  to  allude  to  questions  of  criticism,  —  when  it  was 
written,  or  whether  it  was  written  by  John.  He  anticipates 
the  decision  of  scholars ;  he  knows  that  the  picture  in  itself 
is  its  own  vindication.  It  is  the  inteUectual  Gospel,  because 
in  it  there  is  one  constantly  recurring  word.  That  word  is 
"truth,"  which  is  distinctly  a  word  of  the  intellect. 


234  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

He  whose  favorite  word  is  truth  must  be  a  man  who  values 
intellectual  life,  who  is  not  satisfied  unless  his  own  intellect  is 
living,  and  who  conceives  of  his  fellow  men  as  beings  in  whom  the 
intellect  is  an  important  and  valuable  part.  This  must  belong  to 
any  habitual  use  of  the  word  at  all ;  and  so,  when  we  find  it  ap- 
pearing constantly  upon  the  lips  of  Jesus,  in  the  record  of  that 
one  of  His  disciples  who  understood  Him  best,  we  feel  that  we 
know  this  at  least  about  Him,  —  that  He  cared  for  the  intellect 
of  man,  that  He  desired  to  exercise  some  influence  upon  it,  that 
He  was  not  satisfied  simply  to  win  man's  affection  by  His  kind- 
ness, nor  to  govern  man's  will  by  His  authority,  but  that  He  also 
wished  to  persuade  man's  mind  with  truth  (p.  213). 

He  takes  up  the  word  "truth  "  as  it  is  used  in  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  finding  that  in  every  instance  it  is  employed  in  a 
sense  different  from  that  of  the  schools.  In  its  scholastic 
use  it  is  detached  from  life  and  made  synonymous  with 
knowledge.  But  knowledge  is  no  word  of  Jesus.  With 
information  for  the  head  alone,  detached  from  its  relations 
to  the  whole  nature,  Jesus  has  no  concern.  Truth  was  some- 
thing which  set  the  whole  man  free.  It  was  a  moral  thing, 
for  he  who  does  not  receive  it  is  not  merely  a  doubter,  but  a 
liar.  Truth  was  something  which  a  man  could  be,  not  merely 
something  which  a  man  could  study  and  measure  by  walking 
around  it  on  the  outside.  The  objective  and  the  subjective 
lose  themselves  in  each  other.  Truth  can  be  known  only 
from  the  inside ;  it  is  something  moral,  something  living,  some- 
thing spiritual.  It  is  not  mere  objective  unity;  it  must  have 
in  it  the  elements  of  character.  "To  this  end  was  I  born," 
says  Jesus,  "and  for  this  cause  came  I  into  the  world,  that  I 
should  bear  witness  to  the  truth.  Every  one  that  is  of  the 
truth  heareth  my  voice."  And  upon  these  and  similar  utter- 
ances of  Jesus  is  made  this  comment :  — 

You  see  how  the  air  grows  hazy  with  the  meeting  of  the  sub- 
jective and  objective  conceptions.  They  are  words  of  character. 
A  "man  of  truth  "  is  something  more  than  a  man  who  knows  the 
truth,  whose  intellect  has  seized  it ;  that,  we  are  sure,  would  be 
the  very  tamest  paraphrase  of  the  suggestive  words.  It  would 
take  the  whole  life  and  depth  out  of  them.  A  "man  of  truth  " 
is  a  man  into  all  whose  life  the  truth  has  been  pressed  till  he  is 
full  of  it,  till  he  has  been  given  to  it,  and  it  has  been  given  to 


MT.43']     THE   INFLUENCE   OF  JESUS       235 

him,  he  being  always  the  complete  being  whose  unity  is  in  that 
total  of  moral,  intellectual,  and  spiritual  life  which  makes  what 
we  call  character.  He  is  the  man  of  whom  Pilate's  prisoner  said, 
"He  hears  my  voice."  No  wonder  that  Pilate,  hearing  a  new 
sound  in  an  old  familiar  word,  felt  all  his  old  questions  stir  again 
within  him,  and  asked  with  an  interest  which  was  too  weary  to  be 
called  a  hope,  "What  is  truth?  "  (p.  218). 

From  this  use  of  the  word  "truth  "  is  deduced  the  intel- 
lectual portrait  of  Christ,  if  we  may  call  it  such.  The  great 
fact  concerning  the  intellectual  life  in  Jesus  is  this,  that  "  in 
Him  the  intellect  never  works  alone.  You  never  can  separate 
its  workings  from  the  comj)lete  operations  of  the  whole 
nature.  He  never  simply  knows,  but  always  loves  and  re- 
solves at  the  same  time.  .  .  .  What  God  knows  is  one  and 
the  same  with  the  love  with  which  He  loves  and  the  resolve 
with  which  He  wills." 

We  reach  now  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter.  When 
Phillips  Brooks  spoke  of  God's  knowledge  as  one  with  His 
love  and  will,  he  had  in  view  the  definition  of  the  schoolmen 
that  God  is  actus  purus.  Man  was  to  be  known  by  contrast ; 
in  this  respect  the  human  had  no  likeness  to  the  divine. 
The  intellect  and  the  will  worked  separately  in  man,  and  the 
difference  could  always  be  distinguished,  so  that  it  was  easy 
to  divide  men  into  classes,  and  label  them  according  to  their 
opinions, — men  of  intellect  and  men  of  action.  Against 
this  inference  Phillips  Brooks  is  making  a  protest.  It 
was  with  Jesus  as  it  was  with  God.  It  should  be  the  same 
with  all  men,  —  in  this  respect  they  should  follow  Christ.  It 
is  not  an  impossible  divine  ideal,  but  rather  the  feasible  hu- 
man standard.  He  illustrates  the  possibility  of  this  organic 
fusion  of  intellect  with  the  affections  and  the  will  by  an 
appeal  to  experience,  calling  it  the  true  unity  of  a  man. 

When  we  see  how  constantly  it  is  the  crudity  of  an  unappropri- 
ated, unassimilated  intellectuality  that  disappoints  us  in  intellec- 
tual people ;  when  we  find  ourselves  turning  away  from  a  learned 
man  whose  knowledge  has  not  been  pressed  into  character;  when 
we  find  that  the  action  of  the  intellect  forcing  itself  upon  our 
notice  because  it  is  working  out  of  proportion  to  or  out  of  har- 
mony with  the  other  parts  of  a  man's  nature,  his  conscience,  his 


i^e  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

affections,  and  his  active  powers,  always  dissatisfies  and  makes  as 
restless,  and,  with  all  the  interest  which  we  may  feel  in  him,  does 
not  let  us  think  that  we  have  found  the  fullest  and  most  perfect 
man,  —  when  we  see  all  this,  it  becomes  clear  to  us  what  a  dis- 
tinguishing thing  in  Jesus  was  this  unity  of  life  in  which  the 
special  action  of  the  intellect  was  lost.  We  catch  something  of 
the  spirit  with  which  His  disciple,  fondly  recurring  years  after- 
wards to  the  bright  days  when  He  first  knew  Jesus,  twice  used  the 
same  description  of  Him :  "  The  word  was  made  flesh  and  dwelt 
among  us  full  of  grace  and  truth."  "The  law  was  given  by 
Moses,  but  by  Jesus  Christ  came  grace  and  truth." 

It  is  not  the  intellectual  man  as  such,  not  the  man  in  whom 
intellect  stands  crudely  forth  as  the  controlling  element  in  life, 
that  other  men  are  drawn  to  most.  The  greatest  men  that  ever 
lived  are  those  in  whom  you  cannot  separate  the  mental  and  moral 
lives.  You  cannot  say  just  what  part  of  their  power  and  success 
is  due  to  a  good  heart  and  what  to  a  sound  understanding.  And 
in  every  circle  there  are  apt  to  appear  some  persons  of  great  influ- 
ence and  great  attractiveness,  of  whom  you  never  think  as  being 
specially  intellectual;  it  startles  you;  but  as  you  think  about  your 
wonder,  you  discover  that  it  does  not  come  from  an  absence  of  the 
intellectual  life  in  those  who  are  thus  spoken  of,  but  from  the 
fact  that  the  intellectual  part  of  them  is  so  blended  and  lost  in 
the  rounded  and  symmetrical  unity  of  their  life  that  you  have 
never  been  led  to  think  of  it  by  itself.  All  this  is  very  frequently 
true  concerning  women,  whose  unity  of  life  is  often  more  apparent 
than  that  of  men  (pp.  220,  223). 

He  finds  confirmation  of  this  unity  of  life  in  those  moments 
of  exaltation  when  a  man  realizes  himself  in  supreme  degree, 
and  the  "intellectual  action,  without  being  quenched,  nay, 
burning  at  its  very  brightest,  blends  with  the  quickened 
activity  of  all  the  being,  and  is  not  even  thought  of  by  itself." 

So  it  is  when  death  comes  near,  that  with  our  truest,  profound- 
est  thoughts  about  the  great  mystery,  we  hardly  know  that  we  are 
thinking  at  all.  In  these  and  similar  conditions,  the  intellect 
works  vigorously,  but  it  works  in  the  midst  of  a  being  all  quick- 
ened and  exalted  together,  and  so  it  is  lost  in  the  large  action  of 
the  whole.  This  is  the  meaning  of  Lessing's  remark,  "He 
who  does  not  lose  his  reason  in  certain  things  has  none  to  lose." 
Or  again  in  the  lines  of  Wordsworth :  — 

In  such  access  of  mind,  in  such  high  hour 
Of  Visitation  from  the  Living  God, 
Thought  was  not ;  in  enjoyment  it  expired. 


JET.  43']     THE   INFLUENCE   OF  JESUS       237 

In  the  further  exposition  of  this  principle,  he  turns  to  the 
comparison  of  Jesus  with  Socrates.  It  had  been  in  his  mind 
as  he  began  the  book  to  make  this  the  climax  of  his  treat- 
ment; he  comes  to  it  finally  with  the  momentum  which  had 
been  growing  with  each  successive  chapter.  He  would  take 
the  last  five  chapters  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John  and  place 
them  by  the  side  of  the  story  of  the  death  of  Socrates  which 
Plato  has  written  for  us  in  the  "Phaedo."  "Nowhere  could 
the  essential  difference  as  well  as  the  likeness  of  the  two  great 
teachers  become  more  apparent."  To  this  comparison  he 
invites  "the  critics  who  loosely  class  Jesus  and  Socrates  to- 
gether," showing  them  where  their  classification  fails,  where 
the  line  runs  beyond  which  Socrates  cannot  go,  "beyond  which 
the  nature  of  Jesus  sweeps  out  of  our  sight." 

We  recall  in  this  mature  expression  of  his  thought  his  own 
youthful  devotion  to  Socrates.  We  go  back  to  the  days  when 
he  was  a  boy  of  fifteen,  just  leaving  the  Latin  School,  for  the 
first  utterance  of  this  enthusiasm.  It  had  been  Socrates, 
the  "innocent  martyr  for  truth,"  who  had  fired  him  with  zeal 
in  the  immortal  quest.  Two  sonnets  entitled  "Socrates"  he 
had  written  while  at  the  Virginia  seminary.  The  "Phsedo  " 
was  then  his  favorite  dialogue,  which  he  exercised  himself  in 
translating  into  his  best  English.  When  he  took  his  first 
journey  to  the  Old  World  in  1865,  he  seems  to  have  given  an 
almost  equal  place  to  Athens  and  Jerusalem  in  the  enthusiasm 
which  was  stirred  within  him,  as  he  gazed  with  his  own  eyes 
upon  the  sacred  cities.  But  now  for  twenty  years  he  had 
been  studying  the  life  of  Jesus,  and  though  he  had  lost 
none  of  his  reverence  and  admiration  for  Socrates,  there  had 
grown  up  in  his  soul  a  higher  and  a  different  reverence, 
which  is  mingled  with  love  and  grateful  obedience.  Then  he 
was  in  the  intellectual  stage  of  his  development,  now  he  has 
passed  more  completely  into  the  sphere  of  the  spiritual.  We 
will  not  spoil  the  beautiful  comparison  which  he  has  drawn 
at  length  by  attempts  at  quotation  or  condensation.  But 
here  is  the  concluding  paragraph :  — 

I  know  not  what  to  say  to  any  man  who  does  not  feel  the  dif- 
ference.   I  can  almost  dream  what  Socrates  would  say  to  any  man 


238  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

who  said  that  there  was  no  difference  between  Jesus  and  him. 
But  how  shall  we  state  the  difference?  One  is  divine  and  human; 
the  other  is  human  only.  One  is  Redeemer;  the  other  is  philos- 
opher. One  is  inspired,  the  other  questions.  One  reveals,  and 
the  other  argues.  These  statements  doubtless  are  all  true.  And 
in  them  all  there  is  wrapped  up  this,  which  is  the  truth  of  all  the 
influence  of  Jesus  over  men's  minds,  that  where  Socrates  brings 
an  argument  to  meet  an  objection,  Jesus  always  brings  a  nature  to 
meet  a  nature,  —  a  whole  being  which  the  truth  has  filled  with 
strength,  to  meet  another  whole  being  which  error  has  filled  with 
feebleness  (p.  243). 

It  had  been  part  of  Mr.  Brooks's  intention  to  show  the 
influence  of  Jesus,  not  only  by  the  presentation  of  His  ruling 
idea,  but  by  tracing  its  presence  and  power  in  His  disciples 
and  then  in  the  actual  history  of  the  world.  The  scheme  of 
course  was  too  large.  Yet  he  could  not  resist  in  closing  to 
give  a  brief  summary,  where  he  hints  at  what  he  would  have 
done  had  the  opportunity  permitted :  — 

A  poetic  conception  of  the  world  we  live  in,  a  willing  accept- 
ance of  mystery,  an  expectation  of  progress  by  development,  an 
absence  of  fastidiousness  that  comes  from  the  possibilities  of  all 
humanity,  and  a  perpetual  enlargement  of  thought  from  the  arbi- 
trary into  the  essential,  —  these,  I  think,  are  the  intellectual 
characteristics  which  Christ's  disciples  gathered  from  their  Mas- 
ter; and  I  think  that  we  can  see  that  these  characteristics  make, 
as  we  set  them  together,  a  certain  definite  and  recognizable  type 
of  mental  life,  one  that  we  should  know  from  every  other  if  we  met 
to-day  a  man  in  whom  it  was  embodied.  It  is  a  type  in  which, 
according  to  the  description  which  I  tried  to  give,  the  intel- 
lect, while  it  is  plentifully  present,  does  not  stand  alone  and  force 
itself  upon  our  thought.  It  is  a  type  in  which  character  is  the 
result  that  impresses  us,  —  character  holding  in  harmony  all  the 
elements  of  the  nature,  rather  than  intellectuality,  which  is  the 
predominant  presence  of  one  element.  It  is  a  type  in  which 
righteousness  and  reason  so  coincide  and  cooperate  that  you  can- 
not separate  them,  and  do  not  want  to  (p.  259). 

This  book,  therefore,  the  "Influence  of  Jesus,"  may  be  called 
the  Apologia  of  Phillips  Brooks.  It  is  the  defence  of  him- 
self and  of  his  method,  the  exposition  of  his  ideal  of  life,  his 
final  answer  to  the  question  how  to  meet  the  doubt,  the 
weakness,  the  skepticism  of  the  time.     Although  he  seemed, 


^T.  43]     THE   INFLUENCE   OF  JESUS       239 

and  indeed  he  was,  in  such  entire  sympathy  with  his  age,  yet 
he  also  saw  its  defect  and  raised  against  it  one  mighty  pro- 
test. A  one-sided,  exaggerated  intellectualism  was  the  evil 
which  had  infected  every  department  of  human  inquiry, 
including  the  things  of  religion.  He  pointed  out  the  remedy, 
—  the  influence  of  Jesus  tended  to  the  restoration  of  a  lost 
symmetry.  This  was  the  result  of  his  experience  in  the  first 
ten  years  of  his  Boston  ministry,  which  gives  to  his  preach- 
ing in  Boston  a  different  tone  from  the  Philadelphia  life. 
Then  he  had  delighted  in  exploiting  the  rich  allegorical  im- 
port of  human  life  and  human  history,  with  Christ  as  its 
centre  and  interpreter.  The  Boston  ministry  led  him  to 
proclaim  the  stronger  Christ,  who  was  powerful  enough  to  sub- 
due the  world  to  Himself,  There  are  hints  in  this  book  that 
another  change  was  awaiting  him,  when  he  would  pass  into 
an  ampler  and  diviner  sphere.  At  times  he  seems  to  be  tempted 
to  give  the  primacy  to  the  will.  When  he  speaks  of  the  obe- 
dience of  Christ,  it  is  clear  that  he  is  tending  to  divinize 
obedience  as  the  potent  faculty  in  Christ,  through  which  His 
inspiration  came,  through  which  came  also  the  wisdom  of 
God.  It  is  in  the  sphere  of  the  will  that  the  intimacy  is 
closer  than  in  the  intellect.  Through  the  perfect  obedience 
of  Christ  comes  the  consciousness  of  oneness  with  the  Father. 
Everywhere  the  inference  is  that  perfect  obedience  of  Christ 
means  not  subordination  or  inferiority,  but  coequality  with 
the  Father.    With  these  eloquent  words  he  closes  the  book :  — 

I  dare  not,  I  do  not  hope  that  I  have  succeeded ;  but  I  hope 
that  I  have  not  wholly  failed.  For  to  me  what  I  have  tried  to 
say  is  more  and  more  the  glory  and  the  richness  and  the  sweet- 
ness of  all  life.  The  idea  of  Jesus  is  the  illumination  and  the 
inspiration  of  existence.  Without  it  moral  life  becomes  a  barren 
expediency,  and  social  life  a  hollow  shell,  and  emotional  life  a 
meaningless  excitement,  and  intellectual  life  an  idle  play  or  stupid 
drudgery.  Without  it  the  world  is  a  puzzle,  and  death  a  horror, 
and  eternity  a  blank.  More  and  more  it  shines  the  only  hope  of 
what  without  it  is  all  darkness.  More  and  more  the  wild,  sad, 
frightened  cries  of  men  who  believe  nothing,  and  the  calm,  ear- 
nest, patient  prayers  of  men  who  believe  so  much  that  they  long 
for  perfect  faith,  seem  to  blend  into  the  great  appeal  which  Philip 


240  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879 

of  Bethsaida  made  to  Jesus  at  the  Last  Supper,  where  so  much  of 
our  time  in  these  four  hours  has  been  spent,  "Lord,  show  us  the 
Father,  and  it  sufficeth  us."  And  more  and  more  the  only  answer 
to  that  appeal  seems  to  come  from  the  same  blessed  lips  that 
answered  Philip,  the  lips  of  the  Mediator  Jesus,  who  replies, 
"  Have  I  been  so  long  with  you  and  yet  thou  hast  not  known  me  ? 
He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father." 


CHAPTER  IX 

1879-1880 

VISIT  TO  PHILADELPHIA.  CONVENTION  SERMON.  CORRE- 
SPONDENCE. THE  DEATH  OF  HIS  MOTHER.  SERMON  BE- 
FORE THE  QUEEN.  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY.  THE  NEW 
RECTORY 

The  lectures  on  the  "Influence  of  Jesus  "  were  delivered  in 
Philadelphia  in  the  month  of  February,  1879.  On  the  second 
day  of  December,  1878,  he  had  written  to  Rev.  W.  N.  Mc- 
Vickar  that  only  one  of  the  lectures  was  completed,  "and 
is  so  bad  that  the  others  cannot  be  worse ;  so  I  have  a  free 
mind  and  push  on,  and  will  be  ready."  Again  he  writes  to 
McVickar  regarding  the  lectures :  — 

February  8,  1879. 
I  was  just  putting  the  last  words  to  the  last  page  as  your  letter 
came  in.  There  could  not  have  been  a  better  moment.  Yester- 
day it  would  have  seemed  like  a  mockery  to  talk  about  the  delivery 
of  what  looked  as  if  it  never  would  be  written.  And  now  I  hate 
to  think  that  I  must  ever  read  them  again,  and  especially  that  I 
must  read  them  to  anybody  whom  I  care  about.  .  .  .  But  I  have 
one  or  two  suggestions  to  make  which  are  serious. 

1.  The  lectures  are  an  hour  long,  each  of  them.  Can  it  not  be 
arranged  that  there  shall  be  little  or  no  service  ? 

2.  They  are  not  in  the  least  the  things  for  a  popular  audience. 
I^ot  that  they  are  learned,  but  they  are  quiet  and  dry.  I  want  to 
have  them  not  in  the  great  Church,  but  in  your  Lecture  Room 
which  will  make  it  much  easier  for  me  to  read  them.  I  think 
you  will  agree  with  me  in  this.  At  any  rate  I  wish  it  so,  and  I 
am  sure  you  will  oblige  me. 

If  you  will  do  both  of  these  things  for  me  I  will  preach  all  day 
for  you  at  Holy  Trinity.  If  not,  I  will  see  you  at  Jericho  before 
I  open  my  mouth  in  the  afternoon. 

And  then  I  want  you  to  let  me  make  a  very  quiet  visit  and  not 
go  out  to  dinner  anywhere  but  at  Cooper's.  I  don't  feel  up 
to  parties,  and  I  want  to  see  you.     Won't  you  say  so  to  any  kind 

VOL.  II 


242  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879-80 

people  who  want  to  arrange  dinners  and  breakfasts  before  I  come, 
or  who  desire  to  invite  me  when  I  am  there. 

All  this  sounds  foolish,  but  the  fact  is  I  have  had  a  dreadful 
winter.  These  poor  lectures  have  been  worried  through  in  all 
the  distress  and  bewilderment  of  Father's  death.  I  have  n't 
known  what  I  was  writing  half  the  time.  Now  I  want  to  have  a 
quiet,  restful  time,  and  I  shall  come  trusting  your  good  love  and 
tact  to  get  it  for  me.    .    .    . 

I   count  upon   my  visit   more  than  I   can  tell   you.      I    hope 
Tiffany  will   come.      Tell   him   he   needn't   go   to   the   lectures. 
James  Franks  is  doubtful,  but  I  hope  to  bring  him.      Give  my 
kindest  regards  to  your  sister,  and  expect  me  Monday  night. 
Always  affectionately  yours, 

P.  B. 

This  visit  to  Philadelphia  was  an  event  to  Phillips  Brooks, 
to  his  former  parishioners,  and  to  the  city.  Everything  con- 
nected with  it  moved  him  strongly.  To  the  memory  of 
Mr.  John  Bohlen  he  paid  this  tribute  in  his  opening  lec- 
ture ;  — 

The  subject  I  have  chosen  would  not  have  been  unwelcome  to 
my  dear  friend  of  years  ago,  whose  honored  name  this  lectureship 
bears,  and  in  whose  behalf  I  shall  in  some  sort  speak.  For  of  the 
men  whom  I  have  known,  there  has  been  none  whose  daily  moral 
life,  whose  association  with  his  fellow  men,  whose  meeting  of  the 
joy  and  pain  of  living,  and  whose  ways  of  thought  and  study  have 
been  more  in  the  power  of  the  idea  of  Jesus,  more  inspired  by 
his  Lord's  revelation  than  his  were,  more  obedient  and  trustful  to 
his  Lord's  authority  in  order  that  he  might  become  the  son  of 
God. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  great  church  was  thrown  open 
for  the  purpose,  and  not  the  lecture  room,  as  he  had  de- 
manded. How  the  lectures  were  received,  and  how  he  ap- 
peared as  he  gave  them,  is  told  in  a  newspaper  paragraph  of 
the  day.  The  tendency  to  describe  his  personal  appearance  is 
here  again  manifest,  as  though  the  man  and  his  utterance 
were  inseparable. 

Rev.  Phillips  Brooks  of  Boston  lectured  last  night  in  the 
Episcopal  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  at  Nineteenth  and  Walnut 
streets,  to  an  audience  that  filled  every  pew  in  that  vast  church 
and  left  scarcely  any  sitting  room  in  the  galleries.     It  has  been 


^T.  43-44]  VISIT   TO   PHILADELPHIA       243 

ten  years  since  he  left  his  pastorate  of  that  church  to  take  charge 
of  a  parish  in  Boston.  ...  A  tall,  broad-shouldered  man,  with  a 
perfectly  smooth,  open  face,  strong  lines  about  the  mouth,  bright 
expressive  eyes  and  dark  hair,  was  the  personnel  of  the  man  who 
came  out  of  the  vestry  room  with  Mr.  McVickar  last  evening  at 
eight  o'clock,  and  after  the  singing  of  a  hymn  and  the  delivery  of 
a  brief  prayer  ascended  the  high  pulpit  steps.  There  was  no 
pause  for  preparation  after  he  got  into  the  pulpit.  He  placed 
the  manuscript  before  him  and  began  the  lecture.  The  delivery 
of  the  man  was  remarkable.  He  announced  the  title  and  intro- 
duction in  words  that  came  so  rapidly  that  it  required  the  most 
concentrated  attention  to  keep  up  with  him.  He  spoke  for  about 
an  hour.  During  all  that  time  his  tremendous  energy  of  delivery- 
kept  up  at  the  same  rapid  pace,  reminding  one  of  a  torrent  rush- 
ing over  rocks.  The  words  seemed  not  to  flow  out  to  the  audi- 
ence, but  to  shoot  out.  The  ground  he  got  over  in  an  hour  was 
equal  to  that  of  three  ordinary  lectures.  And  when  he  closed, 
the  attention  of  the  audience  was  as  rapt  as  ever.  Occasionally 
there  would  be  a  stumbling  over  a  word.  Then  his  head  would  jerk 
to  this  side  and  that  impatiently,  as  though  the  word  must  come, 
despite  all  impediments.  He  kept  his  eyes  on  the  paper  almost 
continuously.  Probably  four  times,  certainly  not  more  than  half 
a  dozen,  he  gave  a  glance  out  towards  the  audience.  He  seemed 
to  lose  himself  entirely  in  his  subject.  His  eyes  were  bent  on  the 
manuscript,  his  whole  expression,  his  features,  the  twitching  of 
his  facial  muscles,  showed  the  tremendous  concentration  of  energy 
put  into  the  effort.  Here  was  an  absence  of  all  self-conscious- 
ness 5  his  hearers  lost  sight  of  the  man  and  only  saw  the  ideas, 
rapid,  whirling,  and  tremendous  in  their  force  of  utterance,  keep- 
ing up  the  idea  of  the  torrent  all  the  time. 

As  to  any  attempts  to  save  him  from  the  invasion  of  his 
friends,  while  he  was  in  Philadelphia,  they  were  futile.  If 
he  could  not  go  to  them,  they  came  to  him.  When  he  re- 
turned to  Boston  he  wrote  to  McVickar,  "I  counted  upon 
this  visit,  after  this  sad  and  dreary  winter,  more  than  ever 
I  did  on  any  other,  and  it  has  been  to  me  far  more  than  I 
had  counted  on."  But  he  came  back  tired  and  somewhat 
dispirited.  He  was  obliged  to  return  earlier  than  he  had 
intended  in  order  to  officiate  at  a  wedding,  and  for  a  moment 
brides  and  bridegrooms  lost  their  attractiveness  to  him. 
Boston  suffered  in  his  eyes  when  he  thought  of  the  happy 
days  in  Philadelphia,  "And  now  here  I  am  back  here,  and 


244  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879-80 

it 's  snowing,  and  I  'm  lonely;  there  's  work  to  be  done  and 
it 's  doleful  generally." 

In  March  of  this  year  he  accepted  the  honor  of  an  election 
to  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  There  began  at 
this  time  an  interesting  correspondence  with  M.  Nyegaard,  a 
clergyman  of  the  Keformed  Church  in  France,  whose  parish 
was  at  St.  Quentin  (Aisne),  and  who  had  been  greatly  im- 
pressed by  the  "Lectures  on  Preaching:  "  — 

Le  4  Avril,  1879. 

Permettez  moi  de  vous  dire,  Monsieur,  malgrd  le  peu  de  gofit 
que  vous  devez  avoir  pour  les  compliments,  que  vos  belles  confe- 
rences m'ont  fait  du  bien,  et  de  vous  en  remercier.  Elles  seront 
d^sormais  sur  mon  bureau,  h  cot^  de  la  Th^ologie  pastorale  de 
Vinet  et  j'dspfere  qu' elles  deviendront  comme  le  manuel  de  mon 
minister  e. 

A  second  letter  from  M.  Nyegaard  asked  for  permission  to 
translate  the  lectures  into  French,  which  was  granted,  but 
the  translation  was  not  published  till  1883.  Somewhat 
later  the  "Lectures  on  Preaching"  were  translated  into 
Dutch.  There  came  an  urgent  invitation  from  the  editor 
of  "The  Atlantic  Monthly,"  who  explained  his  purpose 
by  saying  that  he  had  just  been  reading  the  sermon,  al- 
ready referred  to,  on  the  "Present  and  Future  Faith.  "  A 
series  of  articles  of  the  general  tendency  of  that  sermon 
would  find  their  best  audience  if  clothed  in  literary  form. 
But  any  utterance  from  him  would  be  welcome,  secular  or 
religious.  To  this  and  other  invitations  of  a  similar  kind 
he  gave  a  firm  refusal.  He  speaks  of  Lent  as  going  on  most 
pleasantly,  "I  have  no  impatience  for  it  to  be  over."  He 
was  then  preaching  as  usual  in  many  places,  three  times  on 
Sunday,  and  often  during  the  week.  He  gave  the  prefer- 
ence to  invitations  from  his  two  brothers,  for  the  family 
claim  was  the  strongest,  and  the  tie  of  blood  the  deepest  in 
his  nature.  Easter  week  he  spent  in  New  York.  He  was  at 
New  Haven  in  April  to  lecture  again  before  the  students  of 
the  Divinity  School.  He  seemed  to  be  doing  the  work  of  an 
evangelist,  preaching  in  various  towns  in  churches  of  his 
own  denomination,  but  almost  as  often  in  churches  of  other 


^T.  43-44]  CONVENTION   SERMON  245 

names.  There  were  certain  Congregational  churches  where 
it  seemed  to  be  a  settled  arrangement  that  he  should  appear 
once  at  least  every  year. 

At  the  annual  convention  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in 
Massachusetts,  which  met  at  St.  Paul's  Church,  Boston, 
May  14,  Phillips  Brooks  was  the  preacher.  The  words  of 
his  text  were  the  commission  of  Christ  to  his  disciples,  "As 
my  Father  hath  sent  me,  even  so  send  I  you."  In  the  fa- 
miliar association  of  these  words  with  theories  of  ecclesiastical 
organization,  or  with  the  exclusive  authority  of  the  ministry 
in  some  one  particular  church,  he  finds  a  meaning  had  been 
read  into  them  which  they  did  not  originally  contain.  His 
method  of  overcoming  the  wrong  interpretation  and  recom- 
mending the  true  was  to  dwell  on  the  purpose  for  which 
Christ  had  been  sent  by  the  Father  and  in  turn  commissioned 
his  disciples.  The  sermon  was  one  for  the  times,  cutting 
athwart  current  ecclesiastical  tendencies.  From  the  most 
characteristic  words  of  Christ,  four  passages  were  selected  as 
heads  for  the  divisions  of  the  sermon :  — 

I  am  not  come  to  call  the  righteous  but  sinners  to  repentance. 
It  seems  to  me  that  among  all  the  warnings  that  the  Church  of 
Christ  needs  to-day  there  can  be  none  that  she  more  imperatively 
needs  than  this,  —  not  to  teach  doctrine  save  as  a  means ;  not 
to  elaborate  and  strengthen  her  own  organization  save  as  a 
means ;  but  to  convert,  and  rescue  sinners.  The  Church  so  easily 
forgets  her  ends  in  her  means.  We  are  too  apt  to  speak  in 
church  to  artificial  sins  which  the  great  universal  human  con- 
science does  not  recognize,  to  rebuke  the  improprieties  that  are 
not  wrong,  and  to  denounce  the  honest  errors  which  good  men 
may  hold,  and  yet  be  good,  as  if  they  were  the  first  enemies  with 
which  we  and  our  Gospel  had  to  fight. 

/  am  not  come  to  destroy  hut  to  fulfil.  All  earnest  life  which 
has  not  reached  clear  religious  faith,  all  doubt,  however  radical, 
which  at  its  heart  is  truthful  and  not  scornful,  all  eager  study  of 
the  marvellous  world  of  nature  as  if  the  final  facts  of  our  exist- 
ence must  be  somehow  hidden  in  her  bosom,  all  glorifying  of  hu- 
manity, as  if  it  were  an  object  for  our  worship,  all  struggle  to 
develop  society  as  if  by  its  own  self-purification  earth  could  be 
turned  into  heaven,  —  all  this  is  to  the  Church  to-day  what  Ju- 
daism was  to  Christ,  what  He  came  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil. 


246  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879-80 

.  .  .  The  Christian  church  has  made  and  makes  to-day  too  much 
of  settled  views  of  Truth  which  may  he  dead,  too  little  of  the 
search  for  truth  which  TniLst  be  living.  One  trembles  when  he  sees 
the  Church  in  any  way  separating  itself  from  the  pure  instincts 
and  from  the  earnest  thought  of  men,  and  counting  itself  the 
enemy  to  destroy  them  instead  of  the  missionary  to  enlighten 
them. 

He  tlvat  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father.  There  are  mean- 
ings in  these  words  that  can  never  be  true  of  any  other  beside 
Him,  not  even  of  the  Church  which  is  to  perpetuate  His  mission 
in  the  world.  But  if  they  declare  what  was  the  great  truth  of 
the  Incarnation,  that  a  perfectly  pure  obedient  humanity  might 
utter  divinity,  might  be  the  transparent  medium  through  which 
even  God  might  show  Himself,  then  is  there  not  an  everlasting 
sense  in  which  the  words  of  Jesus  may  become  the  words  of  the 
Church  and  the  declaration  of  its  highest  privilege.  .  .  .  When 
one  feels  this,  he  earnestly  deprecates,  he  deeply  dreads  the 
"  clericalism  "  to  which  the  church  is  always  tending.  It  is  not  by 
the  truth  the  clergy  teach,  it  is  by  the  lives  the  Christian  people 
live  that  the  church  must  be  the  witness  of  the  Father. 

He  that  is  not  against  us  is  with  us.  They  are  the  words  of 
one  to  whom  ends  are  more  than  means,  to  whom  not  regularity 
of  method  but  rightness  of  aim  and  energy  of  purpose  is  the 
important  thing.  It  would  be  interesting  if  we  could  know  what 
became  of  these  irregular  casters  out  of  devils  in  the  Lord's  name. 
By  and  by  we  hear  no  more  of  them.  They  seem  to  have  disap- 
peared. They  have  not  been  aggravated  and  exasperated  into  a 
sect  by  the  insistence  of  Jesus  that  they  should  not  work  for  Him 
unless  they  worked  side  by  side  with  Andrew  and  with  Peter  and 
exactly  in  their  way.  It  would  not  be  a  surprise,  if  we  could 
look  into  the  company  about  the  cross,  or  into  the  company  which 
gathered  after  the  Ascension  to  wait  for  the  full  commission  of 
the  Spirit,  to  see  some  of  these  workers  there  drawn  into  the  fel- 
lowship of  Jesus  by  His  sympathy  with  the  irregular,  spontaneous 
effort  they  had  made  to  do  some  of  His  work  in  His  name. 

To  the  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks  he  wrote :  — 

Boston,  May  25,  1879. 

I  wish  we  wrote  of tener,  but  I  suppose  we  shall  always  go  on 
pretty  much  in  this  way.  One  of  these  days  when  I  get  a  little 
further  into  decline  perhaps  I  may  get  a  country  parish  near  New 
York,  succeed  Wildes  at  Riverdale  or  something,  and  then  we 
shall  see  each  other  all  the  time.  Wildes  was  here  the  other  day 
at  our  Diocesan  Convention,  supposed  to  be  attending  to  some 


^T.  43-44]  A  SERMON  AT  HARVARD        247 

obscure  and  complicated  business  about  the  next  Church  Congress. 
It  did  us  all  good  to  see  him,  and  owing  either  to  his  presence  or 
Jim's  absence  in  New  York  the  Convention  went  off  very  tamely. 
There  was  one  bit  of  a  breeze  at  last  between  the  Bishop  and  the 
Advent  Fathers,  but  it  blew  over.  There  will  be  no  persecution 
of  Ritualism  here  like  the  pretty  mess  they  have  made  in  Penn- 
sylvania. I  thought  that  Dr.  Hare  was  the  sensiblest  creature 
there.  But  people  can  never  seem  to  see  beyond  their  noses'  ends, 
nor  anticipate  that  what  they  break  other  men's  heads  with  to- 
day may  break  their  heads  to-morrow.  .  .  .  We,  that  is  William 
and  I,  have  a  little  house  down  at  Cohasset  on  the  Jerusalem  road 
where  we  go  in  two  or  three  weeks,  and  where  you  will  find  us 
pretty  nearly  any  time  before  October.  Come  down  and  look  at  us. 
To  think  that  Garrison  is  dead !  What  a  chapter  of  History 
that  closes. 

He  was  preaching  often  at  this  time  in  Appleton  Chapel, 
Cambridge,  before  the  students  of  the  University.  One  of 
the  sermons  which  he  delivered  in  May,  1879,  exhibited  his 
power  in  extraordinary  manner,  —  a  sermon  to  the  young  from 
the  text,  "  Thou  .  .  .  makest  me  to  possess  the  iniquities  of 
my  youth."  Some  special  circumstance  had  roused  him  to 
write  it.  His  subject  was  the  unity  of  life,  the  continuous- 
ness  of  all  its  experiences.  There  was  no  lurid  picture  of 
endless  torment,  with  which  he  sought  to  alarm  his  hearers, 
but  even  Jonathan  Edwards  in  his  most  terrific  discourses 
could  never  have  produced  a  more  intense  or  fearful  impres- 
sion. It  was  very  rare  with  him  to  preach  such  sermons,  but 
in  this  case  the  sermon  was  consistent  throughout,  —  the  dark 
side  of  life  under  the  consciousness  of  sin.  This  is  a  passage 
which  may  serve  to  illustrate  its  purpose,  but  no  extract  can 
represent  its  power :  — 

It  is  when  some  great  trouble  comes  to  you,  the  death  of  your 
friend,  the  failure  of  your  business,  the  prospect  of  your  own 
death,  then  it  is  you  are  dismayed  to  find  that  under  the  changed 
habits  of  your  life  you  are  the  same  man  still,  and  that  the  sins 
of  your  college  days  are  in  you  even  now.  This  is  what  makes 
men  dread  any  great  event  in  life  so  strangely.  It  brings  back 
the  past  which  they  want  to  forget,  or  rather  it  compels  them  to 
see  that  the  past  is  still  there  in  the  present.  It  is  when  you  fire 
a  cannon  over  the  pond  that  the  dead  body  which  is  sunk  there 
rises. 


248  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879-80 

It  was  not  invective  which  marked  the  sermon,  but  through- 
out calm  self-dissection  of  the  conscience,  and  an  intimate 
penetration  of  experiences  unspoken.  It  ended  with  this 
sentence,  "I  know  that  there  are  words  of  comfort  which  I 
have  not  turned  aside  to  speak  to-day." 

He  was  asked  to  include  the  sermon  in  his  printed  volumes, 
but  he  declined.  It  might  do,  he  replied,  to  preach  such  a 
sermon  occasionally,  when  judgment  without  mercy  was  the 
theme,  but  he  would  not  give  it  a  place  in  the  open  record. 

The  first  day  of  July  was  the  twentieth  anniversary  of  his 
ordination  to  the  deaconate.  To  one  of  his  classmates,  then 
rector  of  St.  Andrew's  Church,  Philadelphia,  he  writes :  — 

Boston,  July  1, 1879. 

Dear  Paddock,  — ...  Do  you  know,  old  fellow,  that  it  was 
twenty  years  ago  to-day,  Friday,  July  1,  1859,  that  we  were 
ordained  deacons  in  the  old  Chapel  at  Alexandria?  In  the  morn- 
ing at  eight  o'clock  we  had  a  Class  Prayer  Meeting  in  George 
Strong's  room,  at  nine  we  met  Bishop  Meade  in  Dr.  Sparrow's 
study,  and  at  eleven  the  service  began  in  the  Chapel.  Kidder  and 
Townsend  and  Strong  and  you  and  I  were  ordained,  and  a  certain 
Gibson  of  Petersburg  preached  the  sermon.  Twenty  years  ago, 
Old  Fellow !  We  must  be  pretty  nearly  halfway  through  our 
active  ministry,  and  what  do  you  suppose  that  the  next  twenty 
years  will  bring?  Nobody  in  the  old  Class  has  gone  yet,  and  we 
have  been  something  to  each  other,  some  of  us,  all  this  score  of 
years.  You  know  we  have  George  Strong  back  in  the  preaching 
ministry.  He  is  at  New  Bedford,  and  I  see  him  every  few  weeks. 
Good-by,  old  fellow,  and  God  bless  you  always. 

P.  B. 

He  replies  to  an  invitation  from  Rev.  Reuben  Kidner  to 
make  an  address  at  the  meeting  of  the  Eastern  Convocation 
to  be  held  in  Ipswich :  — 

Boston,  August  27,.  1879. 

I  will  be  with  you  on  the  evening  of  the  17th.  Please  state  the 
subject  on  which  you  wish  me  to  speak,  as  you  think  best,  only 
don't  say  anything  in  it  about  "workingmen."  I  like  working- 
men  very  much  and  care  for  their  good,  but  I  have  nothing  dis- 
tinct or  separate  to  say  to  them  about  religion,  nor  do  I  see  how 
it  will  do  any  good  to  treat  them  as  a  separate  class  in  this  mat- 
ter, in  which  their  needs  and  duties  are  just  like  other  men's» 


^T.  43-44]       CORRESPONDENCE  249 

In  the  fall  of  the  year  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Dean 
Plumptre,  who  was  visiting  this  country  with  his  wife.  He 
had  come  with  letters  of  introduction  to  Mr.  Brooks,  desirous 
to  hear  hun  preach  after  having  read  his  sermons.  But  the 
case  looked  differently  to  Mr.  Brooks,  and  he  persuaded  the 
distinguished  visitor  to  preach  for  him  at  Trinity  Church  on 
Sunday,  September  24.  In  October  he  was  in  New  York, 
preaching  at  Grace  Church,  morning  and  afternoon,  for  his 
friend,  Dr.  Henry  C.  Potter,  and  in  the  evening  a  special 
sermon  at  St.  Thomas's.  While  there  he  attended  the 
Clericus  when  Dr.  Channing  was  the  subject  of  discussion. 
He  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  the  Boston  Clericus  in  letters  to 
Eev.  Arthur  Brooks,  where  he  also  speaks  of  declining  an 
invitation  to  the  New  England  dinner  in  Brooklyn,  N.  Y., 
commemorating  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims  at  Plymouth. 

November  4, 1879. 

We  had  a  meeting  of  the  Club  last  night,  and  I  told  them  all 
about  Channing  and  how  we  talked  of  him  at  Washburn's.  We 
were  n't  very  intellectual,  but  then  we  were  a  very  jolly  crowd 
and  smoking  was  allowed,  which  was  more  than  we  did  at  Wash- 
burn's. I  have  bad  a  letter  from  Bishop  [Horatio]  Potter  trans- 
mitting the  letter  of  the  City  Missionary,  and  ending  with  this 
remarkable  aspiration,  "I  hope  that  you  are  none  the  worse  for 
the  exposure  of  your  journey  and  the  effort  of  Sunday  evening 
at  St.  Thomas's."  Does  he  think  that  I,  too,  am  eighty  years 
old.? 

Boston,  December  1,  1879. 

You  will  have  to  say  to  your  friend  who  sends  me  the  kind 
invitation  that  it  will  be  quite  impossible  for  me  to  come  to  the 
New  England  Dinner  this  year,  just  as  it  was  last.  The  fact  is 
that  Christmas  and  these  Puritans  interfere  with  one  another  now 
just  as  much  as  they  ever  did.  I  believe  that  they  landed  just 
before  Christmas  on  purpose,  so  that  the  celebration  of  their  land- 
ing might  forever  interfere  with  the  preparation  of  Christmas 
Trees  and  Christmas  sermons.  So  I  can't  come.  I  'd  rather 
like  to,  all  but  the  having  to  speak.      That  spoils  a  dinner. 

Next  Wednesday  we  are  going  to  have  a  time  here  because  Dr. 
Holmes  is  seventy  years  old.  All  the  folks  that  ever  wrote  for 
"The  Atlantic  Monthly,"  and  some  of  us  that  didn't,  are  going 
to  breakfast  with  him  at  the  Brunswick. 


250  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1879-80 

On  his  forty-fourth  birthday  he  writes  to  Mrs.  R.  J.  Hall 
what  was  for  him  a  long  letter :  — 

175  Marlborough  Street,  Boston,  December  13, 1879. 

My  dear  Elise,  —  I  do  not  want  Christmas  to  come  and  go 
without  sending  you  a  word  of  greeting  in  your  new  home.  I 
thanked  you  truly  for  the  note  you  sent  me  so  soon  after  you  were 
in  Vienna.  I  was  exceedingly  pleased  to  find  that  the  new  life 
had  not  blotted  an  old  friend  out  of  your  mind.  And  I  dare  to 
think  that  Christmas  will  bring  back  the  life  at  home  and  the 
life  at  the  Church  so  that  you  will  not  be  sorry  to  get  a  word  or 
two.  I  am  glad  to  say  that  there  was  not  a  murmur  of  objec- 
tion about  your  wedding,  and  I  shall  always  be  glad  to  have  had 
the  pleasure  of  welcoming  Dr.  Hall  to  Trinity.  Everything  there 
looks  just  as  you  so  well  remember  it.  The  people  come  and  go 
and  I  hope  grow  better.  Certainly  their  minister  enjoys  it  more 
and  more  every  year.  The  Sunday-school  has  its  multitude  of 
small  people  who  never  seem  to  fail,  and  I  think  they  never  looked 
more  bright  and  happy.  Certainly  they  never  were  more  numer- 
ous than  this  year.  We  are  just  getting  a  new  organ  for  their 
room  to  take  the  place  of  the  Cabinet  Organ  on  which  you  have 
so  often  kindly  played. 

I  think  you  must  look  back  on  all  the  days  of  work  with  real 
pleasure  and  gratitude.  John  Foster  and  the  rest  of  them  I  dare 
say  are  getting  a  little  bit  dim  in  the  New  Lights.  They  are 
very  hard  to  see  from  Vienna.  But  you  were  very  much  to  them, 
and  I  think  they  must  have  been  very  much  to  you.  One  does 
not  take  so  deep  an  interest  as  you  had  in  them  for  so  long,  and 
then  ever  lose  it  entirely  out  of  his  life.  It  is  like  a  minister's 
first  parish,  which  he  never  loses  or  ceases  to  feel,  however  much 
he  cares  for  the  other  parishes  that  come  afterwards. 

I  envy  you  Vienna  and  its  brightness.  No  place  seemed  to  me 
more  full  of  sunshine  than  it  was  when  1  saw  it  thirteen  years 
ago.  But  perhaps  it  has  dull  days  like  other  places.  I  wonder 
if  you  have  met  Dr.  Mixter  and  his  wife,  who  are  in  Vienna  for 
the  same  purpose  which  takes  you  and  Dr.  Hall  there.  She  was 
married  in  Trinity  a  couple  of  months  before  you,  and  has  been  at 
the  Church  ever  since  I  came  there  when  she  was  a  child  (Miss 
Galloupe).      Do  find  them  out  and  give  them  welcome. 

If  you  ever  come  across  either  of  the  two  books  which  I  have 
just  been  reading,  I  am  sure  that  you  will  like  it.  One  is  the 
"Life  of  Thomas  Erskine  of  Linlathen, "  and  the  other  is  the 
"Life  of  Bishop  Ewing  "  of  Argyle  and  the  Isles.  The  first  is 
rather  a  rare  book  and  a  little  hard  to  get ;  the  other  you  may 
find.      Both  of  them  were  noble  Christian  men  of  the  best  type, 


^T.  43-44]      CORRESPONDENCE  251 

fair  and  true,  "without  partiality  and  without  hypocrisy,"  Broad 
Churchmen  of  the  noblest  sort.  Every  now  and  then  we  get  a 
glimpse  in  the  lives  of  such  men  of  what  Christianity  yet  has  to 
do  for  the  individual  and  for  the  race  before  its  work  shall  be 
complete.  I  think  I  grow  to  have  more  and  more  tolerance  for 
every  kind  of  Christian  except  one,  and  he  is  the  Christian  who 
thinks  that  his  Christian  faith  is  done,  that  there  is  nothing 
greater  for  it  to  do  than  it  has  done  already.  He  does  not  believe 
in  the  Second  Advent,  which  is  a  true  doctrine  of  the  Gospel,  not 
about  a  fantastic  idea  of  a  new  incarnation  and  of  a  visible  Christ 
in  Palestine,  but  about  a  power  of  Clirist  over  the  destinies  and 
institutions  and  hearts  of  men  more  real  and  spiritual  than  any 
that  any  age  has  seen  yet.  But  I  must  not  preach  to  you,  and  I 
do  not  know  that  I  ever  before  wrote  a  letter  eight  pages  long.  I 
only  wanted  to  assure  you  that  I  did  not  forget  you  at  Christmas 
time,  and  to  make  sure  that  you  should  not  quite  forget  me.  I  send 
my  kindest  and  most  cordial  regards  to  your  husband,  and  with 
all  best  wishes  for  God's  truest  blessings  I  am,  my  dear  Elise, 
Your  sincere  friend, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

In  replying  to  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Ward  (Elizabeth  Stuart 
Phelps),  who  had  thanked  him  for  the  "Lectures  on  Preach- 
ing," he  says: — 

December  22,  1879. 

I  am  so  strange  still  to  authorship  that  I  do  not  realize  that  I 
have  actually  written  books,  and  any  allusion  to  them  always 
embarrasses  me. 

To  the  Rev.  George  A.  Strong  he  sends  his  thanks  for  a 
Christmas  present  of  Clifford's  writings:  — 

December  23,  1879. 

Thank  you,  dear  George.  I  have  wanted  to  see  Clifford,  heathen 
though  he  be,  for  he  is  about  the  best  specimen  apparently  of 
these  men  who  are  telling  us  that  we  have  no  souls,  and  that  there 
is  no  God.  They  must  pass  away  some  time  if  anything  that  we 
believe  is  true.  But  they  will  surely  leave  some  mark  upon  the 
Faith  which  they  so  patiently  and  ingeniously  try  to  murder,  and 
which  will  outlive  them  all.  There  is  something  almost  pic- 
turesquely like  our  .muddled  time  in  Clifford  being  made  a  Christ- 
mas present  of.  I  accept  the  omen.  And  I  accept  your  kind 
good  wishes,  as  I  have  all  the  way  along  for  these  last  twenty 
years,  and  thank  you  ever  more  and  more.  This  year  is  especially 
bright  in  that  it  has  brought  us  more  near  together,  after  these 
long  years  when  I  never  saw  you. 


252  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1880 

There  are  some  letters  written  in  a  hurried,  anxious  tone 
from  Phillips  Brooks  to  his  brothers  Arthur  and  John,  in  the 
early  weeks  of  1880,  speaking  of  the  illness  of  their  mother. 
On  the  1st  of  February  she  died,  at  the  age  of  seventy -two. 
To  the  letters  of  condolence  which  he  received  from  his 
friends  he  replied,  but  not  with  the  same  freedom  from  re- 
serve as  when  he  spoke  of  the  loss  of  his  father.  His  grief 
went  deeper.  A  gentleness  and  softness  of  manner  came 
over  him,  the  tenderness  which  can  find  its  best  expression 
not  in  words,  but  in  the  features,  reflecting  unspeakable 
moods  in  the  soul.  He  went  heavily,  as  one  that  mourneth 
for  his  mother. 

To  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell  he  wrote :  — 

My  mother  has  been  the  centre  of  all  the  happiness  of  my  life. 
Thank  God  she  is  not  less  my  pride  and  treasure  now. 

To  Mr.  Cooper :  — 

I  did  not  know  I  could  ever  be  so  much  like  a  child  again,  but 
to-night  the  world  seems  very  desolate  and  lonely.  All  my  life 
I  have  feared  and  dreaded  what  has  come  this  week.  And  now 
that  she  is  with  God,  I  seem  to  know  for  the  first  time  how  pure 
and  true  and  self-sacrificing  all  her  earthly  life  has  been.  Surely 
with  all  these  that  have  gone  before  it  will  not  be  hard  to  go  to 
Him  when  our  time  comes. 

To  another  friend :  — 

The  happiest  part  of  my  happy  life  has  been  my  mother,  and 
with  God's  help  she  will  be  more  to  me  than  ever.  The  sense  of 
God  and  his  love  has  grown  ever  clearer  in  the  midst  of  all  this 
sadness  and  bereavement. 

To  members  of  his  family  he  wrote  these  letters :  — 

175  Maklborodgh  Street,  Bostok,  February  15,  1880. 

Dear  Arthur,  — I  am  sure  we  have  been  thinking  pretty 
much  the  same  thoughts  for  these  last  two  weeks.  It  does  not 
seem  possible  that  two  weeks  have  passed  almost  since  that  Mon- 
day morning.  Surely  Mother's  departure  was  the  quietest  and 
most  placid  of  all  deaths.  And  there  have  been  a  dozen  things 
since  of  which  the  first  feeling  was  that  I  must  write  to  her  about 
them,  and  of  which  I  wondered  what  she  would  have  to  say  about 
them.  Last  night  I  had  a  letter  from  Aunt  Susan,  very  pleasant, 
but  very  sad.      They  must  miss  her  terribly  up  there  in  the  old 


^T.  44]      DEATH  OF  HIS  MOTHER  253 

house.  What  strange  events  in  our  lives  will  always  be  those  two 
visits,  so  much  alike  when  we  waited  together  there  between 
Father's  and  Mother's  deaths  and  their  funerals. 

And  so  the  new  chapter  of  life  has  begun,  and  the  Brooks  Boys 
have  got  to  stand  together  as  long  as  they  are  left.  Well,  we 
have  done  it  pretty  well  so  far,  and  I  guess  we  shall  do  it  to  the 
end.  May  we  all  get  through  with  the  faithfulness  and  simpli- 
city with  which  Father  and  Mother  have  finished  their  course. 
My  love  to  L .  Affectionately,  P. 

175  Mablbobocgh  Street,  Boston,  February  15,  1880. 

Dear  Aunt  Susan,  —  I  thank  you  with  all  my  heart  for  your 
thoughtful  and  kind  note.  It  was  real  good  of  you  to  write  it. 
I  knew  that  you  had  been  thinking  of  us,  and  you  have  known  I 
am  sure  that  we  have  thought  of  you  all  constantly  ever  since  we 
left  you  at  the  door  in  Andover.  It  does  n't  seem  possible  that 
two  whole  weeks  have  gone  since  that  Monday  morning  when 
your  message  came,  and  when  we  started  for  the  last  time  to  go 
up  and  see  dear  Mother.  How  many  times  I  have  been  over 
since  then  every  moment  of  that  day  until  the  quiet  peaceful 
drawing  of  her  last  breath  in  the  evening.  I  never  shall  be 
thankful  enough  that  both  with  her  and  father  it  was  my  privilege 
to  be  with  them  at  the  last  and  see  how  peacefully  they  both 
passed  into  the  everlasting  life.  And  ever  since  we  laid  her  body 
in  the  little  lot  at  Mount  Auburn  I  have  gone  over  and  over  all  her 
life,  and  remembered  all  that  I  thought  I  had  forgotten  about  the 
years  when  we  were  all  together.  You  know,  in  some  respects 
even  better  than  we  do,  what  she  was  to  us  from  our  birth.  And 
it  is  impossible  to  think  of  her  without  thinking  how  much  you 
were  to  her,  and  how  she  loved  you  and  leaned  on  you,  and  how 
you  helped  her  in  everything  that  she  did  for  us.  Our  gratitude 
to  you  and  to  her  will  always  go  together.  Her  life  looks  more 
and  more  beautiful  every  day  as  I  think  it  over,  and  the  new  life 
that  she  has  begun  seems  only  the  continuation  and  fulfilment  of 
the  life  on  earth  which  we  knew  and  loved  so  well.  Thank  you 
for  Uncle  Gorham's  letter  which  is  very  good  and  kind. 

Give  my  love  to  Aunt  Sarah  and  Aunt  Caroline,  and  may  God 
keep  us  all. 

Your  affectionate  nephew, 

Phillips. 

We  must  pause  for  a  moment  longer  to  dwell  on  the 
mother  of  Phillips  Brooks.  Her  greatest  endowment  was  in 
the  power  and  intensity  of  her  emotional  nature.     She  had  a 


254  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1880 

vast  capacity  for  feeling,  pouring  it  forth  inexhaustibly, 
untiringly.  She  lavished  upon  her  family  an  untold  wealth 
of  devotion.  His  father  writes  to  Phillips  Brooks  at  Virginia, 
in  1859:  — 

I  don't  think  one  of  her  children  has  an  idea  of  the  extreme, 
incessant,  and  maternal  anxiety  she  constantly  feels  for  each  one 
of  you ;  just  now  for  you  and  Fred.  You  can  perhaps  conceive 
somewhat  what  she  feels  for  Fred  from  your  recollections  of  your 
entrance  into  College  life.  Such  anxiety  and  love  ought  to  be 
repaid  back  a  thousand-fold,  and  then  the  debt  would  still  remain. 

She  showed  the  intensity  of  her  affection  in  little  ways  that 
are  pathetic.  When  she  was  expecting  her  son's  return  from 
Virginia  for  his  vacation,  she  was  accustomed  to  pin  a  paper 
on  the  wall  of  her  room  with  a  stroke  for  each  week  remain- 
ing, and  draw  a  line  across  the  marks  as  the  weeks  dimin- 
ished. Her  letters  to  him  abound  in  such  expressions  as 
this,  "I  am  longing  to  see  you,  and  I  cannot  wait  much 
longer."  The  devotion  of  a  mother's  love  was  the  power  by 
which  she  trained  and  ruled  her  children.  From  the  time 
the  new  household  was  set  up,  she  concentrated  her  energies 
in  one  single  purpose, —  the  care  of  her  family,  first  its  re- 
ligious, and  then  its  secular  welfare.  As  the  family  income 
at  first  was  limited,  she  studied  economy,  serving  with  her 
own  hands.  She  never  accepted  an  invitation  from  home  for 
any  social  function  until  her  youngest  child  was  grown  up 
and  no  longer  needed  her  care.  Dr.  Vinton  said  of  Phillips 
Brooks  that  he  was  made  by  his  mother.  He  also  said  of  her 
that  if  she  had  chosen  to  go  into  society  she  would  have 
been  a  power  in  the  city  of  Boston.  But  the  quiet  house- 
hold over  which  she  ruled  was  a  veritable  nursery  secluded 
from  the  world.  Everything  was  sacrificed  to  this  end,  — 
the  welfare  of  the  children.  Phillips  Brooks  recalled  the 
picture  when  he  went  abroad  for  the  first  time.  From 
Germany  he  wrote  in  1865 :  — 

My  dearest  Mother,  —  You  cannot  think  how  strange  it 
seems  to  be  writing  in  this  little  German  inn,  and  knowing  that 
you  will  read  it,  in  the  old  back  parlor  at  home,  where  you  have 
read  my  letters  from  Cambridge,  Alexandria,  and  Philadelphia. 


^T.  44]     DEATH   OF   HIS   MOTHER  255 

Johnnie  will  bring  it  up  from  the  post  oflBce  some  night,  and  Trip 
will  break  out  into  one  of  his  horrible  concerts  two  or  three  times 
while  you  are  reading  it.  Then  as  soon  as  it  is  over,  father  will 
get  out  his  big  candle,  and  you  will  put  up  the  stockings,  and  all 
go  up  the  old  stairway  to  the  old  chambers,  and  to  bed.  Well, 
good-night  and  pleasant  dreams  to  you  all,  and  don't  forget  that 
I  am  off  here  wandering  up  and  down  these  old  countries  and 
thinking  ever  so  much  about  you.^ 

While  solicitude  for  the  religious  life  of  her  children  was 
the  mother's  deepest  anxiety,  yet  it  did  not  interfere  with, 
it  may  have  intensified,  her  anxiety  for  their  physical  well- 
being.  She  was  the  mother  careful  and  troubled  about  many 
things,  but  she  had  somehow  reconciled  the  two  types  of 
womanhood;  like  Martha,  but  like  Mary  also,  in  the  good 
part  that  could  not  be  taken  away  from  her.  She  was 
religious,  and  yet  the  simple  human  instincts  of  motherhood 
carried  her  away.  It  was  her  custom,  when  the  boys  were 
at  a  distance  from  home,  to  make  up  boxes,  filled  with 
everything  to  eat  which  she  knew  was  liked.  Into  their 
preparation  she  put  her  heart  and  thought.  Her  husband 
writes  to  Phillips  Brooks  of  one  of  these  presents,  "It  was 
mother  all  over."  When  she  sent  them  it  was  with  the  in- 
junction that  they  would  think  of  her  while  enjoying  her  gift. 

She  understood  the  nature  of  boys.  Her  task  must  often 
have  been  a  hard  one  to  curb  the  natural  merriment  which 
threatened  at  any  moment  to  break  loose  in  riot,  or  the 
natural  play  of  the  physical  powers  which  often  became 
tumultuous.  Even  after  the  boys  had  grown  into  men  she 
still  felt  called  upon  to  exercise  her  sway  in  quieting  the 
tendency  to  uproar.  When  Phillips  and  Frederick  were  on 
a  home  visit,  the  one  rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity 
in  Philadelphia,  and  the  other  rector  of  St.  Paul's  Church 
in  Cleveland,  she  is  recalled  as  putting  her  head  into  the 
doorway  of  the  room  from  which  the  sound  of  merriment 
came,  and  saying,  "Boys,  remember  it  is  Sunday."  She  was 
a  woman  very  much  alive  in  every  pore  of  her  nature,  with  a 
watchful  eye  for  any  incident  that  she  might  distract  into  a 

^  Letters  of  Travel,  p.  18. 


256  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1880 

spiritual  channel.  She  studied  her  opportunities  of  approach 
to  the  soul.  "  That  was  a  very  beautiful  prayer,  father,  that 
you  read  "  was  her  remark  to  her  husband  after  the  morning 
devotions,  but  the  remark  was  intended  for  the  children. 

A  visitor  once  came  to  her,  a  young  and  anxious  mother, 
in  the  confidence  that  she  could  get  aid  from  one  of  so 
much  experience  in  the  bringing  up  of  boys.  At  first  there 
was  demurral,  and  then,  according  to  the  report  of  the  con- 
versation, she  admitted  that  she  could  say  something  in 
regard  to  the  management  of  sons.  This  is  the  substance  of 
what  she  said,  though  in  passing  through  the  mind  of  another 
it  does  not  reflect  her  manner  of  speech,  or  give  her  exact 
language :  — 

There  is  an  age  when  it  is  not  well  to  follow  or  question  your 
boy  too  closely.  Up  to  that  time  you  may  carefully  instruct  and 
direct  him ;  you  are  his  best  friend ;  he  is  never  happy  unless  the 
story  of  the  day  has  been  told ;  you  must  hear  about  his  friends, 
his  school ;  all  that  interests  him  must  be  your  interest.  Suddenly 
these  confidences  cease ;  the  affectionate  son  becomes  reserved  and 
silent,  he  seeks  the  intimate  friendship  of  other  lads,  he  goes  out, 
he  is  averse  to  telling  where  he  is  going  or  how  long  he  will  be 
gone.  He  comes  in  and  goes  silently  to  his  room.  All  this  is  a 
startling  change  to  the  mother,  but  it  is  also  her  opportunity  to 
practice  wisdom  by  loving,  and  praying  for,  and  absolutely  trust- 
ing her  son.  The  faithful  instruction  and  careful  training  during 
his  early  years  the  son  can  never  forget;  that  is  impossible. 
Therefore  trust  not  only  your  heavenly  Father,  but  your  son. 
The  period  of  which  I  speak  appears  to  me  to  be  one  in  which  the 
boy  dies  and  the  man  is  born;  his  individuality  rises  up  before 
him,  and  he  is  dazed  and  almost  overwhelmed  by  his  first  conscious- 
ness of  himself.  I  have  always  believed  that  it  was  then  that 
the  Creator  was  speaking  with  my  sons,  and  that  it  was  good  for 
their  souls  to  be  left  alone  with  Him,  while  I,  their  mother, 
stood  trembling,  praying,  and  waiting,  knowing  that  when  the 
man  was  developed  from  the  boy  I  should  have  my  sons  again, 
and  there  would  be  a  deeper  sympathy  than  ever  between  us. 

For  the  illustration  of  this  in  her  own  experience,  the 
reader  may  recall  the  account  which  has  been  given  of 
Phillips  Brooks's  reserve,  in  his  youth,  when  his  mother  un- 
derstood him,  keeping  silence  in  the  years  of  transition  which 


^T.  44]     DEATH   OF   HIS   MOTHER  257 

shut  him  up  to  the  issue  between  God  and  the  soul;  or 
of  the  conversation  with  George  Brooks  after  his  confir- 
mation, when,  like  Monica  with  Augustine,  after  years  of 
waiting  the  full  communion  of  spirits  came  at  last.  She  was 
making  an  act  of  faith  when  to  her  son  Phillips  at  Alex- 
andria she  wrote  that  she  would  not  doubt  his  love  even  if 
she  did  not  hear  from  him  for  years. 

Phillips  Brooks  resembled  in  appearance  his  mother  more 
than  his  father.  The  contour  of  the  head,  the  large  dark 
eyes,  the  form  of  the  nose,  something  also  in  the  poise  and 
the  carriage  of  the  head,  are  those  of  his  mother.  But  the 
large  stature  seems  to  be  a  remoter  inheritance,  coming  into 
the  Phillips  family,  together  with  the  deep  darkness  of  the 
eye,  in  Phoebe  Foxcroft,  his  great-grandmother,  the  wife  of 
that  Samuel  Phillips  who  founded  the  institutions  at  An- 
dover.  The  indebtedness  of  Phillips  Brooks  to  his  mother 
in  the  line  of  a  rich  heritage  is  perhaps  the  greater,  yet  what 
he  owed  to  his  father  is  of  such  importance  that  without  it  he 
would  not  have  been  the  man  he  was.  Thus  his  handwriting, 
which  is  a  symbol  of  many  other  things,  and  from  which  to 
some  extent  the  character  may  be  read,  at  one  time  so  closely 
resembled  his  father's  that  it  appears  at  a  casual  glance  to 
be  the  same.  But  as  the  years  went  on  it  changed,  and 
became  more  distinctly  his  own,  graceful  and  symmetrical 
and  most  legible,  without  affectation, — a  sort  of  reflection 
of  the  man.  Many  of  the  higher  intellectual  qualities  of 
Phillips  Brooks  are  those  of  his  father.  His  love  of  historical 
studies,  his  taste  for  architecture,  his  accuracy,  his  interest 
in  minute  details,  his  literary  sense,  and  his  sober  judgments 
of  men  and  things,  —  these  are  traits  which  his  father 
possessed.  He  was  like  him  in  his  habit  of  writing  out  on 
paper  what  went  through  his  mind.  Had  his  father  devoted 
himself  to  literary  work,  he  would  have  achieved  distinction. 
He  loved  patient,  laborious  research.  There  are  several  large 
volumes  of  his  journals  running  through  many  years  in  which 
he  notes  all  that  came  under  his  gaze  with  admirable  re- 
flections of  his  own,  in  a  graceful  style,  and  always  most 
interesting  to  read.     These  journals  stand  for  an  immense 

VOL,  n 


258  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1880 

amount  of  work.  No  monkish  chronicler  in  his  cell  in  the 
days  of  the  Crusades  was  more  alive  than  he  to  the  necessity 
of  recording  minutely  and  accurately  the  events  of  the  passing 
hour.  In  that  respect  his  son  resembled  him,  always  fastening 
upon  that  which  had  a  genuine  human  interest.  His  father 
was  something  of  an  onlooker  upon  life,  stationed  a  little 
outside  or  above  it,  in  order  to  note  its  movement,  and  here, 
too,  there  was  a  close  resemblance.  The  father  had  the  con- 
stant play  of  humor  without  which  the  highest  results  in 
character  and  achievement  are  impossible,  and  these  also  the 
son  possessed  in  larger  measure.  Phillips  Brooks's  almost 
invariable  mood  outside  of  the  pulpit  was  one  in  which  his 
humor  played  with  all  the  events,  the  changes,  and  chances 
of  this  mortal  life.  It  is  said  that  sons  inherit  from  the 
father  the  moral  qualities.  If  this  be  true,  then  the  high 
unbending  integrity,  the  uprightness  of  the  perfect  man,  who 
could  be  trusted  in  all  circumstances  to  do  what  was  right 
and  fitting,  was  an  invaluable  paternal  legacy.  For  of  the 
father  the  truest  words  that  his  sons  could  speak  were  these, 
"The  righteous  shall  be  had  in  everlasting  remembrance." 

In  this  comparison  with  his  father,  there  are  some  other 
points  of  resemblance.  They  had  in  common  the  love  of 
relics.  When  the  father  was  leaving  Boston  in  1877,  he 
entrusted  to  his  son,  as  if  his  work  in  life  were  over,  the  relics 
that  he  valued :  — 

Boston,  February  7, 1877. 

Dear  Phillips,  —  I  have  put  with  this  bundle  the  book  with 
the  autograph  of  George  Phillips,  our  ancestor  who  came  over  in 
1630.  I  have  always  valued  it  from  its  rarity,  and  entrust  it  to 
your  keeping  as  a  curiosity.  I  know  of  but  one  other.  It  has 
the  bookmark  also  of  the  Rev.  Samuel  Phillips  of  South  And  over, 
who  graduated  in  1708,  and  died  in  1711.  Also  his  portrait. 
Also  a  Latin  Bible.     All  of  which  please  accept  from 

Father. 

The  mother  was  content  to  remain  at  home,  abiding  in 
the  consciousness  of  an  interior  wealth,  where  lay  her  hap- 
piness. The  son  was  not  without  this  same  satisfaction,  but 
like  his  father  he  loved  to  travel.  Thus  his  father  writes  to 
him  on  one  occasion,  "I  have  been  so  long  at  home  that  I 


^T.  44]      DEATH   OF   HIS   MOTHER  259 

begin  to  feel  uneasy."     Phillips  Brooks  might  have  often 
made  these  words  his  own. 

This  comparison  may  be  summed  up,  then,  in  the  state- 
ment that  the  invaluable  gift  of  the  observation  of  life  came 
from  the  father  to  the  son.  It  is  this  gift  which  underlies 
the  imaginative  power,  and  indeed  may  be  said  to  constitute 
the  imagination  when  it  is  united  with  the  other  gift  of  ex- 
pression, enabling  one  to  reproduce  what  he  sees.  In  Phillips 
Brooks  the  power  of  observation  was  enlarged  in  its  range, 
and  was  fused  with  that  vast  and  almost  unlimited  power  of 
feeling  which  came  from  his  mother.  The  gift  of  observation 
as  seen  in  the  father  implies  the  recognition  of  a  certain 
importance  and  significance  in  secular  things,  in  life  as  it  is 
and  not  solely  as  it  ought  to  be,  that  kind  of  realism  which 
is  based  on  the  conviction  that  the  divine  idea  is  actually 
and  already  working  in  the  ways  and  institutions  of  common 
life.  The  mother  had  more  of  the  spirit  of  the  reformer,  who 
is  born  to  set  the  world  right  and  cannot  contemplate  with 
serenity  the  world  as  it  is.  She  hungered  and  thirsted  for 
the  righteousness  whose  coming  is  so  slow.  So  strong  was 
her  will,  so  intense  her  nature,  that  she  grew  impatient  with 
the  obstacles  in  the  way.  One  who  knew  the  family  well 
speaks  of  this  difference  between  the  father  and  the  mother :  — 

It  always  seemed  to  me  that  Phillips  owed  to  his  father  the 
clear  common  sense  and  realization  of  the  rights  and,  so  to  speak, 
the  personality  of  others,  which  kept  him  from  jarring,  and  made 
him  able  not  to  try  for  too  much  or  too  impulsively.  I  remem- 
ber his  once  speaking  with  amusement  of  that  difEerence  between 
Mother  and  Father.  "Mother,"  he  said,  "always  felt  that  every- 
thing must  be  set  right  at  once.  Anything  wrong  roused  her  to 
appeal,  'William,  are  n't  you  going  to  do  something  about  it? 
Why  don't  you  talk,  then!  '  And  then  Father  with  his  quizzical 
smile  would  say,   '  But  it  is  none  of  my  business. '  " 

Now,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  was  just  that  capacity  to  see  what 
was  his  business,  and  how  in  the  prosecution  of  it  he  yet  must 
regard  other  men's  views  and  peculiarities,  and  could  help  them 
only  by  sympathy  and  honest  respect,  —  in  that  lay  Phillips's 
great  exceptional  power.  We  have  had  many  fanatics,  whom  we 
have  honored  for  their  single-mindedness,  but  few  men  of  such 
breadth  of  mind  that  we  could  be  sure  they  understood  those  who 


26o  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1880 

differed  from  them.     And  one  such  does  more  for  the  unity  of 
the  Church  universal  than  all  the  others. 

A  friend  of  Phillips  Brooks,  who  had  seen  him  at  home 
and  knew  his  father  and  mother,  writes  of  his  impressions 
regarding  them :  — 

Mr.  Brooks  always  gave  me  the  notion  of  a  typical  Boston 
merchant,  solid,  upright,  unimaginative,  unemotional.  Mrs. 
Brooks  gave  me  the  notion  of  a  woman  of  an  intense  emotional 
nature,  the  very  tones  of  her  voice  vibratory  with  feeling,  deep 
spiritual  life,  the  temperament  of  genius,  the  saintly  character.  I 
felt  that  Phillips  Brooks  owed  his  father  very  much,  the  business- 
like and  orderly  habit,  the  administrative  faculty  which  worked 
so  easily  and  was  so  overshadowed  by  greater  powers  that  it 
never  received  full  recognition;  the  clear  logical  understanding 
that  framed  so  well  the  skeletons  of  those  sermons  which  the 
intuitive  reason,  the  active  imagination,  the  literary  sense,  the 
spiritual  fire  so  richly  filled  out,  and  clothed  and  inspired 
afterwards;  and  the  strong  common  sense  that  no  fervor  of  feel- 
ing, no  passionate  outburst  of  soul,  could  ever  sweep  from  its 
anchorage.  But  I  never  had  a  question  that  what  made  Phillips 
Brooks  a  prophet,  a  leader,  a  power  among  men  was  from  the 
Phillips  side  of  the  family.  The  big  heart,  the  changeful  coun- 
tenance, the  voice  that  so  easily  grew  tremulous  with  feeling,  the 
eager  look  and  gesture,  the  magnetism,  the  genius,  seemed  to  me, 
and  I  believe  seemed  to  him,  his  mother's.  The  father  saw  things 
as  they  were ;  she  saw  things  in  vision,  ideally  as  they  should  be. 
So  Phillips  Brooks  knew  the  facts  of  life,  seeing  with  his  father's 
eyes,  and  all  the  hopes  and  possibilities  of  life  through  the  eyes 
of  his  mother. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  carry  this  comparison  further.  The 
conjunction  in  one  personality  and  in  organic  fashion,  accord- 
ing to  the  marvellous  mystery  of  life,  of  the  qualities  inher- 
ited from  both  parents  constituted  the  foundation  of  the 
greatness  of  Phillips  Brooks.  Had  he  received  by  transmis- 
sion only  the  outlook  of  his  father  without  the  inspired  hero- 
ism of  his  mother  he  would  not  have  risen  to  greatness.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  had  he  inherited  from  his  mother  alone, 
he  might  have  been  known  as  an  ardent  reformer,  not  wholly 
unlike  his  distinguished  kinsman,  Wendell  Phillips,  —  a  type 
familiar  in  New  England;  but  the  wonderful  fascination  of 


^T.  44]     DEATH   OF  HIS  MOTHER  261 

his  power  for  men  of  every  class  and  degree,  the  universal 
appeal  to  a  common  humanity,  would  have  been  wanting.  He 
himself  recognized  the  divergence  of  these  possibilities  within 
him.  Sometimes  it  seemed  almost  to  amount  to  a  contra- 
diction whose  resolution  into  a  harmony  he  was  seeking  to 
accomplish.  There  was  a  moment  in  his  Philadelphia  ministry 
when  he  really  identified  the  pulpit  with  the  cause  of  social 
reforms.  He  changed,  but  the  process  of  the  change  is  buried 
in  silence.  All  that  we  know  is  that  when  he  came  to  Boston 
he  must  have  reached  the  determination  to  confine  himself 
to  preaching.  He  saw  that  there  was  an  evil  side  to  this 
perpetual  agitation,  danger  of  life  passing  away  while  one 
was  getting  ready  to  live.  Some  said,  "Remove  first  the 
obstacles  which  stand  in  the  way  of  human  progress,  and  then 
men  will  be  able  to  live."  He  said,  "The  world,  humanity, 
has  already  been  redeemed  by  Christ.  The  opportunities  of 
the  divine  sonship  are  open  to  every  man.  Live!  Live 
greatly  now! "  ^ 

The  mother  of  Phillips  Brooks,  as  she  went  about  her  house- 
hold duties,  was  brooding  over  a  world  to  be  won  for  Christ. 
The  possibility  filled  her  with  strange  unuttered  enthusiasm. 
She  was  thinking  much  about  foreign  missions.  Her  heart 
would  have  been  torn  with  natural  anguish,  but  she  would 
have  bravely  bidden  farewell  to  all  her  sons  had  they  been 
going  forth  into  heathen  lands  to  carry  the  gospel  of  Christ. 
"How  Mother  used  to  talk  to  us  about  Henry  Martyn," 
wrote  Phillips  Brooks  to  one  of  his  brothers,  when  two  years 
later  he  was  in  India.  A  new  zeal  for  foreign  missions  was 
born  in  him  from  that  time.  The  concentration  of  his  power- 
ful will  in  combination  with  the  brooding  love  and  tenderness 
for  humanity,  the  vast  almost  superhuman  yearning  for  the 
well-being  of  humanity  and  of  individual  men,  the  clear  single 
purpose,  from  which  he  steadfastly  refused  to  be  turned 
aside,  even  by  the  fascination  of  intellectual  culture  or  liter- 
ary creation,  the  growing  devotion  to  Christ  which  mastered 
his  whole  being,  —  this  we  came  to  know  as  Phillips  Brooks, 
and  this  in  another  form  was  the  spirit  of  his  mother.  The 
*  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  vi.,  for  a  sermon  on  the  "  Battle  of  Life." 


262  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1880 

words  of  Scripture  upon  which  he  fastened  as  representing 
his  mother's  life,  to  be  engraven  upon  the  stone  that  marks 
her  burying  place,  were  these :  "  O  woman,  great  is  thy  faith : 
be  it  unto  thee  even  as  thou  wilt."  Shortly  after  her  death 
he  preached  upon  this  text  in  the  pulpit  of  Trinity  Church. 
The  sermon  contains  no  personal  reference,  but  it  is  the  son's 
memorial  of  his  mother.^ 

There  are  many  of  his  sermons,  where  one  familiar  with 
his  life  may  trace  his  experience  in  the  home.  It  was  his 
peculiarity  to  dwell  on  the  simple  facts  of  his  own  life  till 
he  saw  them  in  their  truer,  because  diviner  meaning.  There 
is  one  sermon  entitled  "The  Mother's  Wonder,"  on  the 
text,  "Son,  why  hast  thou  thus  dealt  with  us?"  which  may 
be  called  his  apology  for  the  inevitable  divergence  from  the 
standards  of  the  household  in  which  he  had  grown  up. 
Every  man  must  take  his  life  finally  into  his  own  keeping, 
responsible  only  to  God  for  his  methods  and  conclusions.* 
Both  father  and  mother,  and  particularly  the  mother,  held 
stringently  by  those  religious  opinions  which  in  that  day  were 
accounted  safe,  fearful  of  the  newer  books  and  movements  in 
religion,  lest  they  should  shake  the  foundations  of  Christian 
faith.  Thus  the  mother  warned  her  children  against  Bush- 
nell's  writings  as  dangerous.  The  following  letter  was 
written  by  her  while  Phillips  Brooks  was  in  Philadelphia, 
after  he  had  been  for  two  years  the  rector  of  the  Church  of 
the  Holy  Trinity.  It  will  be  read  in  a  spirit  of  profoundest 
reverence,  for  the  intensity  of  its  convictions,  its  entire  devo- 
tion to  truth,  that  sense  of  responsibility,  as  it  were,  for  the 
world  which  made  the  mother  great :  — 

Boston,  Sunday  erening,  November  27,  1864. 
My  deab  Phillv,  —  I  have  just  been  hearing  William  read 
two  sermons  by  Dr.  Bushnell,  just  published,  one  upon  the 
"Agony  of  Christ,"  and  one  upon  the  "Cross."  And  I  am  so 
shocked  by  them  that  I  cannot  refrain  from  warning  you  against 
them  as  being  a  preacher  of  the  Cross  of  Christ.  Philly,  they 
are  nothing  better  than  Unitarianism  that  I  suffered  under  all  my 

1  Cf .  Sermons,  vol.  iii., "  The  Greatness  of  Faith." 

2  Cf.  Ibid.  vol.  iv. 


^T.  44]     DEATH   OF   HIS   MOTHER  263 

young  life.  They  tear  the  view  of  Christ's  vicarious  suffering  all 
to  pieces.  I  know  you  admire  some  of  his  writings,  therefore  I 
warn  you  not  to  be  beguiled  by  these ;  for  God  knows,  Philly,  I 
would  rather  never  have  you  preach  Christ's  blessed  Gospel  than 
wickedly  pervert  it  as  Bushnell  does. 

I  hope  you  do  not  own  the  book  called  "Christ  and  His  Salva- 
tion," But  if  you  do  I  want  you  to  burn  it  with  Frederick  pre- 
sent to  witness  and  exult  over  it.  I  have  no  patience  with  the 
book  or  with  the  man.  It  is  shameful  to  put  forth  such  a  book 
under  the  guise  of  an  orthodox  preacher,  when  it  is  nothing  better 
than  Unitarianism.  I  am  afraid  he  will  beguile  many  a  one  who 
is  not  on  his  guard,  and  so  I  cannot  help  warning  you.  No,  my 
dear  child;  remember,  you  have  promised  to  preach  Christ  and 
Him  crucified  in  the  true  meaning  of  the  words,  and  I  charge  you 
to  stand  firm.  If  you  do  read  the  book,  I  would  love  to  see  you 
come  out  with  a  scorching  criticism  of  it.  He  is  also  going  to 
bring  out  another  volume,  which  I  also  warn  you  against,  upon 
"Christ's  Vicarious  Sufferings."  I  shudder  to  think  how  he  will 
deny  all  Christ's  blessed  dying /or  ws. 

No,  Philly,  I  've  sat  under  such  preaching  a  long  time,  and  I 
know  how  to  warn  you  all  against  it.  I  know  Dr.  Vinton  would 
not  like  those  sermons ;  he  is  so  simply  sound.  I  heard  him  con- 
demn Dr.  Bushnell  fifteen  years  ago. 

Philly,  I  wish  you  would  let  Frederick  read  what  I  have  writ- 
ten. It  may  do  him  good  too.  And  excuse  the  plainness  of  my 
writing,  and  impute  it  all  to  my  love  of  the  Truth  and  my  earnest 
desire  that  you  may  continue  Christ's  faithful  soldier  and  servant 
unto  your  life's  end. 

Your  faithful  and  affectionate, 

Friend  and  Mother. 

P.  S.  I  hope  you  will  answer  this  letter.  Perhaps  it  would 
be  better  after  you  have  read  the  sermons.  But  perhaps  you  had 
better  not  read  them  at  all. 

The  significance  of  this  letter  is  its  valuation  of  the  truth 
of  vicarious  atonement,  which,  apart  from  all  reasoning,  is 
the  expression  of  some  deep  human  feeling,  too  persistent  to 
be  set  aside  as  an  accident  in  the  history  of  the  religious  life. 
Dr.  Bushnell,  it  is  well  known,  changed  his  opinion  on  the 
subject,  and  after  much  serious  consideration  withdrew  the 
book  in  which  he  had  questioned  the  vicariousness  of  the 
great  sacrifice.  This  letter  from  the  mother  of  Phillips 
Brooks,  it  may  be  taken  for  granted,  had  its  influence  on 


264  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1880 

the  son.  He  was  too  deep  a  student  of  the  religious  life  and 
of  the  instinctive  utterances  of  Christian  feeling  to  deny  the 
validity  of  a  conviction  which  meant  so  much  in  his  mother's 
experience.  The  subject  will  be  referred  to  again  when 
treating  of  his  theology.  But  here  it  may  be  said  that  this 
letter  stands  to  his  theology  somewhat  as  the  letters  of  his 
father,  in  regard  to  carrying  politics  into  the  pulpit,  stood 
to  his  general  attitude  as  a  preacher.  He  was  a  loyal  son, 
even  when  forced  to  differ  from  the  parental  injunction. 

Another  instance  of  the  parental  anxiety  was  displayed 
when  the  book  "Ecce  Homo"  appeared,  creating  bewilder- 
ment through  its  unusual  treatment  of  the  person  of  Christ. 
Phillips  Brooks  sought  to  allay  the  anxiety  which  his  en- 
thusiasm for  it  had  created  in  the  home  circle  by  appealing 
to  the  authority  of  Dr.  Stone,  who  was  regarded  as  a  safe 
guide,  "I  am  happy  to  report  to  you  that  Dr.  Stone  is  an 
enthusiastic  admirer  of  'Ecce  Homo.'"  But  any  concern 
which  the  mother  may  have  felt  because  of  the  son's  diver- 
gence from  those  opinions  to  which  she  rigidly  adhered 
ceased  to  exist  after  he  came  to  Boston.  His  preaching 
entirely  satisfied  her  soul  in  its  most  exigent  demands  for  the 
bread  of  life.  This  confirms  what  has  already  been  said, 
that  he  had  now  taken  up  her  mission  and  was  fulfilling  it 
after  her  heart's  desire.  Sometimes  he  himself  or  his  friends 
would  seek  to  tease  her  by  speaking  of  his  tenets  as  not  in 
harmony  with  her  doctrinal  system,  but  she  was  no  longer 
annoyed.  She  kept  the  counsels  of  her  heart  about  in- 
tellectual difficulties  and  new  developments  in  theology.  It 
was  enough  that  he  was  preaching  the  Christ  whom  she  knew 
and  loved  with  a  power  and  insight  she  had  never  known 
before. 

Both  father  and  mother  felt  the  natural  human  pride  in 
such  a  son.  At  the  time  when  the  services  of  Trinity  Church 
were  held  in  Huntington  Hall,  the  father  is  remembered 
as  going  to  the  robing  room,  before  the  service  began,  and  leav- 
ing there  his  hat  and  overcoat  before  entering  the  hall.  The 
mother  sat  with  a  rapt  countenance,  leaning  slightly  forward 
as  her  son  was  preaching.     She  would  often  come  up  to  him 


^T.  44]      DEATH   OF   HIS   MOTHER  265 

in  her  shy,  gentle  way,  saying,  "Phillips,  that  was  a  beauti- 
ful sermon."  She  had  fears,  sometimes  grave  anxiety,  lest 
his  popularity  and  success  would  injure  his  character.  "Do 
you  think  they  are  spoiling  him?  "she  once  asked  in  her 
pleasant  but  abrupt  way  of  a  young  clergyman  whom  she 
casually  met.  She  did  not  like  the  new  style  of  Evangel- 
ical preaching  which  came  in  with  the  younger  generation, 
with  its  finical  play  upon  the  letter  of  Scriptures,  the  find- 
ing of  surprising  meanings  in  the  absence  or  presence  of 
grammatical  particles.  She  also  refused  to  believe  that  there 
were  any  "Romanizing  germs  "  in  the  Prayer  Book.     Thus 

she  wrote :  — 

Boston,  May  7, 1869. 

My  dear  Phillt,  —  I  hear  that  you  are  to  preach  the  Con- 
vention Sermon  next  week.  Do  stand  up  with  all  your  strength 
for  our  dear  good  Prayer  Book.  Plead  that  not  one  jot  or  tittle 
of  it  be  altered.  It  never  was  the  cause  of  that  hateful  ritualism, 
and  our  Faith  and  our  Church  will  go  when  our  Prayer  Book  is 
changed.  Let  us  show  we  can  defend  our  good  old  Mother  when 
she  is  in  danger.  I  trust  in  your  power  and  will  to  do  it,  and 
may  God  help  you  to  defend  the  right. 

Anxiously,  your  Mother,  and  earnestly. 

The  mother  is  also  remembered  for  that  peculiar  power  of 
sympathy  which  was  illustrated  so  amply  in  her  son.  A  lady 
who  had  given  up  her  religious  home  among  the  Unitarians 
to  attend  Trinity  Church,  and  who  felt  still  as  a  stranger  in 
the  new  position,  recalls  how  Mrs.  Brooks  introduced  herself 
once  after  service,  alluding  to  her  own  loneliness  when  she 
made  the  transition  to  the  Episcopal  Church.  Another  lady 
says  of  her,  "I  never  saw  her  without  feeling  a  desire  to  be 
better."  When  her  sister  went  to  Washington  during  the 
war  to  serve  as  a  nurse  in  the  hospitals,  she  writes  that  she 
wishes  she  could  go  herseK.  For  many  years  she  taught  a 
class  of  boys  in  a  mission  Sunday-school  on  Purchase  Street. 
But  her  main  work  was  at  home,  caring  for  her  household 
and  her  children.  There  she  revealed  her  greatness.  Of 
the  devotion  of  Phillips  Brooks  to  his  mother  much  might 
be  said,  and  especially  in  those  last  years  of  her  life,  when  he 
seemed  to  live  for  her  in  constant  acts  of  thoughtfulness  for 


CLSe  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1880 

her  comfort  and  happiness.  She  came  to  wonder  at  his  good- 
ness. She  grew  deeper  into  the  childlike  spirit.  Gratitude 
and  humility  were  the  graces  of  her  character.  Her  favorite 
hymn  was  one  of  Bonar's,  called  the  "Everlasting  Memorial:  " 

Up  and  away  like  the  dew  of  the  morning, 
Soaring  from  earth  to  its  home  in  the  sun, 

So  let  me  steal  away  gently  and  lovingly. 
Only  remembered  by  what  I  have  done. 

The  reputation  of  Phillips  Brooks  as  a  preacher  had  now 
extended  into  England  and  Scotland.  To  trace  the  process 
of  his  growing  fame  abroad  would  be  only  to  repeat  the  story 
of  his  first  appearance  in  the  pulpit  of  the  Church  of  the 
Advent  in  Philadelphia  or  of  his  coming  to  Trinity  Church 
in  Boston.  Abroad  as  at  home  he  awakened  the  same 
interest  in  himself  as  a  man,  as  well  as  overcame  his 
hearers  by  his  power  in  the  pulpit.  It  had  been  through 
Dean  Stanley  that  his  first  introduction  to  England  had 
come.  Then  Dean  Stanley's  friends  had  become  his  own, 
speaking  of  him  among  themselves.  This  was  the  first  be- 
ginning of  his  English  fame.  When  his  first  volume  of 
sermons  appeared,  it  reached  a  wide  circulation  in  England, 
because  those  who  read  it  spoke  of  it  to  their  friends  as  some- 
thing which  had  left  a  rare  impression  on  their  minds.  Be- 
neath the  thought  they  penetrated  to  the  man,  and  felt  the 
same  desire  to  know  him  that  had  been  felt  at  home.  A 
pathetic  interest  attaches  to  this  first  volume  because  Dean 
Stanley  read  it  by  the  bedside  of  his  wife  in  her  last  days. 
A  distinguished  dignitary  of  the  Church  of  England  wrote 
to  a  friend  who  sent  it  to  him :  — 

January  21,  1879. 
.  .  .  The  volume  you  so  kindly  sent  me  to  look  at  is  a  trea- 
sure, and  it  has  already  been  brought  under  my  notice  by  Canon 
Spence,  of  St.  Pancras,  who  was  introduced  to  it  by  Canon 
Farrar.  I  have  ordered  a  copy  for  myself,  for  I  had  already 
dipped  into  the  volume  and  seen  what  wealth  it  contains.  Canon 
Spence  said,  "  The  man  who  wrote  those  sermons  is  a  giant, "  — 
little  knowing  that  his  words  applied  physically  as  well  as  intel- 
lectually !    I  must  say  that  Phillips  Brooks  is  of  all  living  divines 


^T.  44]     SERMON  BEFORE  THE  QUEEN  267 

the  one  with  whom  I  feel  I  have  most  in  common,  —  whose  view 
of  Christianity  and  the  Christian  life  appears  to  me  to  be  the 
wisest  and  the  healthiest.  I  wish  I  had  the  chance  of  "sitting 
under  "  such  a  teacher.  If  we  could  import  him  into  a  stall  at 
Westminster  what  a  gain  it  would  be!  Our  Dean  says  he  con- 
siders the  last  sermon  he  preached  at  the  Abbey  the  best  he  ever 
heard  there.  ^ 

The  knowledge  of  the  sermons  came  to  the  Queen,  who  read 
them  with  deep  interest,  and  made  them  a  gift  to  the  Dean  of 
Windsor.  Her  Majesty  having  expressed  a  desire  to  hear 
him  preach  when  he  next  visited  England,  the  invitation  was 
conveyed  to  him  by  the  Dean  of  Windsor,  and  on  Sunday,  the 
11th  of  July,  he  preached  in  the  Chapel  Royal  at  Windsor 
Castle.  The  text  of  the  sermon  was  Rev.  iii.  12:  "Him 
that  overcometh  will  I  make  a  pillar  in  the  temple  of  my  God, 
and  he  shall  go  no  more  out:  and  I  will  write  upon  him  the 
name  of  my  God,  and  the  name  of  the  city  of  my  God  .  .  . 
and  .  .  .  my  new  name."  As  it  was  the  first  instance  in 
which  an  American  clergyman  had  preached  before  the  Queen, 
Dean  Wellesley  was  naturally  interested  in  the  result.  Writ- 
ing to  Dean  Stanley  the  next  day  he  says :  — 

Phillips  Brooks  was  a  complete  success.      The  Queen  and  

who  were  here  admired  him  very  much.  His  word-painting  —  if 
one  may  use  the  expression  —  was  very  fine,  clothing  matter  most 
lucidly  arranged  and  with  much  unction.  I  do  not  remember 
having  heard  a  finer  preacher;  and  with  it  the  man  himself,  most 
simple,  unassuming,  and  agreeable. 

To  Phillips  Brooks  Dean  Wellesley  wrote,  July  19, 1880 :  — 

I  received  with  great  pleasure  your  letter  of  the  18th,  more 
especially  as  it  gives  me  the  opportunity  of  letting  you  know 
that  the  Queen  is  most  anxious  to  have  a  copy  of  your  sermon. 
She  has  twice  asked  for  it.  If  it  is  not  giving  you  too  much 
trouble,  you  would  have  it  copied  in  a  fair  round  text,  although 
she  would  certainly  prefer  it  in  your  own  hand.  It  would  be 
very  nice,  if  on  your  return  to  Boston  you  would  include  the  ser- 
mon preached  before  the  Queen  of  Great  Britain  in  your  next 
volume  of  printed  sermons.* 

^  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  i.,  for  the  sermon  referred  to,  under  the  title,  "  The 
Symbol  and  the  Reality." 

2  The  request  was  complied  with,  and  the  sermon  is  given  in  Sermons,  vol.  ii. 
p.  60. 


268  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1880 

To  Mrs.  Messer,  a  daughter  of  the  late  Bishop  Mcllvaine 
o£  Ohio,  living  in  England,  Mr.  Brooks  wrote  the  following 
letter  describing  his  visit  to  Windsor :  — 

Caledonia  Hotel,  Edinburgh,  July  18, 1880. 

Dear  Mrs.  Messer,  —  You  took  such  a  kindly  interest  in  my 
going  to  Windsor  that  I  know  you  will  allow  me  to  tell  you 
about  my  visit,  and  how  pleasant  an  experience  it  was.  I  went 
down  on  Saturday  evening  and  spent  the  night  at  the  Castle. 
Everybody  was  most  hospitably  cordial,  and  curious  and  new  as 
it  all  was  I  enjoyed  the  evening  very  much.  Sunday  was  a 
delightfully  pleasant  day,  and  the  service  at  noon  was  full  of 
heartiness  and  spirit.  The  place  was  not,  as  I  had  feared,  too 
small  to  preach  in ;  and  the  people,  Her  Majesty  and  all  the  rest, 
were  good  enough  to  listen,  so  that  the  twenty  minutes  of 
preaching  was  not  disagreeable.  After  the  service  the  Queen  sent 
for  me,  and  I  had  a  short  interview  with  her.  She  was  kind  and 
pleasant,  and  I  liked  her.  In  the  afternoon  I  went  to  service  in 
St.  George's  Chapel,  and  in  the  evening  came  back  to  London. 
It  was  all  a  very  enjoyable  experience.  I  shall  always  look  back 
to  it  with  much  interest.  We  left  London  early  the  next  morning, 
and  have  been  in  and  about  Edinburgh  ever  since.  I  have  been 
trying  hard  to  understand  what  the  Scotchmen  are  saying  and 
how  their  very  queer  and  complicated  Ecclesiastical  System  is 
working,  and  I  make  some  little  progress  in  both.  It  rains  most 
of  the  time,  otherwise  everything  is  most  pleasant.  To-morrow 
morning  we  are  off  for  the  Highlands. 

I  thank  you  for  all  your  kindness,  and  with  all  good  wishes,  I 
am,  Ever  sincerely  yours, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

Besides  preaching  before  the  Queen  and  at  Chester  Cathe- 
dral, Mr.  Brooks  preached  at  Westminster  Abbey,  deliver- 
ing his  famous  sermon,  "The  Candle  of  the  Lord."  As  the 
Sunday  fell  on  the  Fourth  of  July,  many  felt  that  the 
Dean  had  given  a  very  difficult  task  to  an  American  in  ask- 
ing him  to  preach  on  that  day  in  such  a  place.  The  Dean 
himself  felt  some  anxiety  about  the  result.  Lady  Francis 
Baillie,  a  sister-in-law  of  Dean  Stanley,  has  contributed  an 
interesting  incident  in  connection  with  the  occasion.  After 
the  service  she  slipped  out  into  the  deanery  by  the  private 
door,  and  reached  the  drawing-room  before  any  of  the  guests 


^T.  44]  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY  269 

who  were  to  come  in  from  the  Abbey.  She  found  the  Dean 
with  tears  running  down  his  face,  a  most  extraordinary  thing 
for  him;  and  as  soon  as  she  appeared  he  burst  out  with 
expressions  of  the  intensest  admiration,  saying  that  he  had 
never  been  so  moved  by  any  sermon  that  he  could  remember, 
and  dwelling  on  the  wonderful  taste  and  feeling  displayed 
in  the  passage  at  the  end.  This  is  the  passage  referred 
to,  appended  to  the  sermon  in  order  to  commemorate  the 
day:  — 

My  Friends,  —  May  I  ask  you  to  linger  while  I  •  say  a  few 
words  more  which  shall  not  be  unsuited  to  what  I  have  been  say- 
ing, and  which  shall,  for  just  a  moment,  recall  to  you  the  sacred- 
ness  which  this  day  — •  the  Fourth  of  July,  the  anniversary  of 
American  Independence  —  has  in  the  hearts  of  us  Americans.  If  I 
dare  —  generously  permitted  as  I  am  to  stand  this  evening  in  the 
venerable  Abbey,  so  full  of  our  history  as  well  as  yours  —  to 
claim  that  our  festival  shall  have  some  sacredness  for  you  as  well 
as  for  us,  my  claim  rests  on  the  simple  truth  that  to  all  true  men 
the  birthday  of  a  nation  must  always  be  a  sacred  thing.  For  in 
our  modern  thought  the  nation  is  the  making-place  of  men.  Not 
by  the  traditions  of  its  history,  nor  by  the  splendor  of  its  corpo- 
rate achievements,  nor  by  the  abstract  excellence  of  its  constitu- 
tion, but  by  its  fitness  to  make  men,  to  beget  and  educate  human 
character,  to  contribute  to  the  complete  humanity,  the  perfect 
man  that  is  to  be,  — by  this  alone  each  nation  must  be  judged 
to-day.  The  nations  are  the  golden  candlesticks  which  hold  aloft 
the  glory  of  the  Lord.  No  candlestick  can  be  so  rich  or  vener- 
able that  men  shall  honor  it  if  it  holds  no  candle.  "Show  us 
your  man,"  land  cries  to  land. 

In  such  days  any  nation,  out  of  the  midst  of  which  God  has  led 
another  nation  as  He  led  ours  out  of  the  midst  of  yours,  must 
surely  watch  with  anxiety  and  prayer  the  peculiar  development  of 
our  common  humanity  of  which  that  new  nation  is  made  the  home, 
the  special  burning  of  the  human  candle  in  that  new  candlestick; 
and  if  she  sees  a  hope  and  promise  that  God  means  to  build  in 
that  land  some  strong  and  free  and  characteristic  manhood,  which 
shall  help  the  world  to  its  completeness,  the  mother-land  will 
surely  lose  the  thought  and  memory  of  whatever  anguish  accompa- 
nied the  birth,  for  gratitude  over  the  gain  which  humanity  has 
made,   "for  joy  that  a  man  is  born  into  the  world." 

It  is  not  for  me  to  glorify  to-night  the  country  which  I  love 
with  all  my  heart  and  soul.     I  may  not  ask  your  praise  for  any- 


270  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1880 

thing  admirable  which  the  United  States  has  been  or  done.  But 
on  my  country's  birthday  I  may  do  something  far  more  solemn 
and  more  worthy  of  the  hour.  I  may  ask  for  your  prayers  in  her 
behalf.  That  on  the  manifold  and  wondrous  chance  which  God  is 
giving  her,  —  on  her  freedom  (for  she  is  free,  since  the  old  stain 
of  slavery  was  washed  out  in  blood) ;  on  her  unconstrained  reli- 
gious life ;  on  her  passion  for  education  and  her  eager  search  for 
truth ;  on  her  zealous  care  for  the  poor  man's  rights  and  oppor- 
tunities ;  on  her  quiet  homes  where  the  future  generations  of  men 
are  growing;  on  her  manufactories  and  her  commerce;  on  her 
wide  gates  open  to  the  east  and  to  the  west ;  on  her  strange  meet- 
ing of  the  races  out  of  which  a  new  race  is  slowly  being  born;  on 
her  vast  enterprise  and  her  illimitable  hopefulness,  —  on  all  these 
materials  and  machineries  of  manhood,  on  all  that  the  life  of 
my  cotmtry  must  mean  for  humanity,  I  may  ask  you  to  pray  that 
the  blessing  of  God,  the  Father  of  man,  and  Christ,  the  Son  of 
man,  may  rest  forever. 

Because  you  are  Englishmen  and  I  am  an  American;  also 
because  here,  under  this  high  and  hospitable  roof  of  God,  we  are 
all  more  than  Englishmen  and  more  than  Americans ;  because  we 
are  all  men,  children  of  God  waiting  for  the  full  coming  of  our 
Father's  kingdom,  I  ask  you  for  that  prayer.^ 

These  words  of  international  amity,  which  if  they  could  be 
realized  would  put  an  end  to  jealousy  or  suspicion  or  hostility 
between  England  and  America,  were  rendered  memorable  by 
the  sublime  associations  of  the  place  and  the  day  as  well  as 
by  the  preacher  who  uttered  them.  The  occasion  becomes 
representative,  impressive  to  the  historical  Imagination.  It 
has  in  it  the  element  of  the  picturesque,  in  which  Dean 
Stanley  delighted.  The  accessories  of  the  moment  have  been 
described  by  an  eyewitness :  — 

A  vast  congregation  filled  the  grand  old  Abbey,  the  most  striking 
scene  of  Christian  worship  in  the  world.  There  was  the  presence, 
too,  in  spiritual  communion  of  the  great  dead  whom  the  Abbey 
commemorates,  the  men  of  renown  in  English  history,  —  statesmen 
and  warriors,  poets  and  philosophers,  men  of  letters,  of  science  and 
of  arts,  who  have  made  England  great,  and  in  whose  greatness 
America  claims  a  share.  The  noble  anthem  of  Mendelssohn,  "I 
waited  for  the  Lord, "  resounded  through  the  arches  of  the  vener- 

^  Sermons,  vol.  ii.  pp.  20,  21.  Cf.,  also,  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  354,  for  a 
reference  to  the  occasion  by  Mr.  Brooks. 


^T.  44]  CORRESPONDENCE  271 

able  fane.  Dean  Stanley,  the  most  eminent  ecclesiastic  of  the 
century,  read  for  the  first  lesson  the  story  of  Absalom's  death  in 
pathetic,  almost  dramatic  manner.  While  Keble's  hymn,  "Sun 
of  my  soul,  Thou  Saviour  dear,"  was  being  sung  the  American 
preacher  in  his  black  gown  mounted  the  pulpit.  There  were 
many  in  the  large  congregation  who  had  come  attracted  by  his 
fame.  The  eyes  of  all  fastened  upon  him  as  he  spoke.  He 
held  their  attention  by  the  freshness  and  suggestiveness,  the 
beauty  and  spiritual  power,  with  which  he  invested  his  theme. 
He  was  cultured  and  classical  in  his  style ;  there  was  also  noted 
the  absence  in  the  voice  of  any  American  peculiarity  which 
grates  upon  English  ears.  But  yet  he  reminded  in  some  subtle 
way  of  the  wide  prairies,  in  the  largeness  and  freedom  of  the 
atmosphere  which  enveloped  him  as  a  garment.  There  was  one 
common  verdict  on  the  sermon,  —  it  was  worthy  of  the  pulpit  of 
Westminster  Abbey.  From  that  time  the  fame  of  Phillips  Brooks 
was  established  in  England.  He  had  the  royal  approval  in  having 
preached  before  the  Queen ;  it  was  but  a  short  step  to  the  confidence 
and  love  of  the  English  people. 

There  was  an  event  in  ecclesiastical  circles  while  Mr.  Brooks 
was  in  England  which  was  making  no  slight  commotion,  — 
the  renunciation  of  the  Church  of  England  by  the  Rev.  Stop- 
ford  Brooke  in  order  to  join  the  Unitarians.  In  this  event 
there  came  to  a  focus  some  of  the  conditions  of  religious 
thought  which  characterized  the  moment.  Mr.  Brooke  left 
the  Church  because  he  no  longer  accepted  the  miracle, 
joining  the  Unitarians  because  among  them  he  was  free  to 
preach  a  non-miraculous  Christianity.  The  question  was 
raised  whether  he  was  justified  in  leaving  the  Church  on  this 
ground.  As  the  national  establishment  of  religion,  the 
Church  of  England,  it  was  said,  might  reflect  the  passing 
phases  of  religious  opinion  in  the  nineteenth  century,  as  in 
the  eighteenth,  without  detriment  to  her  spiritual  constitution 
or  effectiveness.  It  must  be  remembered  that  at  this  time 
the  scientific  presumption  against  the  miracle  was  so  strong 
that  it  almost  amounted  to  an  intellectual  proscription  of  its 
adherents.  To  scientific  minds  the  miracle  had  become  im- 
possible and  unthinkable.  To  a  friend  in  England  who  asked 
for  his  opinion  on  the  questions  at  issue,  Phillips  Brooks 
wrote  this  letter :  — 


aya  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1880 

233  Clabbndon  Street,  November  4,  1880. 

Dear  Mrs.  Messer,  —  I  must  thank  you  in  a  single  hurried 
word  for  your  kindness  in  sending  me  the  account  of  Stopford 
Brooke's  Sermon.  I  differ  from  him  very  deeply.  To  me  the 
Incarnation  and  the  miracles  which  Christ  Jesus  is  said  to  have 
wrought  seem  to  be  sublimely  reasonable,  and  contradicted  by  no 
knowledge  of  man  or  of  the  world  which  God  has  given  us.  I 
believe  that  they  are  true  historically  and  most  natural  philo- 
sophically. 

But  as  between  Mr.  Brooke  and  those  who  blame  him  for  leav- 
ing the  Church  of  England,  I  cannot  doubt  which  is  right.  Of 
course  he  is.  He  could  not  stay  in  justice  to  the  Church  or  to 
himself.  The  "Spectator"  had  an  article  upon  his  action  a  few 
weeks  ago  with  which  I  thoroughly  agreed. 
Ever  sincerely  yours, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

Mr.  Brooks  was  accompanied  on  this  visit  by  his  youngest 

brother.     Leaving  London  after  a  few  delightful  weeks,  they 

went  to  Scotland. 

Scotland,  July  25, 1880. 

Dear  Arthur, —  .  .  .  Here  are  John  and  I,  way  up  in  the 
Highlands,  with  everything  redolent  of  heather  and  broom  and  gillies 
and  pibrochs  and  burns  and  tarns  and  the  "Princess  of  Thule  " 
and  that  sort  of  thing.  Your  letter  reached  me  at  Oban  a  day 
or  two  ago,  and  it  was  pleasant  to  learn  about  Commencement  up 
among  those  wretches  who  never  heard  of  Harvard.  The  High- 
land journey  has  been  very  beautiful  and  everything  has  gone 
well,  the  weather  being  exceptionally  well  behaved.  We  had 
almost  a  week  in  and  about  Edinburgh  with  a  little  visit  to  St. 
Andrew's,  where  we  saw  Shairp  and  TuUoch  and  the  little  Divinity 
School  over  which  the  author  of  the  "  Rational  Theology  "  pre- 
sides. One  gets  quite  interested  in  theological  quarrels  here,  and 
listens  to  the  battle  which  is  raging  over  Robinson  Smith  and  his 
articles  in  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica  "  with  a  curious  sort  of 
sense  that  he  is  hearing  the  roar  of  an  out-of-the-way  skirmish  of 
the  same  battlefield  that  he  is  so  familiar  with  at  home.  The 
Kirk  and  the  Free  Church  and  the  U.  P's  keep  up  a  perennial 
turmoil,  and  divide  the  people  of  every  little  county  town  among 
them.   .   .   . 

In  London  everything  was  very  pleasant.  Stanley  was  very 
devoted,  and  put  us  in  the  way  of  seeing  lots  of  pleasant  sights 
and  people.  I  preached  for  him  in  the  Abbey  on  the  Fourth  of 
July,  and  was  quite  shamed  with  the  way  in  which  Farrar  in  the 


^T,  44]  THE  NEW   RECTORY  273 

afternoon  outsaid  everything  that  I  possibly  could  have  said  about 
America.  Then  I  went  down  to  Windsor  and  preached.  .  .  . 
Last  Sunday  we  spent  in  Edinburgh  and  heard  their  great  man 
there,  a  certain  Dr.  MacGregor.  .  .  .  John  spent  at  Boston  the 
Sunday  which  I  spent  at  Windsor,  and  preached  in  old  St. 
Botolph's  there. 

Mr.  Brooks  returned  to  Boston  with  the  prospect  of  taking 
possession  of  the  new  house,  No.  233  Clarendon  Street.  It 
was  intended,  of  course,  as  the  rectory  of  Trinity  Church, 
but  was  built  primarily  for  him,  the  architect  Richardson 
advising  with  him  in  regard  to  the  plan.  Mr.  Brooks  had  at 
first  protested  against  the  purpose  of  building  him  a  fine  house, 
which  should  be  a  permanent  home.  So  long  had  he  been 
accustomed  to  transient  residences  in  hotels  or  hired  houses 
that  it  seemed  to  him  inappropriate  to  live  in  any  other  way. 
But  he  acquiesced  in  the  arrangement,  and  soon  appreciated 
its  advantages.  The  house  on  Clarendon  Street  became  very 
dear  to  him  as  to  all  his  friends.  It  was  part  of  his  recre- 
ation to  adorn  and  beautify  it  with  pictures  and  relics  and 
souvenirs  of  travel,  till  it  took  on  a  personal  character  and 
seemed  the  expression  of  himself.  Among  the  relics  which 
he  valued  and  gave  an  honored  place  were  an  old  chair  from 
the  house  in  North  Andover,  and  a  cabinet  richly  carved,  for 
which  he  had  a  peculiar  reverence,  as  associated  with  the 
generations  of  the  Phillipses.  He  writes  to  his  aunt  Susan 
that  it  is  a  perpetual  pleasure,  asking  for  information  about 
its  history. 

Among  the  letters  of  this  year  there  is  one  to  his  college 

friend,  the  Eev.  James  Reed,  pastor  of  the  New  Church  in 

Boston :  — 

April  29, 1880. 

My  dear  Jim  Reed,  —  It  has  not  been  carelessness  or  ingrat- 
itude that  has  kept  me  from  acknowledging  your  book  before 
this.  But  I  wanted  to  read  it  first,  and  I  found  no  time  until  a 
few  days  ago,  when  I  went  to  New  York  and  took  it  with  me. 
Then  I  read  it  all  carefully,  and  I  want  to  tell  you  how  much  I 
enjoyed  it. 

I  am  not  a  New  Churchman  in  the  special  meaning  which  the 
words  have  for  you,  but  I  hope  still  that  I  have  some  small  part 
and  lot,  as  I  certainly  have  the  deepest  interest  and  delight,  in 

VOL.  n 


274  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1880 

the  great  New  Church  which  one  feels  moving  everywhere  under 
the  crust  of  sects  and  dogmas  in  these  days:  the  New  Church 
which  comes  down  from  heaven  and  not  up  out  of  the  earth,  and 
whose  power  of  life  and  unity  is  love  and  loyalty  to  the  personal 
Christ. 

I  thank  you  with  all  my  heart  for  your  Book,  for  it  has  shown 
me  how  much  there  is  that  is  dear  to  both  of  us  alike,  and  has 
helped  me  I  know  in  faith  and  life. 
May  God  bless  you  always. 

Your  old  friend, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

In  the  fall  of  the  year  he  participated  in  the  two  hundred 
and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  First  Church  in  Boston,  where 
his  ancestor,  John  Cotton,  had  been  a  minister,  and  again  at 
Watertown  in  the  commemoration  of  the  founding  of  the 
town  and  church  in  1630,  in  which  his  ancestor.  Rev.  George 
Phillips,  had  been  an  important  factor.  "I  am  afraid,"  he 
writes  to  his  aunt  Susan,  "that  my  ancestors  would  not  ap- 
prove of  the  people  who  are  celebrating  them." 

To  his  brother  in  bereavement  by  the  death  of  a  child  he 
writes  this  letter :  — 

December  2,  1880. 

Dear  Johnny,  —  I  hope  that  you  will  feel  like  coming  down 
on  Monday.  I  am  sure  that  it  will  do  you  good ;  you  know  what 
a  simple,  quiet  time  it  is.  All  the  fellows  will  be  glad  to  see  you, 
and  you  know  what  a  treat  it  will  be  to  me. 

I  have  been  thinking  of  you  all  the  time,  and  hoping  that  you 
were  happy,  and  that  everything  was  going  well  with   you   and 

H .     The  Sundays  must  have  been  hard  enough,  and  yet  I 

know  the  work  has  helped  you.  I  am  sure  it  is  a  blessing  to  a 
minister  that  the  work  to  which  he  has  to  go  when  he  is  in  sorrow 
is  not  a  foreign  thing  which  vexes  and  chafes  him,  but  he  is  busied 
with  the  thoughts  which  he  needs  most,  and  which  bring  him  into 
the  presence  of  God  where  he  most  wants  to  be. 

I  am  so  glad  that  I  was  with  you  those  two  days,  and  that  I  had 
part  in  choosing  the  pleasant  spot  where  the  body  of  your  little 
child  and  my  godchild  was  to  be  laid.  I  shall  always  be  thank- 
ful for  it.  How  "beautiful  it  must  be  out  there  this  bright  winter 
morning ! 

To  the  Rev.  W.  N.  McVickar  he  writes  in  reference  to  the 
consecration  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity :  — 


^T.  44]  CORRESPONDENCE  275 

233  Clakendon  Stbeet,  Boston,  December  4,  1880. 

My  dear  McVickak,  —  Your  good  letter  came  yesterday,  and 
I  am  glad  to  be  able  to  clap  you  on  the  back  at  this  long  distance, 
and  rejoice  with  you  in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity.  Long 
may  you  live  to  flourish  there,  dear  fellow,  and  may  each  year  be 
happier  and  brighter  than  the  year  before  it. 

Thank  you  for  wanting  me  to  come.  I  '11  tell  you  what  I  '11  do. 
If  the  consecration  should  be  on  the  11th  of  January,  I  '11  come 
and  spend  the  9th  with  you  and  preach  all  I  know  how  on  that 
day  and  stay  over  the  Consecration  day.  But  I  won't  preach  the 
Consecration  sermon.  Dr.  Vinton  is  expecting  to  do  that,  and  I 
haven't  a  moment  between  now  and  then  to  preach  a  consecration 
sermon.  Get  him  to  come  and  give  the  occasion  the  proper 
solemnity  and  dignity  which  neither  you  nor  I,  old  boy,  are 
capable  of  giving. 

If  you  '11  do  that  I  will  be  with  you  on  the  9th  and  the  11th. 
I  don't  see  how  I  could  possibly  be  there  on  the  13th,  for  I  must 
lecture  here  upon  the  evening  of  the  12th,  and  the  16th  is  our 
Foreign  Missionary  Sunday,  when  I  must  surely  be  at  home. 

Now  think  of  all  this ;  ponder  and  digest  it  well,  and  when  your 
mind  is  clear  write  to  me  all  about  it,  and  I  will  make  a  big  mark 
in  my  Almanac,  and  when  the  day  comes  so  will  I. 

My  best  remembrance  to  your  sister  and  to  you.  Oh,  William, 
what  more  can  I  say  than  that  the  longer  I  live  I  am  more  and 
more. 

Yours  respectfully  and  affectionately  (if  you  only  would  n't 
cross  your  letters), 

Phillips  Brooks. 


CHAPTER  X 

1881 

THE  CALL  TO  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY,  AS  PREACHER  AND 
PROFESSOR  OF  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS.  EXTRACTS  FROM  COR- 
RESPONDENCE 

One  of  the  features  of  the  ministry  of  Phillips  Brooks  was 
its  adaptation  to  all  classes  of  men.  He  spoke  to  all  alike 
as  though  in  some  way  he  had  bridged  the  gulf  which  divides 
the  people.  He  touched  the  common  humanity.  But,  for  the 
most  part,  it  was  his  mission  in  life  to  preach  to  people  of 
intellectual  culture;  nowhere  was  he  more  eagerly  welcomed 
than  in  colleges  and  universities  where  the  standard  was 
intellectual.  Like  Schleiermacher  in  his  famous  appeal  to 
the  educated  people  of  Germany,  he  made  thoughtful  men 
and  women  realize  the  power  of  religion  in  an  age  when  the 
current  of  tendencies  ran  strongly  against  religious  faith. 
It  is  all  true,  so  he  seemed  to  be  constantly  saying, —  this  old 
religion;  it  has  a  deeper,  larger,  grander  meaning,  and  a 
diviner  beauty  than  you  knew.  It  only  needs  to  be  seen  as 
it  really  is  and  you  would  receive  it  again  with  enthusiasm. 
His  temperament  was  intellectual,  and  therefore  he  met  the 
human  intellect  in  all  stages  of  its  development.  Had  he 
been  free  to  follow  his  natural  bent  he  would  have  pursued 
the  lines  of  intellectual  research  and  activity  in  which  his 
age  was  interested.  But  the  preparation  for  the  ministry 
and  the  experience  of  the  pulpit  had  forced  upon  him  the 
conviction,  that  if  the  intellectual  appeal  was  to  be  effective 
it  must  come  from  an  intellect  fused  in  organic  relationship 
with  the  heart  and  will,  —  the  whole  man  on  the  one  side 
reaching  forth  to  meet  a  simple  humanity  on  the  other. 

It  was  through  his  power  to  meet  the  needs  of  those  who 
were  seeking  to  connect  intellect  with  life  that  he  became  the 


^T.  45]  CALL  TO  HARVARD  277 

favorite  preacher  to  young  men  in  that  stage  of  their  progress 
where  the  intellect  is  supreme.  To  an  age  of  over-intellec- 
tual refinement  and  subtlety,  where  the  reason  was  defeating 
its  own  end,  he  brought  a  mind  which  had  been  subjected  to 
special  training  in  the  logic  of  life.  Educational  institutions 
recognized  his  mission  and  asked  for  his  aid.  While  in 
Philadelphia  he  had  been  called  to  the  presidency  of  Kenyon 
College,  in  Ohio.  He  felt  an  attraction  for  such  a  call, 
but  declined  on  the  ground  that  he  would  not  be  free  to  carry 
out  his  purpose  in  his  own  way.  He  had  been  invited  to 
take  the  chair  of  Church  History  in  the  Philadelphia  Divin- 
ity School,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  his  impulse  had  been  to 
accept  it.  In  1880  he  was  requested  to  consider  the  question 
of  the  provostship  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania.  To 
Dr.  Weir  Mitchell  he  then  wrote :  — 

I  must  not  think  of  the  provostship ;  though  if  I  were  free 
there  is  no  place  in  the  country  that  would  attract  me  so.  I 
think  the  work  of  a  provost  there,  should  it  be  thoroughly  and  in  the 
best  way  successful,  would  be  so  fine,  that  nothing  I  could  think 
of  would  compare  with  it.     But  I  am  a  preacher  to  the  end. 

But  there  came  a  call  which  shook  his  resolve  to  abide 
exclusively  by  the  pulpit.  In  the  early  spring  of  1881  he 
was  invited  to  accept  the  position  of  preacher  to  Harvard 
University  and  professor  of  Christian  Ethics.  It  was  an 
opportunity  that  strangely  realized  the  dreams  of  his  youth, 
when  it  had  been  his  ambition  to  become  a  great  teacher,  when 
his  highest  hopes  would  have  been  fulfilled  if  he  had  been 
offered  a  position  in  Harvard  College.  It  was  a  character- 
istic of  the  man  that  what  he  had  once  loved  he  had  loved 
forever,  and  to  Harvard  his  whole  heart  had  been  given. 
The  call  came  as  the  natural  sequence  of  his  devotion  to  it 
during  his  ministry  in  Boston.  On  coming  to  Boston  he  had 
been  at  once  elected  to  its  Board  of  Overseers,  and  when  his 
first  term  of  service  had  expired  was  reelected  for  a  second 
term.  In  this  capacity  for  twelve  years  he  had  now  served 
the  College. 

In  his  position  as  an  Overseer  [says  President  Eliot]  he  sup- 
ported all  changes  which  enlarged  the  freedom  of  the  students, 


278  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1881 

simplified  regulations,  and  tended  to  develop  in  the  young  men  the 
capacity  for  self-control.  In  his  judgment  of  character  and  of 
conduct,  he  was  generous  without  heing  weak.  He  was  tolerant 
of  all  religious,  philosophical,  and  political  views  and  opinions,  — 
so  much  so  that  I  never  heard  him  raise  a  question  on  any  such 
matter  when  the  appointment  of  a  teacher  was  under  discussion; 
hut  he  had  a  strong  dislike  for  the  pessimistic  or  cynical  temper, 
and  in  a  few  instances  he  expressed  distrust  of  College  teachers 
on  the  ground  that  they  exhibited  this  quality,  in  his  judgment  so 
injurious  to  young  men. 

His  first  connection  with  the  College  as  a  religious  teacher 
was  indirect,  through  the  chapel  of  the  Episcopal  Theologi- 
cal School.  The  most  noticeable  feature  of  these  Sunday 
evening  services  for  the  seven  consecutive  years  he  had 
preached  there  was  the  large  number  present  of  its  officers 
and  students.  It  was  something  unusual  for  students  in  such 
large  numbers  voluntarily  to  crowd  a  place  of  worship  in 
order  to  listen  to  a  sermon,  and  the  spectacle  awoke  reflection 
as  to  the  place  of  religion  in  the  College.  During  those  years 
the  attendance  of  Harvard  students  never  slackened.  They 
knew  that  the  service  was  intended  for  them,  and  the  feeling 
grew  that  Phillips  Brooks  was  devoting  himself  to  their  inter- 
est. When  this  arrangement  came  to  an  end  in  1877,  a  peti- 
tion was  sent  to  him  from  the  students,  with  a  large  number 
of  signatures,  asking  that  he  continue  to  preach  in  the  chapel. 
But  for  various  reasons  it  was  not  possible  to  comply  with  the 
request,  and  there  came  the  feeling  of  a  void,  which  could 
be  only  partially  filled  by  his  occasional  appearance  at  the 
college  chapel.  In  1881  came  the  opportunity  to  bring  him 
into  an  official  relationship,  through  the  resignation  of  Dr. 
Andrew  P.  Peabody,  who  for  many  years  had  held  the  post 
of  preacher  to  the  University.  To  this  vacant  place  Mr. 
Brooks  was  at  once  invited. 

The  call  of  Phillips  Brooks  to  Harvard  produced  a  wide- 
spread and  intense  excitement.  There  was  much  speculation 
as  to  its  import  and  possible  consequences, —  deep  searchings 
of  heart  when  one  considered  all  the  issues  involved.  In  the 
minds  of  some  the  consideration  was  foremost  that  the  Uni- 
versity was  breaking  with  the   traditions  of  its  history  in 


^T.  45]  CALL  TO  HARVARD  279 

handing  over  the  responsibility  for  the  religious  training  of 
its  students  to  an  Episcopal  clergyman,  a  representative  of 
the  Church  of  England  in  America.  And  again  for  several 
generations  the  College  had  been  identified  with  Unitarianism. 
To  call  a  minister  of  another  denomination  must  mean  at 
least  that  the  University  was  swinging  away  from  its  old 
position  as  a  sectarian  institution.  But  if  this  meant  calamity 
to  Unitarians  it  must  mean  jubilation  to  Episcopalians,  as 
though  there  were  a  possibility  of  their  ultimate  possession 
and  control.  Or,  still  further,  there  was  ground  for  the  sin- 
ister suspicion  that  Mr.  Brooks  had  changed  his  creed,  and 
under  some  tacit  understanding  with  the  Corporation  had  been 
called  to  the  high  position.  In  the  absence  of  definite  infor- 
mation, and  in  the  intense  interest  and  excitement  which 
prevailed,  unnatural  rumors  were  magnified  into  facts.  Mr. 
Brooks  himself  was  so  stirred  by  these  reports  that  he  went 
to  President  Eliot,  and  asked  if  it  were  understood  by  those 
in  authority  that  he  was  a  Trinitarian  in  his  belief.  The 
answer  was  definite  and  satisfactory  that  he  had  been  called 
with  full  knowledge  of  his  theological  position.  Thus  the 
religious  history  of  more  than  two  hundred  years  seemed 
to  be  condensed  in  this  simple  issue. 

Whether  the  President  and  the  Corporation  of  Harvard  had 
foreseen  these  things  or  not,  they  could  not  have  realized  how 
profound  and  widespread  would  be  the  interest  which  their 
action  would  awaken,  how  it  would  stir  the  city  of  Boston, 
the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts,  and  become  a  question 
of  importance  to  the  country  at  large.  But  in  the  midst  of 
the  excitement  and  the  confusion,  one  thing  stood  out  with 
great  clearness,  from  which  there  could  be  no  dissent,  —  the 
Corporation  of  Harvard  University  in  calling  Phillips  Brooks 
had  performed  an  ideal  act  which  was  above  all  criticism; 
they  had  asked  for  the  one  man  in  all  the  world  whom  they 
most  wanted,  who  if  he  came  would  fill  the  vacant  place,  and 
bring  increasing  honor  and  confidence  to  the  institution. 
They  had  called  him  not  because  he  belonged  to  any  one  reli- 
gious body  rather  than  another,  but  in  spite  of  his  denomina- 
tional affiliation.     They  had  supreme  confidence  in  the  man 


28o  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [i88i 

himself,  that  under  all  circumstances  he  could  be  trusted  to 
do  that  which  was  right  and  honorable  and  beautiful  in  the 
eyes  of  all  men. 

It  was  understood  from  the  first  that  Phillips  Brooks  not 
only  felt  free  to  consider  the  offer,  but  that  he  was  strongly 
inclined  to  accept  it.  He  had  freely  said  so  when  the  offer 
came  to  him.  It  would  seem  as  though  this  were  a  question 
which  a  man  was  entitled  to  decide  for  himself,  and  above 
all  that  such  a  man  as  Phillips  Brooks  would  insist  upon  this 
simple  prerogative  of  his  manhood.  If  he  had  done  so,  all 
would  have  admitted  that  he  had  acted  conscientiously  and 
from  the  highest  motives.  But  here  we  touch  an  extraordinary 
phase  in  this  most  important  of  the  experiences  of  his  life. 
He  was  not  to  be  allowed  to  decide  it  for  himself.  The  issues 
at  stake  were  so  vast  and  so  momentous,  he  represented  so 
much  more  than  himself,  that  he  was  compelled,  as  it  were, 
involuntarily  to  submit  the  question  to  be  determined  by  the 
people  while  he  waited  for  the  verdict.  Such  is  the  impres- 
sion made  when  the  full  picture  of  the  moment  is  gathered 
in.  There  came  a  month  of  waiting  and  suspense,  filled  up 
with  personal  interviews,  when  anxious  letters  flowed  in  upon 
him  daily  from  all  parts  of  the  country,  from  all  classes  of 
people,  from  the  governor  of  the  Commonwealth  and  the 
president  of  the  University  down  to  the  humble  serving 
woman  who  had  found  him  her  support  and  consolation  in 
the  struggle  with  the  hard  necessities  of  life.  As  one  studies 
this  mass  of  letters,  where  the  question  of  his  going  to  Har- 
vard is  discussed  frankly  and  in  all  its  bearing  by  scholars 
and  statesmen  and  thinkers,  by  lawyers  and  men  of  business, 
by  the  clergy  of  all  denominations,  by  women  in  all  ranks  of 
life  as  well  as  by  men,  by  those  who  were  his  closest  friends 
and  by  those  who  had  never  seen  or  heard  him,  there  is  con- 
veyed to  the  mind  a  rare  and  intimate  vision  of  how  people 
are  feeling  at  a  certain  moment  in  life,  such  as  one  never 
gets  from  books  or  history. 

To  Phillips  Brooks  it  must  have  proved  a  strange  revela- 
tion. In  his  simplicity  he  had  thought  he  could  act  in  such 
a  juncture  as  did  other  men.     Now  it  was  borne  in  upon  him 


^T.  45]  CALL  TO   HARVARD  281 

that  he  did  not  belong  to  himself  and  was  no  longer  living 
for  himself.  Others  were  claiming  him  for  their  possession, 
each  for  his  own.  It  reminds  one  of  that  earlier  experience 
when  the  spirit  of  the  world  also  recognized  him  for  its  own, 
and  blocked  his  way  when  he  was  seeking  to  direct  it  for 
himself.  The  spirit  which  then  sent  him  into  the  ministry 
was  now  at  work  to  prevent  the  defeat  of  its  design.  To  this 
end  it  invoked  methods  that  were  almost  weird  in  their 
effects.  Those  who  wrote  and  spoke  to  him  broke  the  cus- 
tomary reticence  of  life,  and  told  him  all  they  thought  and 
felt.  It  was  like  listening  to  a  long  eulogy  while  he  was  yet 
alive.  It  must  have  had  its  effect.  It  humiliated  him  to  the 
very  dust.  He  could  never  again  be  quite  the  same  that  he 
had  been.  There  was  from  this  time  a  change  in  his  face 
and  bearing,  as  of  one  who  had  seen  a  vision  of  things  un- 
speakable. 

It  may  be  interesting  to  review,  now  that  twenty  years 
have  gone  by,  the  history  of  that  critical  moment  in  the 
life  of  Phillips  Brooks.  He  was  the  object  of  a  controversy, 
almost  a  battle,  between  contending  parties,  not  unequally 
matched.  In  the  first  place  the  cause  of  the  University  may 
be  presented.  And  from  the  first  it  had  this  advantage, 
that  Mr.  Brooks  felt  a  strong  inclination  to  accept  the  call. 
He  liked  young  men  and  the  associations  of  student  life. 
Throughout  the  years  of  his  ministry  he  had  not  discarded 
his  early  ambition  to  do  some  scholarly  work.  Amid 
the  pressure  of  duties  in  a  large  parish  he  felt  at  a  dis- 
advantage when  issues  were  at  stake  which  could  be  solved 
only  by  intellectual  research.  To  this  research  he  could 
bring  a  mind  that  had  learned  how  to  connect  abstract  ideas 
with  life.  He  may  even  have  felt  that  he  had  for  this  reason 
a  special  mission  to  young  men  at  the  age  when  the  intellec- 
tual is  too  apt  to  be  divorced  from  the  moral  and  the  spiritual. 
There  was  a  possibility  that  he  might  help  them  to  a  more 
complete  culture.  He  was  at  this  time  forty-five  years  of  age, 
not  too  late  to  betake  himself  again  to  the  distinctive  work  of 
a  student,  — the  moment  in  a  man's  life  when  all  his  powers 
have  reached  their  perfection.     But  it  was  manifest  enough 


282  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1881 

that  he  had  no  time  to  lose.  If  anything  were  to  be  done 
in  this  direction  it  must  be  begun  now,  or  he  must  abandon 
the  dream  forever. 

And  still  further,  he  was  beginning  to  be  wearied  with  the 
burden  he  had  so  long  been  carrying.  For  twenty  years  he 
had  stood  in  the  pulpit,  Sunday  after  Sunday,  preaching  his 
matchless  sermons.  To  exert  the  influence  he  did  was  to 
take  the  life  out  of  him.  With  the  constant  drain  on  his 
vital  powers  it  was  a  marvel  that  he  had  endured  so  long 
without  the  breaking  down  of  his  health.  People  had  come 
to  think  of  his  work  as  calling  for  no  effort  or  preparation, 
welcoming  and  rejoicing  in  his  appearance  as  in  the  sun  shin- 
ing in  its  strength.  In  the  rich  endowment  of  his  nature,  he 
seemed  to  work  with  such  absolute  spontaneity  that  no  one 
thought  of  a  possible  exhaustion,  or  if  they  did,  postponed  it 
to  years  in  the  remote  future.  Yet  there  were  signs  already 
that  he  had  overtaxed  his  strength.  He  said  nothing  of 
them,  perhaps  did  not  consciously  recognize  them  as  warn- 
ings. Yet  he  knew  that  he  needed  some  great  change,  and 
the  opportunity  was  here  presented  to  him. 

These  personal  considerations  were  reinforced  by  the  most 
earnest  appeals  from  the  University,  its  officers  and  its  stu- 
dents, and  by  others  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of 
the  land,  wherever  the  interests  of  Harvard  were  cherished. 
The  late  Professor  J.  P.  Cooke  wrote  to  him :  — 

Of  the  great  opportunities  for  influence  which  the  College 
offers,  you  need  no  one's  testimony;  but  I  doubt  if  you  appre- 
ciate how  very  great  they  are.  I  have  had  an  intimate  knowledge 
of  the  facts  for  some  thirty  years,  and  I  speak  of  what  I  do  know 
when  I  say  that  your  power  here  at  this  time  would  exert  a 
greater  influence  over  the  educated  minds  of  the  country  than  in 
any  other  position  however  prominent.  As  is  the  case  with  all 
planting,  we  are  obliged  to  wait  long  for  the  fruit  of  our  labor, 
but  it  is  a  noble  harvest  when  it  comes.  This  is  a  place  where 
conviction  at  once  leads  to  action,  and  you  know  this  is  not  the 
case  where  men  are  engrossed  in  the  cares  of  the  world.  The  one 
place  in  the  country  to  fight  and  overpower  the  agnosticism  which 
is  weakening  the  religious  faith  and  sapping  the  manhood  of  the 
community  is  just  here.  You  have  a  wonderful  power,  and  I  do 
hope  you  can  view  this  field  of  labor  as  I  do. 


^T.  45]  CALL  TO  HARVARD  283 

The  College  is  offering  you  [wrote  a  prominent  educator]  the 
very  finest  chance  for  working  "Christo  et  Ecclesia  "  that  has 
ever  before  been  offered  to  any  man  in  this  country. 

The  greatest  religious  opportunity  in  this  country  [wrote  another 
distinguished  teacher]  will  be  lost  if  you  say  No. 

And  who  knoweth  [were  the  words  of  Scripture  quoted  to  him] 
whether  thou  art  come  to  the  Kingdom  for  such  a  time  as  this? 

You  can  touch  [says  a  Unitarian  clergyman]  the  young  men  at 
Harvard.  I  will  not  say  "you  know  to  do  it,"  for  I  doubt  if  you 
do  know  how  you  do  it.      But  God  helping  you,  you  do  it. 

Allow  me  to  express  my  very  earnest  desire  and  hope  [wrote 
the  late  Dr.  Ezra  Abbot]  that  you  will  accept  the  call  to  Har- 
vard, where  I  am  sure  your  influence  would  be  a  power  for  good 
hardly  to  be  measured. 

No  other  man  [wrote  one  of  the  younger  professors  in  the 
College]  has  such  a  hold  on  the  young  men  as  you.  No  matter 
what  the  explanation  is,  you  do,  as  a  fact,  hold  their  ear  and 
their  whole  confidence.  ...  I  believe  you  can  do  with  these 
thousand  young  men  practically  anything.  .  .  .  People  of  every 
church  would  welcome  you,  without  distinction  of  creed  and  with 
open  arms. 

Among  the  clergy,  as  among  the  students,  the  sense  of  re- 
ligious divisions  was  subordinated  when  they  thought  of 
Phillips  Brooks  at  Harvard.  Yet  in  some  of  the  letters  there 
is  the  consciousness  that  religious  changes  are  impending, 
not  without  significance.  Most  of  the  clerical  opinion  was 
in  favor  of  his  remaining  in  Trinity  Church.  But  there  were 
some  exceptions.  The  late  Rev.  J.  F.  Garrison,  a  learned 
and  thoughtful  Episcopal  divine,  *iot  so  widely  known  as  he 
deserved  to  be,  writes :  — 

My  acquaintance  with  you  is  too  slight  to  give  me  any  right  to 
express  an  opinion  to  you  upon  so  weighty  a  matter,  but  my  sense 
of  its  vast  importance  is  so  profound  that  I  shall  let  it  override 
conventionalities.  I  feel  that  no  congregation  in  this  Union  can 
give  you  such  a  mighty  field  of  work  for  God,  just  where  it  is 
most  needed,  as  there.  To  be  the  privileged  teacher  of  thousands 
of    men,    themselves  well-nigh  all  to  be  in  their  future   life  in 


284  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881 

some  high  sense  teachers,  and  of  such  an  institution,  will  enable 
you  to  do  a  work  for  the  cause  of  Christ  such  as  is  seldom  offered 
to  a  man.  And  in  this  age,  when  there  are  such  intense  mental 
awakenings  and  so  much  silly  orthodoxy  quailing  under  them,  to 
have  a  man  who  knows  how  to  be  true  to  the  essentials  and  yet 
not  bound  in  the  grave  clothes  of  dead  formulas,  seems  to  me  one 
of  those  providences  of  God  you  ought  not  to  regard  in  any  other 
light  or  on  personal  grounds. 

Among  other  letters  which  came  to  him  was  one  from  the 
late  Kev.  John  Henry  Hopkins  of  Williamsport,  Pa.,  the 
son  of  the  Bishop  of  Vermont  with  the  same  name,  an  eccle- 
siastical controversialist  all  his  life,  devoted  to  High  Church 
principles,  but  also  capable  of  seeing  the  larger  bearings  of 
religious  problems.      He  writes :  — 

Your  election  to  succeed  Dr.  Peabody  at  Harvard  is  the  most 
stunning  fact  in  regard  to  religious  changes  that  our  country  has 
seen  since  the  Cutler  and  Johnson  tempest  in  the  "good  old  colony 
times."  It  means  more  than  dozens  of  Rectorates  or  even  Epis- 
copates. Accept  hy  all  means.  There  ought  not  to  be  one 
moment's  hesitation,  unless  merely  to  enhance  the  effect  of  your 
acceptance.  Your  acceptance  will  do  more  to  leaven  the  intellect 
of  the  land  than  can  well  be  conceived  of.  Rejoicing  with  all  my 
heart  in  the  wonderful  field  thus  opening  before  you  for  wide- 
spread good,  I  am,  etc. 

This  following  letter  was  from  the  late  Dr.  George  E.  Ellis, 
who  was  watching  the  career  of  Phillips  Brooks  with  an 
interest  deep  and  undisguised :  — 

110  Mablbokough  Street,  Boston,  April  5, 1881. 

Dear  Mr.  Brooks,  —  With  inexpressible  satisfaction  do  I 
read  in  the  papers  that  the  Corporation  of  the  College  have  invited 
you  to  the  office  of  the  College  Pastor.  Allow  me  to  say  frankly 
that  I  can  think  of  no  other  minister  of  any  denomination  whom 
I  would  so  gladly  see  in  that  office,  and  whose  accession  to  and 
occupancy  of  it  would  be  so  grateful  to  our  whole  community,  and 
so  hopeful  of  good  to  the  College. 

And  I  shall  find  this  satisfaction  in  the  call  to  you  whether 
your  judgment  and  conscience  decide  on  its  acceptance  or  other- 
wise, for  I  know  that  your  decision  will  be  made  upon  most 
thoughtful  religious  deliberation  on  the  way  of  duty.  Hard  in- 
deed it  must  be  for  you  to  weigh  the  alternatives  presented  to 
you. 


^T.  45]  CALL  TO  HARVARD  285 

In  talking  confidentially  to  one  of  the  Corporation  recently,  I 
said  I  did  not  believe  they  could  find  an  able,  earnest,  and  self- 
respecting  man  who  would  be  willing  to  accede  to  the  office  held 
by  Dr.  Peabody  on  the  conditions  under  which  he  had  exercised 
it.  I  think  you  yourself  would  exert  a  mastery  over  those  con- 
ditions. One  might  perhaps  suppose  that  I  should  feel  something 
of  a  shock  at  the  thought  of  the  old  Puritan  College  being  minis- 
tered to  by  an  Episcopal  clergyman.  But  I  feel  nothing  of  the 
sort.  Circumstances  and  relations,  coming  with  the  changes  of 
time,  modifications  of  opinion  and  the  expansion  of  the  College, 
I  will  not  say  reconcile  me  to  the  result,  but  dispose  me  to  wel- 
come it.  Nothing  will  ever  lower  my  sense  of  the  profound 
indebtedness  of  the  obligations  of  this  especial  community  to  that 
class  of  persons,  clerical  and  lay,  of  the  last  generation,  who  were 
known  as  Liberal  Christians,  devout,  serious,  earnest  Bible  Chris- 
tians. Their  works  and  services  have  left  an  enduring  benefac- 
tion to  this  good  city  and  to  the  College.  But  with  existing  so- 
called  Unitarianism  I  have  for  many  years  had  no  concern.  It 
has  left  no  authoritative  basis  for  religious  instruction  and  insti- 
tution common  to  preachers  and  people.  The  preacher  has  for 
his  stock  and  capital  his  own  individualism  of  opinion  and  belief, 
and  his  utterances  are  like  notes,  dependent  on  his  own  credit  and 
integrity  and  resources,  instead  of  current  coin  of  Divine  or 
human  realm. 

Of  course,  I  am  wholly  ignorant  of  any  conditions  offered  or 
required  of  you  or  by  you  in  reference  to  the  acceptance  of  the 
discharge  of  the  official  duties  proposed  to  you. 

I  have  written  these  lines  solely  from  the  promptings  of  my 
own  loving  respect  for  you,  and  in  view  of  the  gleam  of  a  bright 
way  of  relief  for  the  College  from  what  I  feared  would  be  an 
almost  hopeless  difficulty.  Excuse  me  if  I  have  in  any  way  tres- 
passed upon  delicacy  or  propriety. 

Most  sincerely  yours, 

George  E.  Ellis. 

There  were  many  other  things  said  in  connection  with  the 
call  by  those  who  favored  it,  but  the  burden  of  the  argument 
has  been  given.  It  was  well  summed  up  in  the  Christian 
Kegister  (Unitarian),  "  Phillips  Brooks  would  not  be  lost  to 
Boston,  but  would  be  gained  by  the  whole  country."  Nor 
could  anything  nobler  in  spirit  be  found  than  the  attitude  of 
the  Unitarians,  who  while  they  felt  that  the  College  was  to  be 
no  longer  identified  with  the  religious  body  which  they  repre- 


286  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881 

sented,  could  yet  rejoice  in  the  call  to  Phillips  Brooks,  and 
yield  their  support  to  the  conaprehensive  and  far-sighted  policy 
of  the  President  of  the  University,  as  he  sought  to  give  reli- 
gion the  foremost  place  among  the  agencies  and  influences  in 
the  college  world. 

Among  the  incidents  of  the  campaign,  as  it  may  be  called, 
was  a  mass  meeting  of  Harvard  students,  where  speeches  were 
made  and  a  petition  signed,  expressing  not  only  the  hope  that 
he  would  come,  but  the  conviction  that  he  could  not  refuse. 
Accompanying  the  petition  was  a  letter  from  the  late  Mr. 
Frank  Bolles,  afterwards  secretary  of  the  College,  whose 
untimely  death  is  still  lamented :  — 

You  will  receive  to-day  the  signed  copy  of  the  resolution 
passed  at  the  great  meeting  of  last  evening.  It  was  probably  the 
largest  spontaneous  meeting  of  students  ever  held  here.  The 
Chapel  was  packed  (it  holds  over  three  hundred),  and  more  were 
turned  away  than  could  find  seats  or  standing  room.  The  speeches, 
all  made  by  students,  were  so  earnest,  so  full  of  confidence  in 
your  coming  that  I  wished  you  could  have  heard  them  and  seen 
for  yourself  what  Harvard  thinks  of  your  coming.  Of  the  speak- 
ers, certainly  seven  to  one  were  not  churchmen,  and  throughout 
the  whole  meeting  not  one  word  was  said  which  did  not  show,  not 
only  the  deepest  regard  for  you  and  admiration  for  your  work, 
but  the  fullest  confidence  that  you  would  decide  to  come,  and  that 
it  was  wise  for  you  to  come.  I  mail  you  a  copy  of  the  "call  "  for 
the  meeting,  which  was  posted  at  eleven  o'clock  yesterday  afternoon. 

And  now,  my  dear  Mr.  Brooks,  I  can  only  say  a  word  or  two 
more  of  the  much  that  I  think  about  this  matter. 

I  beg  of  you  to  remember  in  all  this  clamor,  that  we  all  knew 
that  you  were  doing  a  great  work  in  Boston,  that  we  all  knew 
how  Boston  valued  you ;  and  yet  when  you  were  asked  to  come 
here,  we  believed  we  were  asking  you  to  a  more  useful  field,  and 
to  a  congregation  of  hearts  whose  devotion  to  your  teaching  would 
bring  forth  even  better  fruit  than  that  of  Trinity  parish. 

Your  coming  here  will  be  the  opening  of  the  new  reformation 
in  thought  and  faith  of  American  manhood.  It  will  give  the 
needed  example  to  all  our  great  universities,  and  show  them 
that  in  calling  to  their  chairs  the  great  preachers  of  the  day,  they 
will  be  laying  the  foundation  of  a  revived  faith  among  men,  —  a 
faith,  which  equipped  with  all  that  modern  learning  can  afford, 
will  have  a  strength  and  vigor  unknown  in  any  earlier  age  of  the 
Church. 


^T.  45]  CALL  TO  HARVARD  287 

From  the  situation  in  Cambridge  we  turn  to  Boston  and  to 
Trinity  Church.  The  letters  that  came  to  Dr.  Brooks  urging 
him  to  remain  at  his  post  were  no  less  positive  and  exigent 
in  the  expression  of  convictions  than  those  advising  his 
acceptance  of  the  call,  but  in  number  they  exceeded  them  in 
the  proportion  of  ten  to  one.  What  he  had  been  to  Boston 
in  the  twelve  years  of  his  ministry  at  Trinity  Church  it  is 
impossible  to  describe ;  it  must  be  left  to  the  imagination  to 
conceive.  He  had  become  one  of  its  foremost  citizens,  so 
identified  with  the  city  that  he  had  given  it  a  new  lustre 
and  reputation.  Visitors  to  Boston  from  all  parts  of  the 
country  and  from  abroad  thought  of  it  as  the  home  of  Phillips 
Brooks.  To  see  him  or  to  hear  him  was  one  of  the  induce- 
ments which  led  strangers  to  remain  over  Sunday,  or  brought 
pilgrims  as  to  some  sacred  shrine.  Trinity  Church  during 
these  years  had  been  like  an  open  cathedral,  the  common 
property  of  the  people ;  or,  to  change  the  figure,  it  had  be- 
come a  vast  confessional  for  human  souls,  whose  spiritual 
directorship  was  bringing  strength  and  consolation,  faith  and 
hope,  to  the  thousands  whom  no  man  can  number.  At  first 
there  had  been  symptoms  of  coldness,  suspicion,  or  uncer- 
tainty in  the  reception  given  to  Phillips  Brooks,  but  all  that 
was  long  gone  by.  Boston  had  taken  him  to  its  heart  as  well 
as  to  its  head.  He  had  no  superior,  no  rival  in  its  affections. 
It  had  been  impossible,  even  had  he  wished  it,  to  confine  his 
influence  to  the  limits  of  his  parish.  He  spoke  to  all,  and  his 
heart  went  forth  alike  to  all,  without  regard  to  distinctions  of 
class  or  religious  sects.  He  had  the  freedom  of  the  city  and 
its  many  suburban  towns,  and  he  had  the  freedom  of  all  reli- 
gious denominations. 

The  devotion  to  Phillips  Brooks,  it  need  not  be  said, 
rested  upon  solid  foundations  at  a  very  peculiar  juncture  in 
the  history  of  religious  faith.  He  had  risen  up  as  a  deliverer 
from  the  causes  that  were  shaking  religious  opinion  and  un- 
dermining or  destroying  religious  belief.  There  was  no  illu- 
sion about  it ;  it  was  most  real.  The  people  are  not  mistaken 
about  these  things.  And  yet  there  was  danger  of  its  becom- 
ing a  fashion  to  worship  him.     A  distinguished  clergyman, 


288  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881 

who  knew  Boston  well,  remarked  that  so  long  as  Phillips 
Brooks  remained  there,  it  was  impossible  that  any  other 
clergyman  should  be  estimated  at  his  true  merits.  The 
remark  was  not  meant  to  be  disparaging,  but  only  to  state  the 
simple  fact.  It  had  reached  such  a  point  that  the  veriest 
commonplaces  of  religious  thought  or  sentiment  when  uttered 
by  him  were  received  on  his  authority  as  true,  or  as  if  they 
had  never  been  spoken  before.  Those  who  listened  to  him 
wrote  down  his  remarks  to  send  them  away  to  their  friends 
as  what  Phillips  Brooks  had  said.  They  treasured  up  his 
sayings  as  the  first  principles  of  religion.  He  was  the  stan- 
dard of  comparison  by  which  others  were  judged.  The  clergy 
of  Boston  knew  better  than  most  the  deeper  significance  of 
Phillips  Brooks's  position.  Nor  was  there  a  better  test  of 
their  manhood,  or  of  their  Christian  character  and  power  of 
intellectual  and  spiritual  appreciation,  than  when  they  asked 
him  to  remain  in  Boston.  There  were  some  who  thought 
it  would  have  been  a  gain  to  every  one  of  them  had  he  left. 
They  did  not  take  this  view.  They  knew,  and  they  said  to 
him,  that  every  church  was  the  stronger  for  his  presence  in 
the  city,  that  they  themselves  were  stronger  to  do  their  work, 
that  every  agency  for  good  was  more  effective  under  the 
stimulus  of  his  inspiration. 

It  had  been  one  of  the  arguments  for  inducing  him  to  go 
to  Harvard  that  he  would  influence  the  future  teachers  of 
others  as  they  passed  through  the  College  on  their  way  into 
the  world.  He  was  now  reminded  that  he  was  doing  this 
work  at  Trinity.  Teachers  in  the  public  and  private  schools 
of  Boston  and  the  vicinity  were  drawn  there  in  large  numbers 
by  his  magnetic  influence,  living  by  his  strength,  for  some- 
how he  spoke  to  teachers  of  every  grade,  from  the  highest  to 
the  lowest,  as  if  teaching  were  his  profession.  And  then 
again,  he  was  reminded  that  he  need  not  go  to  Harvard  to 
meet  young  men,  for  there  was  a  university  in  his  own  parish, 
drawn  in  part  from  the  College  and  from  all  the  higher  insti- 
tutions of  learning  and  professional  schools  in  and  around 
Boston.  Theological  students  came  from  their  seminaries  in 
every  direction  to  listen  to  the  sermons  on  Sunday  after- 


^T.  45]  CALL  TO   HARVARD  289 

noons,  —  from  Boston  University,  from  Newton,  and  from 
Cambridge.  And  they  came  also  with  the  knowledge  and 
approval,  even  the  recommendation  of  their  teachers.  It 
would  not,  therefore,  do  to  assume,  as  some  had  done, 
that  it  would  be  no  loss  to  Boston  if  he  went  to  Harvard.  In 
this  discussion  the  Governor  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Massa- 
chusetts took  part.  He,  if  any  one,  could  speak  for  the  city 
and  the  State,  and  the  value  of  his  testimony  is  enhanced  in 
that  he  was  not  a  member  of  the  same  religious  communion :  — 

April  13, 1881. 
My  dear  Mr.  Brooks,  —  May  I  add  my  sincere  word  in  be- 
half of  your  remaining  in  Boston  ?  It  seems  to  me  in  the  interest 
of  the  Commonwealth,  with  its  population  accumulating  and  its 
young  men  gathering  in  its  capital,  that  your  close  relation  to 
them  should  not  be  lost.  The  Harvard  boys  do  not  need  you  so 
much.  They  have  everything  already.  If  they  develop  some 
wild  oats,  yet  the  general  surroundings  of  their  college  life  lead 
them  to  higher  opportunities  and  standards  sooner  or  later.  But 
your  reach  in  Cambridge  will  be  nothing  compared  with  what  it 
is  in  Boston,  extending  to  homes,  families,  the  shop,  the  count- 
ing-house, and  every  fibre  of  the  city.  I  cannot  help  feeling  that 
to  change  would  limit  and  not  enlarge  your  work.  I  know  your 
own  judgment  is  best,  but  I  think  you  will  pardon  my  suggestion 
which  is  certainly  sincere. 

Very  truly  yours, 

John  D.  Long. 

The  call  had  been  given  to  Mr.  Brooks  in  the  latter  part 
of  March,  and  by  the  middle  of  April  the  excitement  had 
grown  to  an  unprecedented  extent.  The  daily  newspapers  in 
Boston  teemed  with  communications,  representing  every  point 
of  view.  Throughout  the  country  the  conflict  was  watched  in 
its  varying  phases  and  commented  on  as  having  some  strange 
import  for  all  the  higher  interests  of  life.  It  may  be  said  for 
Phillips  Brooks  that  he  was  now  waiting  to  give  his  answer, 
not  of  his  own  volition,  but  because  he  was  earnestly  besought 
to  wait  until  the  question  should  have  been  discussed  in  all 
its  bearings.  Only  in  the  multitude  of  counsellors  was  there 
safety.  Both  parties  in  the  conflict  felt  secure,  if  only  time 
could  be  taken  for  the  fullest  consideration. 

VOL.   II 


290  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881 

One  effect  of  the  discussion  was  to  make  men  realize  as 
they  had  not  done  before  the  unique  greatness  of  the  man  in 
whom  the  interest  concentrated.  In  the  history  of  pulpit 
oratory,  it  was  asked,  who  was  there  to  compare  with  him  ? 
He  was  to  be  ranked  among  those  most  eminent,  whose  fame 
had  come  down  through  the  ages,  the  few  who  came  first  to 
the  mind.  Great  names  were  recalled,  St.  Gregory  Nazianzen 
and  St.  Chrysostom,  in  the  ancient  church;  St.  Bernard, 
St.  Francis,  Tauler,  and  Savonarola,  in  the  Middle  Ages; 
Jeremy  Taylor  and  Bossuet,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  — 
that  age  of  great  preachers;  Chalmers,  or  Tillotson,  or 
Beecher,  in  the  modern  world.  What  one  among  them  all 
was  greater  than  he,  especially  when  one  took  into  considera- 
tion the  vast  growth  of  the  modern  day,  and  recalled  that  he 
was  now  moving  by  his  voice  or  by  his  writings  the  English- 
speaking  world,  with  its  colonies  ifi  every  part  of  the  globe? 

There  were  those  who  took  these  things  into  consideration 
and  were  impressed  and  awed  as  they  revolved  in  their  minds 
the  issue.  This  gift  of  inspired  speech,  so  divine  and  so 
rare,  had  he  any  right  to  endanger  its  possession  for  the 
world  by  any  experiment?  All  the  conditions  of  his  place 
at  Trinity  Church  had  favored  its  expanding  power.  What 
would  be  the  result  if  he  were  to  withdraw  himseK  into  the 
seclusion  of  the  University  town?  He  was  reminded  that  his 
power  as  a  preacher  must  in  some  real  though  subtle  way 
be  dependent  on  conditions  which  would  be  lost  if  he  were 
to  abandon  the  pulpit  of  Trinity  Church.  Mr.  Robert  Treat 
Paine  wrote  to  him  with  these  thoughts  in  his  mind. 

April  14, 1881. 

My  dear  Brooks,  —  Let  me  too  pour  out  my  heart  to  you, 
about  what  is  filling  all  our  hearts.  I  know  how  you  are  over- 
whelmed with  counsels  from  all  sides. 

Take  it  in  patience,  and  let  it  at  least  convince  you  of  the  Love 
and  Respect  of  the  whole  city  for  you,  —  your  hold  on  the  heart  of 
the  whole  Community  —  their  terrible  earnestness  that  you  should 
remain  doing  your  grand  work  among  them  —  and  their  pain  at 
the  thought  that  you  may  think  it  a  duty  to  go. 

What  a  sight  this  is !  A  great  city  stirred  at  the  fear  of  losing 
you,  and  many  sects,  forgetting  all  sectarian  ties,  men  as  well  as 


MT.  45]  CALL  TO  HARVARD  291 

women,  youths  aa  well  as  strong  men,  uniting  to  speak  out  to 
you,  not  only  their  affection,  but  their  strong  sense  of  how  you 
have  brought  to  them  and  the  whole  city  the  Blessings  of  God. 

Boston  is  just  the  city  to-day  for  ideal  work  —  large  enough 
for  a  vast  work  to  be  done  —  bad  enough  to  be  almost  hopeless  — 
good  enough  to  fill  us  with  hope  passing  into  certainty.  Boston 
has  a  certain  great  privilege  among  the  great  cities  of  this  coun- 
try. She  holds  an  influence  second  to  none.  Work  done  here 
has  a  potency  and  value  multiplied  all  over  the  land. 

College  life  is  full  of  fun  and  froth  and  frolic  and  frivolity  and 
scurrility.  It  is  acutely  critical.  It  turns  into  sport  everything, 
sacred  and  profane.  Life  is  free  there  first  —  full  of  joy  and  spar- 
kle, full  of  study  and  sports,  absorbed  and  preoccupied.  Entire 
absence  of  variety  in  experience;  death,  marriage,  children,  busi- 
ness, failure,  sickness,  suffering,  danger,  all  that  makes  adult  life 
so  full,  —  none  of  all  this  enters  the  life  of  the  student.  Gather 
them  together  into  a  single  audience,  and  it  is  the  hardest  in  the 
world  to  hold  in  constant  interest  to  religion.  Scatter  them  into 
their  own  churches  and  it  is  far  easier.  Compel  them  to  attend 
at  Appleton  Chapel  and  some  will  be  studying  for  the  Lampoon, 
and  their  spirit  is  contagious  on  all  around. 

Surely  this  is  the  least  impressible  part  of  life.  It  is  not 
responsive,  it  has  no  magnetism  in  it.  The  power  of  the  Preacher 
rises  to  the  need.  Great  need  is  great  inspiration.  Life  in  a 
great  city  with  all  the  sufferings  and  joys  and  anxieties  of  the 
infinitely  varied  lives  of  a  multitude  of  men  and  women  and  chil- 
dren crowding  upon  a  minister's  sympathies  keep  him  full  of  fire, 
and  make  him  surpass  himself. 

The  secluded  life  of  a  college  minister,  with  boys  critical  and 
cold  and  free,  and  so  simple  in  their  relations  to  life,  lacks  almost 
every  inspiration  except  Duty,  stern  Daughter  of  the  Voice  of 
God.  Others  might  go  there  and  do  as  well  as  they  could  else- 
where, but  surely  you  feel  the  magnetic  influence  of  responsive 
numbers  too  powerfully  not  to  know  the  danger  of  settling  down 
as  the  permanent,  regular  college  preacher  and  professor.  Not 
that  I  make  light  of  such  important  work,  but  the  question  is 
where  you  can  find  the  Great  Field  for  those  transcendent  powers 
which  God  has  poured  out  upon  you  in  such  full  measure.  You, 
the  great  Missionary  to  the  Masses  of  the  People!  You,  who 
have  let  us  build  a  splendid  Temple,  full  of  beauty  and  art  and 
lavish  outlay,  —  because  all  unto  God  and  a  joy  to  offer  —  this 
splendid  Temple  not  only,  nay  not  so  much,  for  ourselves,  as  for 
the  masses  of  the  people,  now  and  hereafter,  setting  a  grand 
example  of  rich  and  poor,  of  favored  and  unfavored,  meeting  to 


292  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881 

worship  God!  Can  you,  the  people's  leader,  go  apart  to  the 
favored  few,  the  sons  of  wealth,  present  or  prospective,  —  the  sons 
of  culture,  and  leave  the  Great  World  behind  ? 

Among  others  who  did  much  to  clear  up  the  issue  and 
bring  all  its  aspects  before  Mr.  Brooks  was  his  friend 
Colonel  Charles  R.  Codman,  who  studied  the  situation  with 
the  keen  and  practised  eye  of  a  man  of  affairs.  He  pointed 
to  a  few  actual  facts  which  afforded  the  basis  of  a  conclusive 
deduction.  Trinity  Church  was  so  near  the  University  that 
its  students  could  attend  there  freely  if  they  wished.  In  case 
he  went  to  Cambridge  he  would  have  only  a  fraction  of  its 
students  for  an  audience,  for  a  large  proportion  of  them 
spent  Sundays  at  their  homes,  and  went  to  their  various 
places  of  worship.  A  large  part  of  the  University,  indeed, 
the  Medical  School,  was  in  Boston.  And  more  important 
still,  it  had  been  in  and  from  his  place  in  Boston  that  he  had 
already  exerted  such  an  influence  upon  Harvard  as  to  lead  to 
his  call,  and  it  was  not  necessary  to  go  there  to  reside  in 
order  to  retain  or  increase  his  influence.  It  was  also  pointed 
out  what  many  felt,  that  the  sectarian  feeling  really  consti- 
tuted an  element  in  the  problem.  There  would  be  jealousy 
of  him  as  an  Episcopalian.  Already  in  the  communications 
to  the  press  this  cry  had  been  raised.  The  Episcopalians, 
it  was  said,  were  "working  like  beavers"  to  secure  the  trans- 
formation of  Harvard  College  into  an  American  Oxford  and 
to  make  it  as  far  as  possible  an  Episcopalian  institution.  If 
he  went  to  Cambridge  he  would  have  to  suppress  his  own  con- 
victions and  would  not  be  as  free  as  at  Trinity.  The  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity,  the  liturgical  worship  of  the  Prayer  Book,  the 
method  of  the  Christian  year,  he  could  not  keep  these  colors 
flying  for  fear  of  some  sectarian  protest.  The  truth  was 
simply  this,  that  the  University  had  outgrown  the  possibility 
of  any  longer  being  ministered  to  in  its  spiritual  life  by  any 
one  clergyman,  no  matter  to  what  denomination  he  might 
belong. 

The  Episcopal  clergy  for  the  most  part  were  agreed  that 
the  Church  would  suffer  a  greater  loss  by  his  removal  than 
the  College  would  gain.     Those  more  especially  who  looked 


^T.  45]  CALL  TO  HARVARD  293 

to  Phillips  Brooks  as  a  leader,  leavening  the  Episcopal  Church 
with  the  elements  of  a  more  comprehensive  theology,  and 
weakening  the  ecclesiastical  stringency  which  separated  it 
from  other  Protestant  communions,  were  unanimous  in  the 
expression  of  their  conviction  that  it  would  be  nothing  short 
of  a  calamity  if  he  abandoned  the  parish  ministry.  He  would 
gradually  lose  his  identification  with  the  Episcopal  Church 
altogether. 

There  were  still  other  considerations  which  had  their 
weight.  "The  aptitude  of  the  student  mind,"  wrote  the  Rev. 
C.  C.  Tiffany,  "to  sheer  off  from  the  direction  of  official 
teachers,  especially  preachers,  gives  me  the  conviction, 
that  in  your  present  position  you  affect  these  students  more 
positively  than  you  could  from  the  University  pulpit."  The 
Rev.  William  R.  Huntington  fastened  upon  a  point  which 
no  one  else  had  urged.  The  post  to  which  Mr.  Brooks  had 
been  called  carried  with  it  not  only  the  preaching  in  the 
University  pulpit,  but  the  work  of  a  teacher  in  the  chair 
of  Christian  Ethics.  "A  sophomore,"  wrote  Dr.  Huntington, 
"is  not  likely  to  be  the  more  interested  in  your  preaching  on 
account  of  your  having  given  him,  the  week  previous,  a  poor 
mark  in  his  examination  paper." 

There  were  letters  from  representative  business  men  in 
Boston  pleading  in  behalf  of  those  who  were  neither  scholars 
nor  teachers,  but  that  large  class  of  young  men  who  would 
influence  the  business  interests  of  Boston  in  the  future.  One 
of  them,  from  an  old  schoolmate  and  dear  friend,  will  be 
read  with  interest :  — 

Boston,  April  12,  1881. 

Dear  old  Chap,  —  Forty  years  is  it  since  we  began  learning 
Latin  and  mischief  together  —  you  the  Latin  and  I  the  mischief  ? 
Since  which  we  have  never  had  a  cross  word,  and  so  I  will  run 
the  chance  of  one  by  impertinence. 

Folks  say  that  the  College  is  asking  for  you ;  and  it  is  true,  I 
know.  Since  you  took  your  course  for  life,  you  have  gone  on 
steadily  and  enthusiastically  until  you  've  won  a  great  place. 
Just  think  of  the  empty  old  church  and  of  the  present  full  church ! 
Just  think  of  the  men  and  women  of  the  intelligent  and  educated 
classes  whom  you  've  drawn  into  your  fold !     Think  what  these 


294  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1881 

men  will  do  for  the  less  fortunate  people  of  our  city,  and  still 
more  think  how  your  women  work !  We  have  not  seen  the  like 
for  a  great,  great  while.  It  has  fallen  to  you  to  do  this  thing, 
and  I  will  not  pass  on  your  deserts,  hut  merely  on  your  luck  to 
have  done  something  in  this  life  worth  doing.  Is  not  that  what 
we  all  are  after,  and  what  goes  far  to  save  us  from  remorse  or 
despair  ?  How  can  a  chap  be  content  for  a  day,  unless  he  is  aim- 
ing at  something  of  a  serious  kind  ?  It  is  the  only  theory  on 
which  one  can  explain  this  life,  is  n't  it  ?  And  how  many  of  our 
comrades  have  made  a  success  of  their  lives  ?  or  how  often  does  it 
occm*  in  our  experience  to  see  it  ? 

You  have,  —  no  matter  how  or  why ;  and  still  more  the  future 
for  you  is  greater  in  promise  than  the  past  has  been  in  perform- 
ance. Don't  dream  of  leaving  your  own  field.  Your  personal 
contact  with  all  these  folks  is  a  necessity,  if  you  will  go  on. 
How  can  you  then  think  of  Cambridge  and  the  dear  old  Univer- 
sity? You  can't  work  on  those  boys  in  the  same  way,  simply 
because  they  are  at  the  questioning,  critical,  restless  age.  The 
worst  of  them  are  not  bad,  but  frivolous  or  idle-minded.  The  best 
of  them  are  seeking  for  the  truth  everywhere,  and  had  better  seek 
by  themselves.  Let  them  ferment.  Of  course  you  can  help 
many  a  restless  spirit,  when  he  wishes  to  be  helped  —  but  you  can 
do  it  as  well  here  as  at  Cambridge.  You  certainly  can  talk  to 
or  preach  to  or  teach  them  at  Cambridge  occasionally  —  as  in 
Boston.  But,  for  Heaven's  sake,  don't  leave  your  stronghold  for 
this  new  field.  It  would  be  the  mistake  of  your  life  —  and  you 
will  rue  it  deeply  and  forever. 

Now  how  do  I  know  ?  I  do  not  know,  and  yet  I  feel  absolutely 
sure  of  it.  I  've  talked  to  some  of  the  middle-aged  and  some  of 
the  younger  folk  of  it,  and  listened  with  much  interest  —  to  but 
one  reply. 

You  know  that  personally  I  get  nothing  from  your  being  in 
town.  We  both  are  too  busy  to  meet  often  unless  at  church ;  and 
there  I  do  not  go.  So  I  am  free  from  bias.  But  I  can't  but 
feel  much  interested  in  your  work,  and  glad  of  your  great  influ- 
ence.     Don't  risk  losing  it  —  don't  go  away  until  your  sim  sets. 

This  letter  calls  for  no  reply.  If  it  annoys  you,  burn  it  and 
forgive  me  for  the  sake  of  old  times.  I  know  that  it  is  presum- 
ing, impertinent,  arrogant  even.  It  has  not  one  word  of  praise 
or  admiration  for  you.  Such  a  word  is  not  called  for  or  needed, 
but  no  one  can  value  work  and  enthusiasm  more  than  I.  You 
know  full  well  how  I  feel  about  your  life. 
God  bless  you,  old  fellow. 

Henby  L.  H1GGIN8ON. 


^T.  45]  CALL   TO   HARVARD  295 

As  the  time  went  on  the  forces  that  multiplied  against  the 
call  were  stronger  than  those  in  favor  of  it.  If  the  students 
of  Harvard  had  a  mass  meeting  to  urge  his  coming,  so  also  a 
mass  meeting  was  held  in  Boston  in  Huntington  Hall,  at 
which  hundreds  of  young  men  raised  their  voices  in  protest 
against  his  leaving.  The  entire  membership  of  the  Young 
Men's  Christian  Association  signed  their  names  to  a  request 
that  he  should  remain  in  Boston.  There  came  the  same 
request  in  a  petition  from  the  large  business  establishment 
of  C.  F.  Hovey  &  Co.,  signed  by  more  than  fifty  names. 
Other  petitions  there  were,  with  the  names  of  prominent  busi- 
ness firms  appended.  It  was  no  slight  consideration  with 
Phillips  Brooks  that  the  members  of  his  own  family  were 
opposed  to  his  going.  The  wise  counsel  of  the  Kev.  Arthur 
Brooks,  in  whose  judgment  he  placed  great  confidence,  con- 
demned on  the  whole  what  seemed  a  doubtful  experiment. 
The  bishop  of  the  diocese  asked  him  to  remain.  Trinity 
Church  spoke  in  its  organic  capacity  through  the  wardens 
and  vestry :  — 

Boston,  April  11,  1881. 

To  THE  Reverend  Phillips  Brooks,  D.  D., — We,  the  War- 
dens and  Vestrymen  of  Trinity  Church,  feel  it  our  duty  to  address 
you  on  the  invitation  that  you  have  received  to  become  the 
preacher  to  the  University  at  Cambridge. 

As  individuals,  we  have  expressed  our  personal  wishes  that  your 
relations  to  the  Parish  may  continue  for  many  years,  but  we  have 
not  hitherto  felt  called  upon  to  take  ofl&cial  action. 

We  were  confident  that  you  thoroughly  understood  our  feelings, 
and  we  have  desired  not  to  embarrass  you  by  any  act  of  ours. 

But  we  cannot  forget  that  we  are  the  chosen  representatives 
of  the  Proprietors  of  Trinity  Church,  and  we  feel  that  we  should 
not  be  acting  justly  to  them,  nor  to  the  large  number  of  worship- 
pers who  are  connected  with  the  Parish,  if  we  did  not  in  their 
behalf  affectionately,  but  most  urgently  and  earnestly,  beg  you  to 
consider  well,  not  only  what  may  be  your  duty  to  them,  but  to 
the  larger  community  to  whom  you  have  ministered.  We  speak 
not  only  for  ourselves,  but  for  the  highest  spiritual  interests  of 
those  whom  we  immediately  represent,  and  chiefly  for  the  city  in 
which  we  live,  to  great  numbers  of  whose  inhabitants  our  Parish, 
altogether  from  your  connection  with  it,  has  been  and  is  a  blessing. 
We  beg  you  to  remember  —  and  this  with  no  desire  to  pain  you 


i^e  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881 

by  saying  anything  that  may  seem  extravagant,  but  solely  from  our 
regard  for  what  we  believe  to  be  the  simple  truth  —  that  the  pulpit 
of  Trinity  Church  has  given  you  the  opportunity,  which  you  have 
improved  with  results  altogether  unparalleled,  to  exercise  an 
influence  for  good  upon  the  people  of  this  city,  including  all 
classes  and  both  sexes,  —  the  young  and  the  old,  the  poor  and 
the  rich.  Parents  are  thanking  you  for  the  blessing  to  their  chil- 
dren of  growing  up  inspired  by  you,  and  they  cannot  see  the  pos- 
sibility of  your  going  from  them  without  speaking  out  to  you 
their  sense  of  loss. 

The  mothers,  wives,  and  daughters  of  our  great  congregation 
have  seen  under  your  ministry  new  visions  of  life  and  love  and 
work  and  devotion  to  Christ.  Business  men,  full  of  the  sense  of 
life  and  power,  are  moved  mightily  by  your  words  to  consecrate 
their  lives  to  the  service  of  God. 

The  young  men  of  the  city,  of  our  schools,  our  colleges,  our 
stores  and  homes,  know  the  way  to  Trinity  Church,  and  go  there 
at  the  critical  moments  of  their  lives,  when  perhaps  for  years 
before  they  have  been  unimpressible,  and  go  away  inspired  and 
consecrated,  and  carrying  your  power  widely  through  the  land. 

Those  of  our  community  who  are  not  the  favored  ones  of  the 
earth  in  education  or  worldly  circumstances  have  received  from 
your  words  comfort  and  courage,  and  many  of  these  would  sadly 
feel  the  loss  of  your  presence  from  their  homes  and  families,  in 
their  hour  of  sorrow  or  distress. 

The  work  that  you  are  doing  is  one  of  transcendent  importance. 
It  is  steadily  growing  and  cannot  be  left  to  suffer  or  halt.  We 
solemnly  believe  that  if  you  will  appreciate  this  work  and  its  infi- 
nite needs,  you  must  come  to  our  conclusion,  that  no  other  place 
can  give  you  so  much  power  for  good. 

Trinity  Church,  with  its  open  doors,  its  generous  welcome,  its 
great  congregations,  its  varied  audiences  gathered  from  every  sect 
and  section  of  the  city,  attracting  the  men  and  women  of  thought 
and  influence  from  all  parts  of  the  country  as  they  pass  through 
Boston,  —  Trinity  Church  as  a  means  of  carrying  your  power 
and  inspiration  into  the  hearts  and  lives  of  the  whole  people,  far 
surpasses  in  our  judgment  any  other  possible  field  of  usefulness. 

Your  parishioners  have  not  believed  it  possible  that  you  could 
take  a  different  view;  and  if  they  have  seemed  silent,  we  who 
know  their  strong  and  unanimous  feeling  can  assure  you  that  it 
has  been  from  a  conviction  that  a  separation  was  impossible,  and 
because  they  have  shrunk  from  believing  that  such  a  thing  could 
be  seriously  contemplated. 

The  grief  which  all  your  people  feel  at  the  suggestion  of  your 


^T.  45]  CALL   TO   HARVARD  297 

withdrawal  from  the  Rectorship  cannot  adequately  be  expressed 
by  any  words  of  ours.  They  do  not  dare  to  contemplate  the  ef- 
fect of  your  departure  upon  all  the  activities  and  missionary  work 
of  the  parish  already  vigorous  and  rapidly  developing;  still  less, 
its  effect  upon  the  Parish  itself. 

We  beg  you  to  allow  them  ample  time  and  opportunity  to  ex- 
press their  feelings  and  wishes  before  you  come  to  a  final  decision. 
We  ask  you  to  determine  nothing  until  you  have  heard  the  repre- 
sentations that  will  be  made  by  many  persons  of  whose  deep  and 
personal  concern  in  your  decision  you  are  possibly  not  now  aware ; 
and  when  you  have  heard  all  that  can  be  said  by  those  for  whom 
we  speak,  we  trust  and  believe  that  it  will  be  given  you  to  see  that 
it  is  your  present  duty  not  to  abandon  the  field  in  which  God  has 
made  it  manifest  that  your  power  and  influence  can  do  a  great 
work  for  the  souls  of  all  conditions  of  men. 

Charles  Henry  Parker 


^  -r,    ^  ,    Wardens. 

Charles  R.  Codmak  ) 

Thomas  C.  Amory,  John  C.  Ropes,  Stephen  G.  Deblois,  C.  J. 

Morrill,  B.  F.  Nourse,  Robert  Treat  Paine,  Jr.,  William  Amory, 

Jr.,  Edward  D.  Peters,  Samuel  Eliot,  Robert  M.  Gushing,  Vestry. 

Phillips  Brooks  had  sometimes  doubted  whether  his  work 
at  Trinity  were  successful,  judged  by  the  higher  standard  of 
success.  He  had  longed  for  some  response,  which  he  did  not 
get,  which  indeed  it  was  almost  impossible  to  give,  to  those 
impassioned,  exalted  appeals  which  he  poured  forth,  Sunday 
after  Sunday,  year  after  year.  But  from  this  time  he  could 
have  had  no  doubt  as  to  his  place  in  the  hearts  of  his  con- 
gregation. Into  the  sacred  confidences  of  personal  letters, 
where  he  was  told  what  he  had  been  to  the  hundreds  of  fami- 
lies in  his  congregation,  we  must  not  enter.  They  have  one 
common  feature,  —  a  determination  that  he  should  know  at 
last,  not  merely  in  a  general  way  but  by  the  unveiling  of 
individual  experiences,  that  his  work  at  Trinity  had  been  the 
agency  under  God  of  illumination  and  consolation,  of  moral 
reformation  and  of  spiritual  life. 

There  is  still  one  point  to  be  mentioned,  as  the  vision 
gradually  faded  from  his  mind,  of  the  possibilities  involved 
in  the  call  to  Harvard.  In  one  of  the  letters  which  came  to 
him  there  is  this  remark :  — 

There  is  one  other  thing  that  I  hardly  dare  to  say.      I  cannot 


298  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881 

believe,  as  some  people  do,  that  you  care  only  for  your  work  with 
men.  It  would  be  too  ignoble  a  thought.  But  I  do  believe  that 
you  think  women  by  nature  more  religious,  less  needy  than  they 
are.  You  do  not  feel  always  that  triumph  and  joy  in  helping 
them  that  you  do  in  helping  men.  But  when  you  give  up  a  mixed 
congregation,  do  you  realize  what  a  tremendous  indirect  influence 
upon  men  you  lose,  men  who  never  care  for  church  or  preacher  but 
who  have  homes  ?  You  spoke  not  long  ago  of  the  queenly  power 
in  the  household  as  the  most  subtle  though  the  least  manifest. 
Only  to-day  some  one  said  to  me,  "Our  home  is  utterly  different 
since  we  went  to  Trinity  Church ;  we  are  different  people. "  And 
this  is  only  one. 

A  gentleman  in  his  congregation  wrote  to  him  with  refer- 
ence to  the  same  point :  — 

I  think  more  Harvard  students  hear  you  preach  every  Sunday 
in  Trinity  Church,  brought  there  mostly  through  the  influence  of 
women  in  one  way  or  another,  than  would  hear  you  on  Sundays  in 
Cambridge;  for  most  students  that  live  in  Boston  and  vicinity 
spend  their  Sundays  at  home.  I  believe  women  are  the  minister's 
strongest  support  in  religion  and  all  other  good  works,  and  the 
great  secret  of  the  power  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  its  in- 
fluence over  and  through  them.  Most  men,  in  my  belief,  that  join 
the  Church  do  so  directly  or  indirectly  through  their  influence,  and 
the  best  way  to  reach  young  men  is  through  them.  It  seems  to 
me  that  in  losing  the  direct  aid  and  support  of  women,  you  would 
be  losing  more  power  than  you  have  any  conception  of. 

No  words  except  those  of  the  writers  of  these  letters  can 
adequately  portray  the  "terrible  earnestness,"  the  "intense 
anxiety,"  the  "severity  of  the  shock,"  the  "fearful  strain," 
the  "sorrow  and  the  gloom,"  of  that  long,  agonizing  day  at 
Trinity  Church  when  this  question  was  pending.  .  But  it  was 
also  a  day  not  wholly  dark,  for  the  trial  cemented  more 
strongly  the  already  strong  bond  of  unity  in  the  parish. 
People  and  minister  alike  were  impressed  anew  with  the 
reality  of  the  religious  life.  If  the  people  realized  what  the 
ministry  of  Phillips  Brooks  had  been  to  them,  he  too  was 
made  to  know,  as  he  had  not  known  before,  what  was  the 
work  which  it  had  been  given  him  to  do.  He  did  not  forget 
the  lesson.  There  was  to  follow  still  another  epoch  in  his 
life,  when  its  fruit  would  become  manifest.     It  might  seem 


235   CLAr\ENDON^TI\EET. 


/t^ c^::^  <^!^  ^^^^^    ^^uy^^^^  ^^<J^>^   c<^'Z.€e^e^ 


'^^^  ^"^  ^  "-^  ^"^"^  -^<i^  c:^^  ^^^ 


{Zla^     -Ci^^jl^      /^CUiyJ      y^^lZj^yi^i^^       ?:^^'^-^ 


i(/^  ^<^ji>  o^j^c^  o^/?       "^h^LA^  ^^^Ceji'uU 


c/y6y^ 


MT.4S]  CALL   TO   HARVARD  299 

as  if  he  had  now  exhausted  the  line  of  ministerial  experiences, 
or  as  if  he  had  reaped  the  highest  earthly  reward  for  which  a 
man  can  hope  in  this  world.  He  appeared  to  be  standing  on 
the  highest  pinnacle  of  fame.  But  yet  he  was  to  be  called 
to  take  another  step  in  the  way  of  self-renunciation,  before 
the  sacrifice  should  be  complete. 

The  letters  of  Phillips  Brooks  relating  to  this  incident  in 
his  life  tell  us  but  little  of  what  he  thought  or  felt.  Yet  in 
this  very  circumstance  a  light  is  thrown  on  his  character. 
He  was  bewildered  and  hardly  knew  what  to  think.  His 
mind  was  rent  with  contradictory  impulses.  There  was 
something  in  him  of  the  feminine  mood  which  led  him  to  go 
where  he  was  wanted.  He  would  like  to  have  gone  to  Cam- 
bridge, but  he  also  wanted  to  remain  at  Trinity.  To  go,  or 
to  remain,  meant  some  inward  suffering.  These  are  a  few  of 
his  letters :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  31,  1881. 

Dear  Aethub,  — I  have  been  elected  by  the  Corporation  of 
Harvard  College  to  be  Preacher  to  the  University,  ...  I  wish 
you  would  tell  me  when  you  have  a  leisure  moment  what  you 
think  of  my  resigning  Trinity  and  going  there.  I  am  much 
puzzled.  Many  things  about  it  attract  me  very  much  indeed. 
Tell  me  perfectly  frankly  what  you  think.  But  don't  mention 
the  matter  till  you  hear  it  in  some  other  way,  for  it  is  not  "out " 
yet.      I  count  much  on  hearing  your  judgment  about  it. 

Boston,  April  4, 1881. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  I  want  to  thank  you  right  off  for  your  kind 
letter.  It  stated  both  sides  very  satisfactorily  and  I  think  on 
the  whole  inclined  towards  "Go  to  Cambridge."  I  incline  very 
much  that  way  myself,  more  because  I  don't  see  exactly  how  it 
is  possible  to  decline  the  call  than  because  I  particularly  want  to 
go.  But  I  think  it  will  come  to  going,  unless  you  write  me 
speedily  to  tell  me  some  overwhelmingly  convincing  reason  why 
I  should  decide  otherwise.    .    .    . 

To  the  Eev.  Dr.  George  E.  Ellis  he  writes :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  April  5, 1881. 

Mt  dear  Dr.  Ellis,  —  I  must  thank  you  at  once  and  with 
all  my  heart  for  your  letter.  I  thank  you  for  its  friendliness 
and  for  its  wisdom.  Both  will  help  me.  "While  I  feel,  of  course, 
that  the  difficult  question  which  is  given  to  me  must  be  answered 


300  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881 

by  myself,  it  is  very  good  indeed  to  know  how  those  whom  I 
esteem  and  honor  feel  about  it,  and  how  my  acceptance  of  the 
place,  if  I  should  venture  to  accept  it,  will  be  regarded  by  them. 
I  am  in  no  danger  of  underestimating  the  interest  and  impor- 
tance of  the  work  in  Cambridge.  I  am  much  more  likely  to  err 
by  being  afraid  of  it  than  by  being  indifferent  to  it.  It  would 
offer  the  most  delightful  and  satisfactory  life  that  any  mortal 
minister  could  live.  I  shall  always  thank  you,  my  dear  Dr. 
Ellis,  for  your  letter  and  for  the  kindness  which  made  you  write  it. 

Most  faithfully  yours, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

To  the  Rev.  Percy  Browne  he  writes :  — 

Fast  Day  Morning,  April  7. 

I  can't  thank  you  as  I  wish  I  could,  dear  Percy,  for  your  let- 
ter. It  makes  me  feel  frightfully  ashamed  of  myself  when  I  hear 
that  you  really  care  so  much  about  what  I  decide  to  do.  I  feel 
like  a  horrible  fraud.  I  know  it  is  not  a  great  matter  for  the 
Church  or  the  world  whether  I  go  or  stay,  but  I  do  want  to 
make  what  life  I  have  still  to  live  tell  as  much  as  I  can,  all  the 
more  because  I  honestly  feel  every  year  more  and  more  how  poor 
it  is.  I  think  now  that  this  feeling  will  carry  me  to  Cambridge, 
but  it  is  far  from  settled,  and  you  and  my  other  friends  must 
have  patience  with  my  hesitation.  Only,  my  dear  Percy,  don't 
talk  as  if  the  going  to  Cambridge  would  break  or  even  strain  the 
friendship  and  intercourse  which  has  been  growingly  one  of  the 
greatest  treasures  of  my  life  here.  If  you  are  going  to  give  me 
up,  why  that  settles  it,  I  won't  go.  No,  we  will  have  Monday 
morning  somewhere  in  Cambridgeport,  or  if  you  won't  come  there 
I  '11  come  to  Millmont  Street. 

I  thank  you  more  than  I  can  say. 

To  the  Rev.  John  C.  Brooks  he  writes :  — 

AprU  13,  1881. 

Dear  Johnnie,  —  A  thousand  thanks  (in  a  great  hurry)  for 
your  kind  letter  and  your  good  sympathy.  I  am  getting  to  feel 
just  as  you  do  about  it  all,  and  I  don't  believe  that  I  shall  go. 
The  work  at  Trinity  looks  more  and  more.  The  chance  (though 
not  the  need)  at  Cambridge  less  and  less.  It  is  n't  settled  and 
probably  won't  be  for  a  week.    .   .    . 

One  of  the  earliest  and  most  important  of  these  letters 
is  addressed  to  Dr.  Vinton,  at  Pomfret,  whose  counsel  and 
blessing  on  all  the  changes  in  his  life  he  had  invoked  hitherto, 
without  which  no  event  was  complete :  — 


^T.  45]  CALL   TO   HARVARD  301 

Dear  Doctor,  —  You  won't  forget  that  you  are  to  come  and 
spend  Passion  Week  here  and  go  to  church  all  the  time  and  preach 
as  much  as  you  can,  will  you  ?  Let  me  know  just  when  I  may 
meet  you  at  the  station  and  you  shall  have  the  cordialest  of 
welcomes. 

I  want  to  see  you  very  much.  I  want  to  talk  with  you  about 
Cambridge,  whither  I  have  been  called  and  whither  it  seems  now 
as  if  I  might  go.  Don't  fail  to  come.  It  will  be  the  last  chance 
perhaps  to  get  you  under  this  roof. 

Affectionately  yours,  P.  B. 

Dr.  Vinton  came  up  from  his  retirement  at  Pomfret,  —  it 
was  to  be  for  the  last  time.  For  several  days  he  remained 
the  guest  of  Mr.  Brooks  at  the  Clarendon  Street  rectory. 
Then,  as  we  know,  the  question  was  turned  over  in  all  its 
aspects,  with  calmness  and  dignity  and  the  sense  of  repose 
after  the  excitement.  To  Dr.  Vinton  he  sent  this  letter, 
announcing  that  he  had  declined  the  call  to  Harvard :  — 

April  18,  1881. 

Dear  Doctor,  —  I  write  to  you  at  once  to  say  that  the  thing 
is  settled  and  I  am  to  stay  at  Trinity.  President  Eliot  was  very 
courteous,  said  that  he  was  sorry  and  did  n't  know  where  to  look ; 
and  then  I  came  away.  It  was  the  quietest  death  of  the  pretty 
little  project  that  you  can  conceive  of,  and  the  pretty  little  pro- 
ject never  looked  so  pretty  as  it  does  now  in  death.  Just  at  this 
moment  I  feel  as  if  I  would  rather  be  Preacher  at  Cambridge  than 
Rector  of  fifty  Trinities.  But  I  think  it 's  all  right,  and  I  cannot 
thank  you  enough  for  the  kind  patience  with  which  you  listened 
hour  after  hour  to  the  endless  talk  about  it  all.  You  must  have 
been  badly  bored,  but  it  was  very  good  of  you  and  I  do  thank 
you.   ... 

Well,  on  Thursday  we  meet  in  Philadelphia  and  Sunday  we  are 
in  New  York.     Till  then  adieu. 

Gratefully  yours,  P.  B. 

To  another  friend  on  the  same  day  he  wrote,  "I  hope  it 's 
all  right,  but  I  'm  awfuUy  blue  about  it."  His  call  on  Pre- 
sident Eliot  had  been  a  severe  ordeal;  his  face  was  pallid 
during  the  short  interview,  as  of  a  man  who  saw  egress  denied 
him  at  a  critical  moment  and  his  life  shut  up,  for  his  future 
years,  to  a  work  from  whose  limitations  and  its  fearful  strain 
on  all  his  vital  powers  he  had  dreamed  for  a  moment  of 


302  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1881 

escaping.  It  was  the  old  story  with  which  we  are  familiar 
ab-eady  in  his  history.  There  was  not  the  time  in  his  parish 
ministry  to  read,  or  study,  or  think.  Under  these  conditions 
the  task  of  preaching  began  to  loom  up  more  formidably 
before  his  eyes.  From  this  time  he  began  to  forecast  the 
future  with  misgivings  and  an  occasional  touch  of  despond- 
ency. 

What,  then,  shall  be  said  upon  "  the  merits  of  the  question  "  ? 
In  view  of  his  own  profound  silence,  one's  words  must  be 
brief  and  cautious  for  fear  of  error.  We  may  believe  that 
if  he  had  accepted  the  call  to  Harvard,  he  would  have  made 
no  failure.  He  was  wise ;  he  would  have  committed  no  mis- 
take by  attempting  too  much ;  he  was  under  the  restraints  of 
sobriety  of  judgment ;  he  knew  what  was  in  men  and  how  to 
address  them.  President  Eliot  saw  that,  amid  the  conflict- 
ing variety  of  opinion,  this  was  the  point  to  be  kept  in  the 
foreground.  He  went  to  the  friends  of  Phillips  Brooks  who 
were  doing  their  utmost  to  keep  him  in  Boston,  and  in  answer 
to  the  question  whether  Mr.  Brooks  could  exert  an  ideal 
influence  at  Cambridge,  he  received  from  them  all  the  tes- 
timony that  he  could  desire.  "As  they  testify  with  reluc- 
tance," he  wrote  to  Mr.  Brooks,  "tiieir  testimony  is  the  more 
trustworthy."  We  may  also  believe  that  had  he  given  his 
remaining  years  to  study,  he  would  have  surely  left  a  stu- 
dent's mark  upon  the  thought  of  the  world. 

And  again,  he  did  not  like  the  exceptional  position  which 
he  held.  In  going  to  Harvard  he  would  have  passed  from 
the  glare  of  publicity  into  the  simple  quiet  life  which  he 
coveted.  He  could  do  there  his  work  as  a  teacher  with  at 
least  the  same  success  as  any  man.  He  alludes  to  this  feel- 
ing as  possibly  a  touch  of  the  boyish  morbidness  which  had 
led  him  to  feel  that  in  going  into  the  ministry  he  was  crawl- 
ing into  obscurity.  There  was  a  certain  contradiction  in  his 
being,  as  though  two  lives  were  struggling  within  him  for 
the  ascendency.  He  would  have  liked  to  lead  the  life  of  his 
father,  doing  an  honorable  man's  work  without  ostentation. 
He  might  have  married,  he  was  a  man  who  could  have  given 
himself  to  and  lived  for  one  woman.     He  was  torn  by  an 


JET.  45]  CALL   TO   HARVARD  303 

inward  contradiction.  For  when  he  was  living  so  publicly, 
for  all  the  world,  confiding  to  the  sermon  his  most  intimate 
feeling  and  thought,  he  could  not  belong  to  any  one  in 'the 
same  interior  way.  It  may  then  have  seemed  to  him  like  a 
last  chance  to  reconstruct  his  life. 

He  acquiesced  in  the  verdict,  knowing  that  an  opportunity 
had  been  lost  which  would  not  return.  Yet  was  he  convinced 
that  he  had  done  the  right  thing.  The  voice  of  God  and  the 
people  assured  him.  There  seems  to  be  here  something  of 
supernatural  direction.  A  call  had  come  to  him  again  with 
renewed  force  to  give  himself  in  more  complete  self -surrender 
to  the  larger  number  who  wanted  him. 

There  came  another  series  of  letters  after  the  decision  had 
been  announced,  for  the  most  part  of  a  congratulatory  char- 
acter. Among  them  is  one  from  the  president  of  Haverford 
College,  in  Pennsylvania,  who  had  been  watching  the  situation 
with  deep  interest :  — 

AprU  25,  1881. 

Dear  Mr.  Brooks,  —  I  am  not  surprised  by  your  decision, 
which  the  newspapers  announce  this  morning,  nor  can  I  blame  it, 
for  it  is  a  serious  thing  to  leave  a  post  of  great  usefulness,  how- 
ever strong  the  inducements  to  enter  another.  But  will  you  not, 
even  more  than  before,  be  an  unofficial  pastor  and  teacher  for  those 
Harvard  boys,  and  help  them  to  find  the  substantial  reality  amidst 
the  fogs  and  darkness  of  oiu*  times  ?  You  would  certainly  be 
welcome  at  any  time  in  the  College  pulpit;  and,  regarding  it  as 
a  simply  Christian  and  undenominational  position,  can  you  not 
occasionally  address  the  students  from  it  ?  Can  it  not  be  under- 
stood, too,  that  there  will  always  be  a  seat  at  Trinity  for  any 
Harvard  boy? 

But  wherever  you  speak,  I  beg  you  to  feel  that  you  are  priv- 
ileged to  command  the  attention  of  men  at  a  very  critical  period 
in  the  history  of  Christianity.  Religion  and  morality  itself  are 
menaced  by  wild  and  one-sided  speculations ;  but  you  will  continue 
to  teach  that  there  is  an  eternal,  unchangeable  moral  law,  a  God 
in  whom  we  can  trust,  a  Saviour  to  whom  we  can  cling. 

I  had  pleased  myself  with  a  day-dream  of  you  at  Cambridge  as 
a  better  Newman,  leading  the  intellectual  hope  of  the  country,  not, 
like  the  Oxford  preacher,  into  the  lions'  den,  but  to  the  promised 
land.  It  may  be,  however,  that  you  will  be  almost  as  influential 
in  the  University  from  Boston  as  from  any  "Appleton  Chapel," 


304  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881 

however  enlarged,  at  the  same  time  that  your  influence  over  the 
whole  country  will  be  wider  from  your  present  post. 

Let  me  tell  you  that  I  have  often  read  your  printed  sermons 
here,  on  Sunday  afternoons,  with  great  satisfaction  both  to  them 
and  myself. 

Ever  very  truly  yours, 

Thomas  Chase. 

There  is  a  sense,  then,  in  which  Harvard  University  gained 
in  the  struggle.  The  whole  subject  of  religion  came  up  for 
discussion,  and  the  old  arrangement  was  abandoned  by  which 
one  man  ministered  to  the  miscellaneous  body  of  students. 
A  body  of  chaplains  was  constituted,  of  which  Mr.  Brooks 
was  one,  who,  coming  in  from  outside,  with  a  wider  range  in 
the  observation  and  experience  of  life,  could  bring  their 
spiritual  force  to  bear  upon  the  college  life.  This  plan  which 
Harvard  was  the  first  to  adopt  was  gradually  introduced  into 
other  colleges.  During  the  next  ten  years  of  his  life,  Phillips 
Brooks  seemed  to  have  at  his  command  the  open  door  to  stu- 
dents' life,  throughout  the  leading  colleges  in  the  country. 
It  was  an  additional  burden,  but  he  thought  of  it  as  a  glorious 
privilege.  It  was  Harvard  University  that  was  sending  him 
forth  with  this  mission.  She  had  placed  her  seal  upon  him 
as  the  great  University  preacher. 


CHAPTER  XI 

1881-1882 

MEMORIAL  SERMON  ON  DR.  VINTON.  DEATH  OP  DEAN 
STANLEY.  SPEECHES  AT  CHURCH  CONGRESS.  SECOND 
VOLUME  OF  SERMONS.  THE  STANLEY  MEMORIAL.  DEATH 
OF  DR.  STONE.  REQUEST  FOR  LEAVE  OF  ABSENCE  FOR 
A   YEAR 

On  April  26,  1881,  Dr.  Vinton  died  at  the  age  of  seventy- 
four.  The  eulogy  which  Phillips  Brooks  pronounced  upon 
him  in  a  memorial  sermon  preached  at  Emmanuel  Church, 
Boston,  and  again  in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  Phila- 
delphia, was  published  by  request  in  pamphlet  form,  but  de- 
serves a  permanent  place  among  his  writings,  for  it  is  the 
description  of  an  ideal  which  had  been  before  him  from  his 
boyhood.  For  nearly  forty  years  these  two  lives  had  been 
intertwined.  A  few  extracts  from  this  sermon  will  show 
what  the  relationship  had  been,  how  profound  had  been  the 
influence  of  the  older  man  upon  the  younger,  but  incidentally 
they  show  us  what  manner  of  man  was  Phillips  Brooks.  Thus 
he  describes  Dr.  Vinton  as  the  great  presbyter,  to  whom 
the  episcopate  would  have  been  no  gain.  He  is  interpreting 
the  working  of  the  organization  of  the  church  by  his  own  ex- 
perience when  he  says :  — 

And  so  he  was  in  his  true  place  in  that  degree  of  the  ministry 
where  preaching  is  the  constant  duty.  Once  or  twice  they  talked 
of  making  him  a  bishop.  But  it  was  well  in  his  heart,  I  think 
he  knew  that  it  was  well,  that  they  who  formed  such  plans  for 
him  did  not  succeed.  So  far  as  it  would  have  separated  him 
from  the  pulpit  where  he  belonged,  it  would  have  been  a  loss  and 
not  a  gain.  The  great  work  of  the  church  lies  with  the  presby- 
ters.    The  deacon  saves  the  presbyter  from  some  details  of  work 

VOL.   II. 


3o6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881-82 

that  he  may  be  the  freer  for  his  tasks.  The  bishop  watches  the 
ramparts  of  the  church  and  secures  for  the  presbyter  the  condi- 
tions of  peaceful  and  effective  labor.  But  the  great  work  of  the 
church  is  in  the  presbyters.  And  this  was  our  great  presbyter. 
That  is  his  name  and  honor.  A  bishopric  could  never  have  in- 
creased his  dignity,  while  it  must  have  weakened  his  power  and 
fretted  his  life  out  with  minute  details.  He  was  our  great  pres- 
byter, the  elder,  the  brother,  with  a  special  experience  and  educa- 
tion, but  still  the  elder  brother,  telling  his  brethren  in  brotherly 
simplicity  and  earnestness  the  truth  of  God. 

Here  follows  a  description  of  the  pastoral  office  as  em- 
bodied in  Dr.  Vinton,  always  before  the  mind  of  Phillips 
Brooks  as  his  own  ideal :  — 

I  stop  a  moment  and  think  of  that  great  pastorship,  of  all  it 
meant  to  countless  souls;  and  to  have  lived  in  it  and  carried  it 
on  as  he  did  seems  to  me  to  be  an  indescribable,  an  inestimable 
privilege.  A  great  pastorship  is  the  noblest  picture  of  human 
influence  and  of  the  relationship  of  man  to  man  which  the  world 
has  to  show.  It  is  the  canonization  of  friendship.  It  is  friend- 
ship lifted  above  the  regions  of  mere  instinct  and  sentiment  and 
fondness,  above  all  thought  of  policy  or  convenience,  and  exalted 
into  the  mutual  helpfulness  of  the  children  of  God.  The  pastor 
is  father  and  brother  both  to  those  whose  deepest  lives  he  helps 
in  deepest  ways.  His  belonging  to  his  people  is  like  the  broad 
spreading  of  the  sky  over  the  lives  of  men  and  women  and  little 
children,  of  good  and  bad,  of  weak  and  strong,  on  all  of  whom 
alike  it  sheds  its  rain  and  dew.  Who  that  has  ever  known  such 
a  pastorate  can  believe  that  death,  which  sets  free  all  the  best 
and  purest  things  into  a  larger  spiritual  being,  ends  the  relation- 
ship of  soul  to  soul  which  a  true  pastorship  involves  ? 

It  is  with  profound  respect  that  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  Dr. 
Vinton's  theology,  from  which  he  had  diverged.  Many  and 
earnest  had  been  the  discussions  between  them  on  this  sub- 
ject, as  they  maintained  their  differing  views,  but  always 
with  mutual  deference  and  toleration :  — 

He  won  in  the  community  where  he  lived  a  profound  respect 
for  the  theology  which  he  preached;  not  necessarily  an  acceptance 
of  it,  but  a  respect  for  it.  No  people  listening  to  him  could 
think  that  the  theology  of  the  Incarnation  and  the  Atonement 
was  irrational  or  absurd.     There  never  was  a  pulpit  which  more 


JET.  45-46]    SERMON  ON  DR.  VINTON      307 

clearly  uttered  a  definite  truth  than  his,  and  yet  there  never  was 
a  pulpit  more  respected.  .  .  .  Many  of  us  who  listened  to  Dr. 
Vinton  thirty  years  ago  have  seen  truth  differently  now  from  the 
way  in  which  he  showed  it  to  us  then,  but  we  have  seen  it  still 
with  eyes  that  he  helped  to  open ;  and  many  a  vision  which  he 
never  bade  us  see,  but  which  is  now  our  joy  and  feast  and  inspi- 
ration, we  owe  still  to  his  ministry,  and  may  thank  him  for  it, 
next  to  God. 

The  change  in  the  religious  outlook  which  comes  to  every 
new  generation  is  a  trying  experience  to  the  older  men,  who 
would  fain  have  the  world  abide  by  the  conclusions  they 
themselves  have  reached.  Dr.  Vinton  bore  himself  well 
under  this  ordeal  —  a  model  to  young  men  who  in  their  turn 
must  encounter  the  same  difficulty. 

Those  years  from  1858  to  1861  were  interesting  years  to  any 
minister  of  our  church,  because  of  the  new  drifts  and  tendencies 
of  Christian  thought  which  were  beginning  to  become  pronounced. 
Ritualism  and  rationalism  were  claiming  their  places  in  the 
church.  Especially  in  the  latter  of  these  two  directions  the  move- 
ment became  vigorous  and  prominent  about  that  time.  The 
famous  "Essays  and  Reviews  "  were  published  in  1860,  and  the 
whole  liberal  or  broad  church  tendency  attracted  the  interest  of 
thinking  men.  It  would  not  be  right  to  try  to  sketch  the  life  of 
Dr.  Vinton,  and  not  to  tell  how  he  regarded  that  movement  in 
which  he  was,  through  all  the  last  years  of  his  life,  so  deeply  inter- 
ested. He  mistrusted  it  and  feared  it.  He  disagreed  with  many 
of  its  processes  and  most  of  its  conclusions.  At  the  same  time 
he  never  withheld  his  friendship  and  his  love  from  those  who  were 
most  earnestly  in  sympathy  with  it,  nor  ever  gave  them  anything 
but  help  and  godspeed  in  their  work.  He  never  recoiled  from 
it  with  horror.  And  his  own  spirit,  which,  above  the  spirit  of 
any  other  man  I  ever  knew,  was  devout  without  the  slightest  taint 
of  superstition,  had  much  to  contribute,  both  in  the  way  of  check 
and  in  the  way  of  stimulus,  to  the  new  thought  of  the  younger 
men  in  whose  society  so  much  of  the  years  which  still  remained  to 
him  was  passed.  .  .  .  For  my  part,  I  thank  Dr.  Vinton  for 
many  and  many  a  word  even  of  protest  against  what  I  thought 
was  true,  which,  while  it  made  me  more  anxious  and  careful 
to  be  sure  that  what  I  thought  was  truth  was  really  true,  made 
me  also  more  earnest  in  holding  it  as  I  became  convinced  that 
I  was  not  mistaken.  And  I  am  sure  that  his  great  soul  would 
not  grudge  me  that  gratitude.     And  I  think  that  it  is  one  which 


3o8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881-82 

many  others  share  with  me.  .  .  .  He  has  been  the  Socrates  to 
many  a  poor  boy's  unborn  power  of  thinking.  He  was  never 
shocked  at  honest  heresy,  however  earnestly  he  argued  to  disprove 
it  and  dislodge  it.  He  has  set  many  a  glad  soul  free  from  the 
constraint  of  what  it  thought  it  ought  to  believe  and  sent  it  out 
to  the  delight  of  a  real  faith. 

There  came  a  letter  in  response  to  this  sketch  of  Dr.  Vin- 
ton from  a  distinguished  Congregational  clergyman,  which 
forms  part  of  the  record,  showing  that  Dr.  Vinton's  power 
continued  to  be  felt  through  the  influence  of  Phillips  Brooks's 
portrayal :  — 

Boston,  September  13, 1881. 

Mt  deab  Brother,  — I  can  address  you  by  no  other  name 
since  reading,  as  I  have  just  done,  your  Memorial  Sermon  on 
Dr.  Vinton.  Never  by  anything  you  have  before  written  have  I 
been  so  profoundly  stirred  as  by  parts  of  this  noble  discourse.  I 
am  not  ashamed  to  tell  you  that  tears  have  fallen  on  the  pages 
where  you  describe  a  great  pastorship  as  "the  noblest  picture  of 
human  influence,"  and  where  you  tell  of  Dr.  Vinton's  work  in 
the  national  judgment  day  of  this  generation. 

Rebuked  and  humbled  have  I  been  by  the  vision  you  have  given 
me  of  a  great  life,  the  humbling  I  trust  to  be  followed  by  new 
inspirations  to  a  higher  service  of  Christ.  Indeed,  I  now  believe 
that  no  such  moral  quickening  has  come  to  me  for  years  as  I  have 
had  on  this  blessed  morning. 

Within  a  few  weeks  I  am  to  go  from  my  work  here  to  the 
pastorate  of  the  First  Presbyterian  Church  of  Chicago.  In  the 
one  happy  year  of  my  ministry  in  Boston,  I  have  felt  the  inspira- 
tion, not  only  of  your  words,  but  of  your  nearness,  and  I  cannot 
go  away  without  telling  you  of  it. 

There  creeps  into  the  correspondence  of  Phillips  Brooks 
at  this  time  the  evidence  of  some  physical  weariness.  He 
found,  so  he  writes,  the  sermon  on  Dr.  Vinton  one  of  the 
hardest  things  that  he  had  ever  undertaken ;  and  he  men« 
tions  that  while  he  was  writing  it  the  weather  was  atrocious. 
He  declines  an  invitation  to  take  a  journey,  which  would  call 
for  physical  activity  or  endurance,  on  the  ground  that  he  is 
no  longer  good  for  such  things.  On  hearing  that  one  of  his 
clerical  friends  proposed  to  take  a  long  rest  of  more  than  a 


^T.  45-46]    SERMON  ON  DR.  VINTON       309 

year,  he  says :  "  It  is  getting  to  be  kind  of  tame  and  vulgar 
to  plod  right  on.     But  it  is  pleasant  nevertheless." 

It  was  a  novel  event  at  Harvard,  creating  a  deep  interest, 
when  the  "CEdipus  Tyrannus  "  was  given  in  Sanders  Theatre. 
No  one  was  more  interested  in  following  it  than  Phillips 
Brooks,  for  the  Greek  tragedies  had  formed  an  essential  part 
in  his  education.  He  speaks  of  it  as  a  "most  tremendous 
success." 

Among  the  important  books  which  appeared  in  1881  was 
Dr.  Mulford's  "Republic  of  God."  It  was  important  be- 
cause it  broke  the  long  silence  of  the  younger  men,  speaking 
for  them  on  the  religious  issues  of  the  day.  Mr.  Brooks  was 
asked  to  review  it  for  "The  Atlantic  Monthly,"  but  declined. 
He  read  it,  however,  despite  its  philosophic  terminology, 
against  which  he  rebelled.  To  a  lady  who  wrote  to  him  a 
few  years  later,  after  Dr.  MuKord's  lamented  death,  asking 
his  opinion  of  the  book,  he  wrote :  — 

Dr.  Mulford  was  a  most  interesting  man,  and  his  book  is  one 
of  the  most  inspiring  and  exasperating  things  that  anybody  ever 
wrote.  It  is  as  bright  and  deep  and  vague  as  the  sky.  It  will 
never  be  much  read,  but  a  few  men  will  get  out  of  it  what  they 
will  interpret  to  the  world.  He  was  not  a  man  for  the  ecclesias- 
ticism  of  the  Church  to  make  much  out  of,  but  he  was  felt,  and 
his  loss  nobody  can  make  good. 

Mr.  Brooks  took  no  vacation  from  preaching  during  the 
summer  of  1881.  Every  Sunday  found  him  in  his  place  in 
the  pulpit  of  Trinity  Church.  But  he  gained  some  relief 
from  the  burden  of  pastoral  cares  in  visiting  his  parishion- 
ers in  their  summer  homes.  It  was  a  summer  long  to  be  re- 
membered because  of  the  assassination  of  President  Garfield, 
when  for  weeks  the  country  was  in  suspense  waiting  for  the 
fatal  issue.     To  the  Rev.  James  P.  Franks  he  writes :  — 

BosTOK,  233  Clarendon  Street,  July  3, 1881. 
Dear  James,  —  ...  This  week  has  been  Commencement  and 
<I>.  B.  K.,  and  we  have  been  revelling  in  Wendell  Phillips  and  George 
William  Curtis.  It  was  very  beautiful,  and  made  eloquence  seem 
as  easy  as  breathing.  Arthur  and  John  were  both  here,  and  we 
had  a  very  beautiful  time  and  sentimentalized  about  the  lapse  of 


3IO  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1881-82 

time  in  a  very  maudling  sort  of  way.  Then,  when  that  was  over, 
I  went  yesterday  and  spent  a  day  with  Charles  Parker,  the  Senior 
Warden  of  Trinity,  who  has  just  returned  from  Europe,  and  when 
I  came  home  from  there  this  morning,  we  were  met  with  the 
President's  assassination.  How  it  brings  back  that  awful  Friday 
sixteen  years  ago,  only  this  is  more  wretched  because  it  is  not 
connected  with  any  great  issue  and  has  no  more  dignity  than  must 
always  belong  to  death  —  if  it  is  to  be  death.  The  assassin  seems 
to  have  been  the  most  miserable  moonstruck  vagabond  —  and  his 

object  nothing  more  than  disappointed  spite.     I  met on  the 

street  just  after  we  had  heard  of  it  this  morning,  and  he  told  me 
of  an  article  he  had  been  writing  upon  the  folly  of  allowing  the 
President  of  the  United  States  to  go  about  without  a  bodyguard .' 
Every  goose  will  sting  his  own  sermon  into  the  dreadful  tragedy. 

I  saw ,  and  he  had  several  delightful  and  subtle  theories 

about  it.  But  the  one  thing  to  do  now  is  to  hope  that  Garfield 
will  get  well  and  that  we  shall  be  spared  the  infliction  of  Arthur 
as  President.  We  shall  pray  for  the  President  to-night  at  the 
"usual  meeting  previous  to  the  Communion."  Well,  all  this  is  to 
tell  you  why  I  have  n't  come  to  Beverly  to  thank  you  for  asking 
me  to  come.  And  now,  though  I  am  to  be  in  Beverly  twice  next 
week,  I  am  afraid  I  shall  not  tread  your  hospitable  piazza  before 
our  Mountain  tour.  The  truth  is  that  the  Summer  looks  as  if 
it  were  going  to  use  itself  up  in  a  sort  of  parish  visiting  on  a  big 
scale.  ...  It  is  the  old  struggle  of  duty  and  desire,  and,  of 
course,  with  you  and  me  duty  conquers.  But  it 's  only  a  week 
from  next  Monday  when  we  start  under  William's  care  for  the 
Mountains  —  that  will  be  the  Cor  Cordium  of  the  Summer.  Till 
then  we  '11  think  of  one  another,  and  you  will  give  my  Love  to 

S and  the  chickens. 

Ever  affectionately,  P.  B. 

The  summer  brought  another  sorrow,  in  the  death  of  Dean 
Stanley,  which  took  place  July  18.  On  first  hearing  the  sad 
intelligence  he  wrote  to  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks :  — 

July  22,  1881. 

The  suddenness  of  the  Dean's  death  is  most  startling  and  seems 
to  flash  all  that  was  lovable  and  beautiful  about  him  upon  one 
with  a  terrible  sense  of  loss.  We  shall  not  see  another  such  in- 
teresting man  in  our  day,  and  I  have  a  sort  of  feeling  as  if  the 
Abbey  and  the  Deanery  could  not  possibly  be  standing  there  in 
the  old  way  we  used  to  know  them,  now  that  he  is  gone.  Well, 
it  is  a  good  thing  that  he  has  lived  and  a  delightful  recollection  to 
have  known  him. 


^T.  45-46]     DEATH  OF  STANLEY  311 

To  Lady  Frances  Baillie,  a  sister-in-law  of  Dean  Stanley, 
he  wrote :  — 


233  Clarendon  Street,  Jtily  23,  1881. 
My  dear  Lady  Frances,  —  I  hope  that  I  shall  not  seem  to 
you  strangely  intrusive  if  I  try  to  tell  you  something  of  my  deep 
sympathy  with  you  and  of  the  deep  thankfulness  with  which  I 
think  of  our  dear  friend's  beautiful  life.  It  seems  to  me  as  per- 
fect a  picture  of  human  living  as  the  world  has  ever  seen,  —  and 
what  it  suggests  and  promises  for  his  great  future,  for  the  other 
life  (as  we  blindly  call  it)  which  he  has  begun,  is  past  all  expres- 
sion. My  first  thought  is  all  of  him,  of  the.  rich  and  sacred 
delight  which  has  come  to  that  insatiable  appetite  for  truth  and 
that  deep  love  for  God. 

But  when  I  let  myself  think  of  all  his  kindness  to  me,  of  how 
he  has  welcomed  me  with  that  beautiful  welcome  of  his  which  was 
like  no  other  man's,  of  how  England  has  been  bright  and  tempt- 
ing to  me,  most  of  all  because  he  was  there,  the  world  seems 
sadly  altered  now  that  I  shall  never  see  him  again. 

I  remember  so  perfectly  the  first  time  I  saw  him.  Lady 
Augusta  was  with  him  in  the  Library  of  the  dear  old  Deanery, 
and  before  we  had  loosened  hands,  it  was  as  if  she  and  he  had 
given  me  the  right  to  count  them  friends  forever.  That  was  in 
1874,  and  from  that  day  on,  with  all  his  cares  and  interests,  he 
was  so  full  of  thoughtful  kindness,  that  he  did  not  even  let  me 
think  how  little  right  I  had  to  any  word  or  thought  of  his.  But 
I  did  give  him,  and  I  will  give  him  always,  that  love  and  grati- 
tude which  is  all  that  such  as  I  am  can  give  to  such  as  he  is. 

Surely  we  cannot  lose  him.  We  have  not  lost  him.  We  are 
with  him  in  the  love  of  God  in  which  he  rests  at  peace. 

I  wish  that  I  could  tell  you  what  he  was  when  he  was  here  in 
America;  what  friends  he  made,  what  a  memory  of  him  remains, 
and  what  a  multitude  of  hearts  are  mourning  for  him,  as  if  he 
was  their  friend. 

But  more  than  this  is  the  blessed  work  that  he  has  done  for 
Christ  and  for  the  Church.  That  cannot  die.  It  will  be  part  of 
the  great  future  for  which  he  kept  such  an  unfaltering  hope,  and 
which  we  may  believe  he  now  discerns  with  perfect  clearness. 
And  it  is  sweet  for  us  all  because  he  believed  in  it  so. 

Will  you  forgive  me  if  I  ought  not  to  have  written,  for  his 
sake.  I  send  my  kindest  remembrance  to  your  daughter,  and  I 
am,  with  truest  sympathy. 

Sincerely  yours, 

Phillips  Brooks. 


312  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881-82 

Phillips  Brooks  now  for  the  first  time  broke  the  rule  to 
which  he  had  hitherto  invariably  adhered,  and  in  response 
to  a  call  from  the  editor  of  "The  Atlantic  Monthly"  wrote 
his  article  on  "Dean  Stanley."^  For  two  months  he  gave 
himself  up  to  the  task,  collecting  material  enough  in  the  pre- 
paration for  it  to  have  made  a  considerable  volume.  Only 
a  fraction  of  what  he  desired  to  say  could  find  room  within 
the  required  limits.  The  article  glows  with  devotion  to 
Stanley,  to  whom  he  felt  deep  personal  indebtedness.  "The 
life  of  Stanley  when  it  appears,  if  it  is  worthily  written, 
will  be  one  of  the  richest  records  of  the  best  life  of  our  cen- 
tury and  one  of  the  most  attractive  pictures  of  a  human  life 
in  any  time."  He  reviewed  Stanley's  career  so  far  as  it 
was  known  to  the  world.  He  delineates  his  characteristics 
with  loving  appreciation,  for,  as  in  the  case  of  Dr.  Vinton, 
he  is  describing  the  ideals  of  his  own  youth  and  manhood. 
He  speaks  of  Stanley's  love  of  right,  his  desire  to  look  facts 
in  the  face  and  to  know  the  exact  and  certain  truth.  He 
remarks  on  his  method  of  approaching  all  truth  through  his- 
tory; of  his  dislike  and  inability  for  metaphysics  and  for 
abstract  thought.  Stanley  loved  men  for  the  sake  of  man ; 
special  arts  and  occupations  in  which  he  had  no  personal 
interest  were  to  him  full  of  the  great  human  drama,  full  of 
divine  meanings.  The  world  was  full  of  poetry  to  him. 
There  is  need  of  other  methods  for  the  entire  mastery  of 
truth,  but  there  is  great  value  and  beauty  in  the  historic 
method  which  Stanley  followed :  — 

In  the  turmoil  of  a  priori  reasoning,  in  the  hurly-burly  of  men's 
speculations  about  what  ought  to  be,  let  us  welcome  the  enthusi- 
astic student  of  what  is  and  of  what  has  been.  The  gospel  in  the 
ages  must  always  be  part  of  the  same  revelation  with  the  gospel 
in  the  Bible  and  the  gospel  in  the  heart.  We  cannot  afford  to 
lose  the  softening  and  richening  of  opinions  by  the  historic  sense. 
The  ecclesiastical  historian  and  the  systematic  theologian  must  go 
hand  in  hand.  "The  word  of  the  Lord  which  was  given  in  the 
Council  of  Nicaea, "  says  Athanasius,  "abideth  forever,"  but  the 
personal  History  of  the  Council,  which  Dean  Stanley  has  so  won- 

1  Cf.  Essays  and  Addresses,  pp.  340  ff. 


^T.  45-46]     DEATH  OF  STANLEY  313 

derfully  told,  is  part  of  the  word  of  God  which  comes  from  that 
memorable  assemblage  to  all  the  generations. 

Stanley's  last  volume  on  "Christian  Institutions,"  Phillips 
Brooks  especially  admired  for  "its  wonderful  clearness  and 
power,"  and  as  "making  Christian  faith  and  worship  stand 
forth  in  calm  and  majestic  simplicity."  In  an  age  of  perplex- 
ity and  disbelief  Stanley  stood  high  among  the  faithful  souls 
who  refuse  to  despair  of  the  Church  of  Christ.  As  we  read 
his  "Christian  Institutions"  — 

it  is  as  if  we  heard  the  quiet  word  spoken  which  breaks  the  spell 
of  ecclesiasticism,  and  the  imprisoned  truth  or  principle  wakes 
and  stands  upon  its  feet  and  looks  us  in  the  eye.  The  flush  of 
life  comes  back  into  the  hard  face  of  dead  ceremonies,  and  their 
soul  reveals  itself.  Bubbles  of  venerable  superstition  seem  to 
burst  before  our  eyes ;  and  we  feel  sure  anew,  with  fresh  delight 
and  hope,  that  not  fantastical  complexity,  but  the  simplicity  of 
naturalness,  is  the  real  temple  in  which  we  are  to  look  for  truth. 

He  dwelt  upon  the  work  of  Stanley  in  making  the  Bible 
live  to  a  great  multitude  of  readers.  He  had  not  only  in- 
vested it  with  a  fascinating  interest,  but  he  made  it  the  Book 
of  Life.  Thus  his  work  was  constructive.  As  an  American 
Mr.  Brooks  did  not  sympathize  with  the  idea  of  an  estab- 
lished church  ;  but  he  refused  to  believe  that  there  was  any 
low  Erastianism  in  Stanley's  interpretation  of  the  church- 
and-state  theory.  "It  combined  the  view  of  Dr.  Arnold  with 
Maurice's  inspired  and  glorified  doctrine  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  His  volume  of  '  Essays  on  Church  and  State  '  is  a 
book  which  every  religious  student  should  read." 

He  recalled  Stanley's  personal  charm,  the  charm  also 
of  his  preaching,  —  a  point  on  which  he  could  speak  with 
authority :  — 

Apart  from  the  beautiful  simplicity  of  his  style  and  the  rich- 
ness of  illustrative  allusion,  the  charm  of  his  sermons  was  very 
apt  to  lie  in  a  certain  way  which  he  had  of  treating  the  events  of 
the  day  as  parts  of  the  history  of  the  world,  and  making  his 
hearers  feel  that  they  and  what  they  were  doing  belonged  as  truly 
to  the  history  of  their  race,  and  shared  as  truly  in  the  care  and 
government  of  God,  as  David  and  his  wars,  or  Socrates  and  his 


314  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881-82 

teachings.  As  his  lectures  made  all  times  live  with  the  familiar- 
ity of  our  own  day,  so  his  sermons  made  our  own  day,  with  its 
petty  interests,  grow  sacred  and  inspired  by  its  identification  with 
the  great  principles  of  all  the  ages. 

Of  Dean  Stanley's  visit  to  America,  and  his  first  sermon 
in  the  New  World,  at  Trinity  Church,  he  says :  — 

He  had  been  but  a  few  days  in  America.  It  was  the  first 
time  that  he  had  looked  an  American  congregation  in  the  face. 
The  church  was  crowded  with  men  and  women,  of  whom  he  only 
knew  that  to  him  they  represented  the  New  World.  He  was  for 
the  moment  the  representative  of  English  Christianity.  And  as 
he  spoke  the  solemn  words,  it  was  not  a  clergyman  dismissing  a 
congregation:  it  was  the  Old  World  blessing  the  New;  it  was 
England  blessing  America. 

The  article  brought  to  Mr.  Brooks  gratifying  letters  from 
relatives  and  friends  of  Stanley.  Dean  Plumptre  writes: 
"  It  is,  I  think,  the  truest  and  fullest  presentation  of  his  char- 
acter that  has  yet  appeared."  Lady  Frances  Baillie  thanks 
him  for  giving  "such  a  living  picture  to  the  people  of  your 
country  and  to  us  all.  .  .  .  How  she  would  have  thanked 
you!" 

After  Stanley's  death,  the  English  friendships  grew  dearer 
and  more  intimate,  —  with  Lady  Frances  Baillie,  Sir  George 
Grove,  who  had  accompanied  Stanley  to  this  country,  and 
with  Archdeacon  Farrar,  through  whom  he  kept  his  connec- 
tion with  the  sacred  Abbey  unbroken,  always  preaching  within 
its  precincts  at  St.  Margaret's  whenever  he  visited  Eng- 
land. Another  friendship  in  England  was  formed  at  this 
time  with  Dr.  Thorold,  Lord  Bishop  of  Kochester,  after- 
ward translated  to  the  See  of  Winchester.  On  failing  to  find 
Mr.  Brooks  at  home  when  he  called  upon  him  in  this  country, 
Bishop  Thorold  had  written :  — 

You  are  so  well  known  to  me  by  your  sermons  and  have  so 
blessed  me  by  them,  I  wanted  to  thank  you  face  to  face.  They 
are  my  constant  companions.  Some  of  them,  —  the  "Consola- 
tions of  God"  and  the  "Soul's  Refuge  in  God,"  I  almost  know 
by  heart.     This  morning  I  read  the  one  on  "Humility."     As  life 


^T.  45-46]     CHURCH   CONGRESS  315 

goes  on  I  am  always  trying  to  grow  new  blood  in  the  shape  of 
new  friends,  and  I  had  dreamed  such  a  dream  of  a  cup  of  tea  with 
you  to-night,  to  which  I  had  meant  to  invite  myself;  and  we 
should  have  soon  found  out  that  we  had  much  in  common.  .  .  . 
But  I  write  chiefly  to  say,  when  you  next  come  to  England  you 
must  be  my  guest.  I  am  very  near  London,  Selsdon  Park,  Croy- 
don; and  I  shall  rely  on  your  proposing  yourself. 

Part  of  the  summer  was  spent  In  New  Hampshire,  where 
he  recalled  old  associations  connected  with  the  familiar  tour 
of  the  White  Mountains.  He  speaks  of  the  visit  as  "plea- 
sant and  pathetic.  We  have  been  watching  the  telegraph 
just  as  we  used  to  do  in  the  old  war  times,  and  the  last  thing 
we  do  before  going  to  bed  is  to  go  down  to  the  village  and 
see  what  the  President's  pulse  and  temperature  are.  After 
a  short  stay  at  Mount  Desert  he  returned  to  Boston. 

The  effect  of  the  call  to  Harvard  was  to  bring  Mr.  Brooks 
into  closer  relationship  with  the  University.  A  temporary 
arrangement  had  been  made  by  which  he  was  appointed  one 
of  several  chaplains,  who  were  to  take  their  turn  in  preach- 
ing at  Appleton  Chapel  and  in  conducting  morning  prayers. 
Had  he  accepted  the  call  to  be  the  sole  chaplain,  he  could  not 
have  felt  more  keenly  the  responsibility  for  the  spiritual  wel- 
fare of  the  students.  In  his  devotion  to  the  students  he  did 
not  begrudge  the  claims  upon  his  time.  But  the  tax  was 
none  the  less  severe.  "I  am  chaplain  this  week  at  Cam- 
bridge," he  writes  to  Eev.  Arthur  Brooks  (November  6, 
1881),  "and  go  there  every  morning  for  prayers.  It  is  very 
pleasant,  but  it  takes  lots  of  time.  I  have  to  leave  here  at 
eight  o'clock  and  do  not  get  back  till  ten." 

At  the  seventh  Church  Congress,  which  was  held  at  Provi- 
dence, in  October,  Mr.  Brooks  was  one  of  the  appointed 
speakers  on  the  subject  of  "Liturgical  Growth."  It  was  a 
subject  full  of  interest  at  the  time,  for  it  had  been  brought 
before  the  General  Convention  in  1880  by  Dr.  William  R. 
Huntington,  then  rector  of  All  Saints'  Church  in  Worcester, 
and  a  committee  had  been  appointed  to  consider  the  question 
of  the  enrichment  of  the  Prayer  Book.     For  long  and  weary 


3i6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881-82 

years  the  leaders  of  the  Evangelical  school  had  been  asking 
for  changes  in  the  way  of  omissions,  and  also  for  greater  flexi- 
bility in  the  use  of  the  various  services.  These  demands  had 
been  refused.  There  had  grown  up  in  the  minds  of  many 
the  feeling  that  the  Prayer  Book  was  too  sacred  to  admit  of 
alteration  or  change.  Dr.  Huntington's  motion,  however, 
had  passed  the  convention  and  the  subject  was  before  the 
Church.  It  was  distinctly  understood  that  the  purpose  in 
view  was  not  to  alter  the  Prayer  Book  in  the  interest  of 
any  school  of  opinion,  nor  to  make  changes  for  the  sake  of 
change,  or  in  order  to  adapt  the  Church  to  any  changed  con- 
dition of  the  time;  but  to  enrich  the  worship  by  additions 
from  the  great  treasury  of  devotions.  There  were  some 
things  which  all  alike  would  have  been  glad  to  see  incorpo- 
rated in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  Whether  this  could 
be  done  without  also  making  doctrinal  changes,  or  without 
invading  the  Communion  Office,  was  the  question  which  agi- 
tated many. 

To  the  Church  Congress  at  Providence  Mr.  Brooks  went 
with  a  determination  to  speak  his  mind  on  the  subject  of  chan- 
ging the  Prayer  Book.  Others  were  suggesting  what  changes 
were  desirable,  and  he,  too,  had  changes  to  recommend.  What 
he  chiefly  wanted  was  the  formal  recognition  in  the  Prayer 
Book  of  the  liberty  of  extemporaneous  prayer.  In  his  paper 
on  "Liturgical  Growth"^  he  pleaded  for  this  permission  on 
the  ground  that  in  a  comprehensive  church  such  as  the  Epis- 
copal Church  claimed  to  be,  this  element  of  power  and  flexi- 
bility should  be  included.  It  was  not  enough  that  a  clergy- 
man was  already  at  liberty  to  make  the  extemporaneous 
prayer  at  the  close  of  his  sermon,  —  a  liberty  of  which  he 
freely  availed  himself.  So  long  as  the  rubrics  did  not  author- 
ize it,  he  felt  bound  to  refrain  from  indulging  his  prefer- 
ence, for  he  was  scrupulous  in  adherence  to  the  prescribed 
form  and  order.  Yet  it  may  be  told  here  —  for  there  are 
many  who  will  remember  it  —  how  in  saying  the  beauti- 
ful prayer  which  was  a  great  favorite  with  him,  —  "O  God, 
Holy  Ghost,  Sanctifier  of  the  Faithful,"  he  always  included 
^  Cf.  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  96. 


^T.  45-46]     LITURGICAL  GROWTH  317 

himself  with  the  congregation,  and  changed  "them  "  to  "us: " 
"Visit  us,  we  pray  Thee,  with  Thy  love  and  favor."  He 
also  changed  the  abstract  expression  "the  truth"  to  "Thy 
truth:  "  "Graft  in  our  hearts  the  love  of  Thy  truth."  Slight 
changes,  but  bearing  witness  to  his  passion  for  the  personal 
relation  of  truth  and  his  avoidance  of  the  abstraction. 
Whether  he  were  conscious  of  these  innovations  may  be 
doubted.  In  some  nervous  impressible  moment,  on  infor- 
mal occasions,  when  he  was  quite  at  liberty  to  make  such 
changes,  they  may  have  been  stamped  upon  his  memory,  and 
grown  unconsciously  into  a  habit. 

The  paper  on  "Liturgical  Growth"  shows  that  he  keenly 
felt  the  restriction  which  made  it  impossible  to  pray  with 
an  open  heart  at  critical  moments,  when  the  freedom  of  the 
soul  should  be  granted.  Thus  he  was  indignant,  and  also 
amused,  that  when  the  city  of  Chicago  was  in  flames  the 
General  Convention,  then  in  session,  showed  its  sympathy 
and  asked  for  the  Divine  aid  by  reciting  the  Litany,  while 
the  name  of  the  city  and  the  awful  occasion  were  passed 
over  in  silence.  Even  the  Roman  Church  possessed  flexi- 
bility in  striking  contrast  with  this  hard  conservatism  and 
immobility.  To  this  defect  in  the  Church  he  called  atten- 
tion in  vigorous  speech,  denouncing  the  conservative  habit  as 
showing  lack  of  faith  in  the  principles  of  liturgical  worship. 

Upon  one  other  topic  he  volunteered  to  speak  at  this  same 
Church  Congress,  —  a  thing  unusual  with  him,  for  when  peo- 
ple were  met  to  talk  it  was  his  custom  to  be  silent.  The  Re- 
vised Version  of  the  New  Testament  was  one  of  the  subjects 
for  discussion.  He  listened  to  the  objections  to  it  by  the 
various  speakers,  —  its  sacrifice  of  rhythm  in  style  and  of 
familiar  expressions  which  had  become  dear.  He  listened 
tiU  he  could  bear  it  no  longer,  and  rose  in  his  majestic  pre- 
sence to  make  his  way  to  the  platform. 

The  thing  that  is  really  upon  trial,  he  said,  is  not  the  Revised 
Version  but  the  Church.  If  a  man  is  going  to  translate  a  book 
for  me,  the  one  thing  I  demand  is  scrupulousness,  —  the  most 
absolute  fidelity  to  details,  the  absolute  binding  of  themselves  to 
the  simple  question  how  they  could  most  completely  represent  the 


3i8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881-82 

Greek  in  English,  letting  the  question  of  literary  merit  take  care 
of  itself.  That  is  the  one  great  evidence  of  faithfulness  to  their 
charge  which  we  had  a  right  to  ask  of  those  men  who  undertook 
this  responsible  work,  which  work  so  far  Christendom  has  stamped 
with  its  approval  as  to  its  accuracy.  If  a  man  came  to  me  to- 
morrow, and  wanted  to  know  what  Christianity  was,  to  understand 
the  words  of  Christ,  I  should  be  absolutely  bound  to  give  him  the 
New  Version  and  not  the  old  one. 

The  great  body  of  new  Christians  are  reading  the  new  book. 
God  grant  that  our  Church  may  not  condemn  us  to  read  the  old 
and  faulty  book  in  our  churches,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  new  and 
corrected  one,  and  so  lag  behind,  as  we  have  done  again  and 
again,  and  only  with  a  tardy  run  by  and  by  come  up  abreast  of 
the  great  dominant  sentiment  and  the  prevailing  convictions  of 
our  fellow  Christians. 

This  instance  of  Lis  volunteering  to  speak  without  special 
preparation  is  not  a  characteristic  one.  Mr.  Brooks  was 
a  man  that  usually  weighed  his  thoughts  and  his  words  in 
long  meditation  beforehand.  He  was  accustomed  to  qualify 
his  utterance  by  considering  the  other  side.  He  was  quite 
alive  to  the  truth  which  the  late  Master  of  Balliol  had  ex- 
pressed in  such  perfect  form,  —  that  there  might  be  more 
inspiration  in  the  received  version  than  in  the  original 
Greek.  Nor  was  Mr.  Brooks  aware  of  the  importance  which 
others  attached  to  his  words,  how  he  spoke  now  to  the  coun- 
try at  large,  and  not  merely  to  his  own  religious  fold.  The 
consequence  of  these  speeches  at  the  Church  Congress,  espe- 
cially of  his  remarks  on  the  subject  of  Liturgical  Growth, 
was  an  editorial  criticism  in  "The  Churchman  "  which  sharply 
resented  his  strictures  upon  the  ecclesiastical  conservatism, 
not  mentioning  him  by  name,  but  referring  to  him  as  "  a  bril- 
liant and  popular  preacher  "  who  had  recently  been  making 
some  rash  remarks.  The  use  of  the  Litany,  when  Chicago 
was  burning,  was  defended  as  the  most  appropriate  thing  to 
have  done.  How  Mr.  Brooks  regarded  the  criticism  is  shown 
in  a  letter  to  his  brother :  — 

233  Clabendon  Street,  Boston,  December  6, 1881. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  I  thank  you  very  much  indeed  for  your  kind 
sympathy.     The  brutal  attacks  of   "  The  Churchman  "  have  kept 


^T.  45-46]  SERMONS  319 

me  awake  o'  nights  and  I  have  thought  several  times  of  either 
writing  a  reply  or  else  committing  suicide  —  hut  I  haven't  yet 
done  either.  The  only  consolation  I  have  is  that  "  The  Church- 
man "  seems  to  enjoy  it,  and  that  I  have  no  doubt congrat- 
ulates himself  that  the  Church  is  still  sound.  One  serious  injury 
that  the  articles  do  me  is  that  I  don't  feel  quite  as  much  at  lib- 
erty to  abuse  "  The  Churchman, "  which  has  been  one  of  my  chief 
amusements.  I  am  afraid  now  that  people  will  think  I  am  spite- 
ful. 

In  the  fall  of  1881  Dr.  Brooks  published  his  second 
volume  of  sermons,  under  the  title  "  The  Candle  of  the  Lord, 
and  other  Sermons."  It  met  with  the  same  reception  accorded 
to  the  first  volume,  reaching  a  sale  of  over  twenty-one  thou- 
sand. The  titles  of  the  sermons  are  felicitously  chosen, 
and  linger  in  the  memory.  Most  of  them  had  been  written 
in  the  seventies  in  the  ordinary  course  of  his  preaching  at 
Trinity  Church.  Out  of  the  twenty-one  sermons  which  the 
volume  contains,  the  texts  of  nine  are  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, which  is  a  large  proportion.  If  this  circumstance  has 
any  significance,  it  lies  in  showing  his  gift  of  the  poetic 
imagination  applied  to  the  interpretation  of  life,  the  con- 
tinuation of  the  spirit  of  his  Philadelphia  preaching.  Phil- 
lips Brooks  indignantly  repelled  the  insinuation,  that  the 
Christian  pulpit  lingers  too  long  among  Jewish  antiquities. 
He  found  in  the  Old  Testament  perpetual  inspiration,  the 
disclosure  of  the  process  by  which  God  reveals  his  life  to  the 
world.  These  texts  of  sermons  in  his  second  volume  recalls 
some  of  the  most  abiding  impressions  of  his  preaching: 
"The  spirit  of  man  is  the  candle  of  the  Lord;"  "The 
good  will  of  him  that  dwelt  in  the  bush;"  "And  he  said, 
Son  of  man,  stand  upon  thy  feet,  and  I  will  speak  to  thee; " 
"I  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  unto  the  hills  from  whence  cometh 
my  help;"  "Curse  ye  Meroz,  saith  the  Lord;  curse  ye  bit- 
terly the  inhabitants  thereof;  because  they  came  not  to  the 
help  of  the  Lord,  to  the  help  of  the  Lord  against  the 
mighty;"  "Who  coverest  thyself  with  light  as  with  a  gar- 
ment; "  "Behold  he  smote  the  rock  that  the  water  gushed  out 
and  the  streams  overflowed.  But  can  he  give  bread  also? 
Can  he  provide  flesh  for  his  people?  " 


320  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881-82 

As  we  read  these  words  of  Scripture  the  preacher  stands 
forth  again  in  his  strength  with  his  insight  into  the  deeper 
meanings  of  life.  The  bush  which  burned  and  was  not  con- 
sumed stands  for  the  continuity  of  one's  years;  the  joy  of 
self-sacrifice  is  typified  in  ancient  ritual,  as  when  the  "song 
of  the  Lord  began  with  trumpets "  at  the  moment  of  the 
burnt  offering;  to  lift  up  one's  eyes  to  the  hills  is  to  see 
all  lower  sources  of  comfort  and  consolation  as  having  their 
origin  in  the  highest,  which  is  God ;  the  curse  which  was 
upon  Meroz  is  the  curse  upon  human  inactivity  in  any  age 
whenever  the  crises  of  life  are  upon  men ;  the  accumulation 
of  faith  makes  it  possible  to  believe  that  God  is  as  powerful 
in  the  present  as  in  the  past,  —  "He  could  overcome  the  world- 
liness  of  the  eighteenth  century,  He  can  overcome  the  mate- 
rialism and  fatalism  of  the  nineteenth  century;  as  in  ancient 
times  He  not  only  smote  the  rock  that  the  waters  gushed  out, 
but  He  also  provided  bread  for  his  people." 

It  is  hard  to  speak  of  some  of  these  sermons  without 
speaking  of  all.  But  a  few  must  be  specially  mentioned. 
There  is  the  sermon  on  the  "Manliness  of  Christ,"  which 
strangely  touched  the  conscience  of  every  one  who  heard  it. 
The  keenness  of  psychological  analysis  is  here,  going  beneath 
the  surface  to  the  depth  of  the  consciousness,  as  he  probes  it 
for  the  reason  why  men  have  failed  to  see  the  strength  of 
Christ,  who  in  his  human  personality  was  the  manliest  and 
the  mightiest  of  men.  The  defect,  and  the  cause  of  the  de- 
fect, felt  in  the  traditional  portraits  of  Christ,  is  here  made 
apparent. 

The  sermon  on  the  "Law  of  Liberty,"  delivered  many 
times,  has  in  it  a  reminder  of  Chalmers  and  Bushnell,  but 
does  not  suffer  by  comparison.  No  one  who  heard  it  can 
forget  the  closing  passage,  where  he  describes  the  judgment 
day  as  simply  taking  off  the  restraints  of  education  and  of 
social  order,  at  last  leaving  each  man  free  to  seek  his  own 
place. 

The  sermon  on  the  "Mystery  of  Light"  gives  a  contrast 
between  the  two  kinds  of  mystery,  that  of  light  and  that  of 
darkness.     It  is  no  more  possible  to  measure  the  depths  of 


^T.  45-46]  SERMONS  321 

one  than  of  the  other.  The  object  is  to  show  that  current 
popular  objections  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Trinity  are  mis- 
taken in  considering  it  as  a  mystery  of  darkness,  when  in 
reality  it  is  the  dazzling,  bewildering  mystery  of  light. 

This  second  volume  of  sermons,  like  the  first,  bears  witness 
to  that  moment  in  the  history  of  religious  experience  when, 
according  to  the  familiar  comparison,  trite  indeed  but  always 
most  expressive,  there  was  a  storm  on  the  ocean  of  life  and 
much  wreckage  of  faith.  Then  Phillips  Brooks  had  stood 
forth  as  a  commander  to  the  people,  pointing  to  the  haven 
and  the  way  by  which  it  was  to  be  gained.  Thus  on  Thanks- 
giving Day,  when  his  church  overflowed  with  hearers  who 
anticipated  the  value  of  the  message  to  be  delivered,  he  took 
for  his  text  the  words  of  the  prophet  Ezekiel :  "  Son  of  man, 
stand  upon  thy  feet,  and  I  will  speak  to  thee."  His  subject 
was  the  need  of  self-respect  as  a  condition  for  hearing  the 
voice  of  God  in  revelation. 

There  are  many  passages  in  the  Bible  which  describe  the  ser- 
vants of  God  as  their  Lord's  messages  came  to  them,  falling  upon 
their  faces  to  the  earth,  and  in  that  attitude  listening  to  what 
God  had. to  say.  .  .  .  There  is  a  great  truth  set  forth  in  all 
these  pictures.  It  is  that  only  to  human  humility  can  God  speak 
intelligently.  .  .  .  But  in  the  passage  which  I  have  taken  for 
my  text  this  morning,  there  is  another  picture  with  another  truth. 
"Son  of  man,  stand  upon  thy  feet,  and  I  will  speak  to  thee."  Not 
on  his  face  but  on  his  feet ;  not  in  the  attitude  of  humiliation  but 
in  the  attitude  of  self-respect;  not  stripped  of  all  strength,  and 
lying  like  a  dead  man  waiting  for  life  to  be  given  to  him,  but 
strong  in  the  intelligent  consciousness  of  privilege  and  standing 
alive,  ready  to  cooperate  with  the  living  God  who  spoke  to  him ; 
so  the  man  is  now  to  receive  the  word  of  God.  .  .  .  The  best 
understanding  of  God  could  come  to  man  only  when  man  was  up- 
right and  self- reverent  in  his  privilege  as  the  child  of  God. 

If  this  be  a  truth,  is  it  not  a  great  truth  and  one  that  needs 
continually  to  be  preached?  The  other  truth  is  often  urged  upon 
us  that  if  we  do  not  listen  humbly  we  shall  listen  in  vain.  But 
this  truth  is  not  so  often  preached,  nor,  I  think,  so  generally  felt, 
—  unless  you  honor  your  life,  you  cannot  get  God's  best  and  full- 
est wisdom ;  unless  you  stand  upon  your  feet,  you  will  not  hear 
God  speak  to  you. 


322  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881-82 

With  this  introduction  the  preacher  turned  to  pessimism, 
whose  prophets  were  vehemently  declaring  that  "human  life 
is  a  woe  and  a  curse,  that  the  will  to  live  is  the  fiend  which 
persecutes  humanity."  Because  unphilosophical  men,  who 
have  no  theory  of  life,  are  practically  accepting  this  teaching, 
he  proposes  to  show  what  the  "will  to  live  "  must  mean. 

I  am  sure  you  know  whereof  I  speak.  In  large  circles  of  life, 
and  they  are  just  those  circles  in  which  a  great  many  of  us  live, 
there  is  an  habitual  disparagement  of  human  life,  its  joys  and  its 
prospects.  Man  is  on  his  face.  It  seems  to  me  that  he  must  hear 
God's  voice  calling  him  to  another  attitude,  or  he  is  hopeless. 
"Son  of  man,  stand  upon  thy  feet,  and  I  will  speak  to  thee." 

The  year  1881  as  it  came  to  a  close  brought  the  usual 
commemoration  days  with  their  inevitable  reflections.  The 
friends  of  Mr.  Brooks  continued  to  insist  that  his  birthday 
should  be  observed,  though  in  the  swift  passage  of  time  the 
years  were  coming  which  made  it  no  more  a  pleasure.  He 
was  confused  a  little  with  the  transition  of  life.  A  birthday 
should  be  a  day  of  rejoicing.  But  as  he  entered  the  forties 
he  began  to  sigh  for  the  youth  that  was  passing,  and  to 
realize  that  something  had  been  lost.  He  was  now  forty -five. 
When  he  was  reminded  of  the  increasing  wealth  that  came 
with  maturity,  the  larger  vision,  the  mature  ripeness  of  the 
powers,  he  declared  there  was  in  them  no  compensation  for 
that  which  was  gone.  There  was  a  conflict  going  on  in  his 
soul  as  he  measured  the  significance  of  the  changes  in  the  life 
of  man,  and  out  of  this  conflict  were  to  be  born  some  of  the 
most  valuable  truths  which  it  was  given  him  to  reveal  to  the 
world.  Let  the  reader  turn  to  his  sermon  on  the  "Manli- 
ness of  Christ"  and  he  will  find  him  brooding  upon  this 
issue :  — 

It  would  seem,  then,  as  if  this  truth  were  very  general,  that  in 
every  development  there  is  a  sense  of  loss  as  well  as  a  sense  of 
gain.  The  flower  opening  into  its  full  luxuriance  has  no  longer 
the  folded  beauty  of  the  bud.  The  summer  with  its  splendor  has 
lost  the  fascinating  mystery  of  the  springtime.  The  family  of 
grown-up  men  remembers  almost  with  regret  the  crude  dreams 
which  filled  the  old  house  with  romance  when  the  men  were  boys. 


iET.  45-46]  SERMONS  2^3 

The  reasonable  faith  to  which  the  thinker  has  attained  cannot 
forget  the  glow  of  vague  emotion  with  which  faith  began.  .  .  . 
Who  is  not  aware  of  that  strange  sense  of  loss  which  haunts  the 
ripening  man  ?  With  all  that  he  has  come  to,  there  is  something 
that  he  has  left  behind.  In  some  moods  the  loss  seems  to  out- 
weigh the  gain.  He  knows  it  is  not  really  so,  but  yet  the  mis- 
giving that  freshness  has  been  sacrificed  to  maturity,  intenseness 
to  completeness,  enthusiasm  to  wisdom,  makes  the  pathos  of  the 
life  of  every  sensitive  and  growing  man.^ 

This  is  but  one  of  the  passages  scattered  through  his  ser- 
mons where  Phillips  Brooks  is  telling  the  congregation  be- 
fore him  what  he  would  not  speak  of  in  the  intimate  inter- 
course of  friendship.  It  was  when  these  moods  were  on  him 
that  he  took  them  to  the  pulpit,  as  to  some  Horeb  or  mount 
of  vision,  to  test  them  there.  What  he  could  not  tell  to  his 
people  out  of  his  own  experience  which  would  prove  a  source  of 
strength  and  elevation  and  joyous  triumph  could  not  be  true. 
Let  the  reader  then  turn  to  his  sermon  on  the  "Symmetry  of 
Life,"  preached  on  Advent  Sunday,  where  he  gives  the  cor- 
rective of  all  depressing  moods.  His  text  was  from  the  Book 
of  Revelation,  in  whose  mystic  imagery  his  soul  delighted, 
"The  length  and  the  breadth  and  the  height  of  it  are  equal." 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  Christmas  Eve,  1881. 

Dear  Johnny,  —  How  many  Christmas  Eves  we  have  spent 
together!  Do  you  remember  how  we  used  to  go  up  to  St.  Mark's 
and  then  come  back  and  wander  through  the  toy  shops  and  look 
up  children's  presents,  and  then  how  you  would  go  home  and  find 
father  nailing  up  Christmas  wreaths  ?  Well,  that  's  all  over,  and 
here  I  am  all  alone  with  the  Christmas  festival  safely  over  and 
the  Christmas  sermon  done,  and  cheering  myself  up  by  looking  at 
the  mighty  pretty  little  vase  you  have  sent  me,  and  by  thinking 
how  very  kind  you  were  to  send  it.  I  do  thank  you,  and  I  do 
think  it  just  as  pretty  as  possible.  It  came  quite  safe  and  has 
taken  its  place  among  my  treasures,  and  every  club  the  fellows 
will  see  that  the  study  looks  a  great  deal  brighter  than  it  used  to 
look,  and  will  wonder  what  it  was  that  did  it.  I  do  indeed 
thank  you  for  all  your  kind  thoughts  of  me. 

Give  H my  very  best  love,  and  for  you,  dear  Johnny,  you 

know  how  truly  I  am  your  affectionate  old  brother, 

Phillips. 

1  Cf .  Sermons,  vol.  ii.  pp.  258,  259. 


324  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881-82 

Watch  Night  had  been  kept  as  usual  at  Trinity  Church, 
and  on  returning  to  his  house  in  the  first  hour  of  the  New 
Year  he  found  a  gift  awaiting  him  from  the  members  of  the 
Clericus  Club,  —  a  bronze  statue  of  John  Baptist  in  the  atti- 
tude of  preaching.  In  this  letter  he  describes  one  of  the 
familiar  meetings  of  the  Club  and  speaks  of  the  gift  he  had 
received :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  January  5,  1882. 

Dear  Johnny, —  A  Happy  New  Year  to  you  and  Hatty  and 
Josephine  and  the  Baby !  I  have  been  meaning  to  write  you  a 
beautiful  letter,  but  somehow  the  sermons  have  got  all  my  time 
and  all  my  lovely  thoughts.  What  a  lot  of  them  (the  sermons) 
there  have  been !  Thank  you  for  sending  me  your  Advent  sermon, 
which  I  enjoyed  exceedingly.  It  was  a  delightful  sermon,  and  I 
envy  the  people  who  hear  such  sermons  always.  Pray  send  me 
everything  of  yours  that  goes  into  the  papers.  The  Club  went  o£E 
first-rate.  There  were  sixteen  men  here  and  Bradley's  paper  was 
capital.  Parks  and  Percy  got  a  foul  of  one  another  in  the  dis- 
cussion. Willie  Newton  turned  up  when  we  were  halfway 
through.  Charles  Richards  stayed  here  all  night,  and  altogether 
we  had  a  first-rate  time,  barring  your  absence  which  was  very 
bad.  Did  you  know  that  the  Club  made  me  a  splendid  New 
Year's  present  of  a  bronze  John  the  Baptist,  who  stands  upon  my 
centre  table  now  ?  It  came  in  just  after  the  watch  meeting  on 
Saturday  night.  We  have  called  Kidner  to  succeed  Killikelly  and 
he  has  accepted.  Jim  was  up  yesterday  and  Parks  is  going  to 
preach  in  Appleton  Chapel  next  Sunday  morning.  You  will  come 
down  and  spend  a  night  or  two  soon,  won't  you?  But  send  me 
word  beforehand  or  I  'm  awfully  likely  to  be  away. 

Good-by,  Johnny. 

Affectionately,  P. 

In  this  month  of  January  Mr.  Brooks  undertook  with 
enthusiasm  the  task  of  soliciting  subscriptions  for  a  memorial 
of  Dean  Stanley  to  be  placed  in  the  Chapter  House  of  West- 
minster Abbey.  The  subject  had  been  first  suggested  at  a 
meeting  held  in  the  Chapter  House  on  December  13,  1881, 
to  commemorate  Stanley's  birthday.  At  that  meeting  the 
American  minister,  Mr.  James  Eussell  Lowell,  had  been  pre- 
sent, making  one  of  those  felicitous  speeches  which  pleased 
the  hearts  of  Englishmen.     It  had  then  been  suggested  that 


^T.  45-46]     STANLEY   MEMORIAL  325 

the  opportunity  be  given  to  friends  of  Stanley  in  America 
to  contribute  to  the  memorial  already  determined  upon  in 
England,  —  the  completion  of  the  Chapter  House,  —  by 
supplying  one  of  the  great  windows,  for  which  Stanley  had 
already  furnished  the  designs.  With  reference  to  this  point 
Dr.  Bradley,  the  successor  of  Stanley,  wrote  early  in  January 
to  Mr.  Brooks  and  a  few  others,  asking  that  the  amount 
required,  XIOOO,  should  not  come  from  three  or  four  rich 
persons,  but  from  a  large  number.  So  quickly  did  the  re- 
sponse come  in  to  Mr.  Brooks's  appeal  that  by  the  month  of 
March  some  three  hundred  persons  from  all  parts  of  the 
coimtry  had  sent  in  subscriptions  whose  total  amount  exceeded 
what  was  called  for  by  several  hundred  dollars.  Li  a  letter 
to  Dean  Bradley,  in  which  was  enclosed  a  bill  of  exchange  for 
£1064:  9s.  lOd.,  Mr.  Brooks  requested  in  the  name  of  those 
subscribers  whom  he  had  been  able  to  consult,  that  the  sur- 
plus, if  there  were  any,  should  be  given  to  the  Westminster 
Hospital  and  Training  School  in  which  the  Dean  and  Lady 
Augusta  were  so  deeply  interested.  To  Lady  Frances  Baillie 
he  wrote :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  15,  1882. 

Dear  Lady  Frances,  — I  want  you  to  see  one  of  the  small 
tokens  of  the  way  in  which  our  dear  friend  was  honored  in  Amer- 
ica. So  I  send  you  the  list  of  names  of  the  people  who,  without 
urgency,  have  contributed  most  gladly  and  often  most  eagerly  to 
the  window  in  the  Chapter  House.  It  has  been  most  delightful 
to  see  the  feeling  with  which  people  have  sent  their  small  or  large 
sums.  The  subscriptions  have  ranged  from  one  dollar  to  one  hun- 
dred, many  of  the  givers  not  being  able  to  afford  more  than  the 
single  dollar. 

You  will  know  many  of  the  names:  Mr.  Winthrop  and  Mr. 
Adams  among  our  oldest  public  men;  Longfellow,  Holmes,  and 
Whittier  among  the  poets;  Parkman  and  Bancroft  among  the 
historians ;  Emerson,  the  philosopher,  who  was  most  glad  to  make 
his  contribution;  the  Bishops  of  Massachusetts,  New  York, 
Michigan,  Rhode  Island,  Connecticut,  and  Nebraska;  clergymen 
of  all  sorts,  Episcopalians,  Unitarians,  Baptists,  Congregational- 
ists ;  men  of  business,  college  students,  and  professors,  and  then  a 
great  many  who  have  simply  read  the  Dean's  books  and  have  per- 
sonal gratitude  for  him.     You  will  no  doubt  recognize  more  than 


326  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881-82 

one  who  have  enjoyed  the  delightful  hospitality  of  the  Deanery, 
which  nobody  ever  forgets. 

I  hope  that  you  are  well,  and  I  know  that  the  months  must 
bring  you  more  and  more  of  peace  and  thankfulness.  I  wish  that 
I  could  hope  to  meet  you  this  summer,  but,  though  I  probably 
shall  go  abroad,  I  do  not  think  that  I  shall  be  in  England. 

Will  you  remember  me  most  kindly  to  your  children  and  to  my 
kind  friends  at  Megginch  Castle,  and  believe  me,  dear  Lady  Fran- 
ces, 

Always  sincerely  yours, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

On  January  13  Dr.  John  S.  Stone  died  at  the  age  of 
eighty-six,  almost  the  last  of  the  great  leaders  of  the  Evan- 
gelical school.  To  his  death  Phillips  Brooks  refers  in  the 
following  letter :  — 

233  CilAbbndon  Street,  Boston,  January  28, 1882. 

Dear  Cooper,  —  You  know,  I  suppose,  that  dear  Dr.  Stone 
has  gone.  Last  Friday  afternoon  he  took  his  dinner  as  usual  and 
very  shortly  after  had  a  stroke  of  paralysis  from  which  he  almost 
immediately  became  unconscious.  He  lingered  through  the  night, 
and  the  next  forenoon  at  about  eleven  o'clock  without  any  return 
of  consciousness  he  passed  away.  He  has  been  pretty  feeble  lately 
but  very  bright  and  happy.  I  saw  him  about  two  weeks  ago,  and 
he  was  lying  on  the  sofa  in  his  study,  as  cheery  and  full  of  fun 
as  ever.  He  spent  his  days  there,  without  pain,  till  the  stroke 
came,  and  I  believe  he  died  in  the  study  where  you  and  I  saw  him 
a  couple  of  years  ago. 

It  was  a  beautiful  old  age  and  death.  On  Monday  the  funeral 
service  was  held  in  the  Chapel  and  his  body  was  taken  to  Green- 
wood. 

What  good  old  days  those  were  which  it  brings  back,  when  he 
used  to  come  down  to  Race  Street  and  when  he  used  to  come  and 
sit  in  the  chancel  of  Holy  Trinity.      Well !      Well ! 

He  was  very  fond  of  you  and  always  talked  of  you  when  I  saw 
him.     I  wonder  what  he  will  be  like  when  we  see  him  again. 

Ash  Wednesday  fell  on  the  22d  of  February.  It  had  been 
the  custom  of  Mr.  Brooks  in  the  earlier  years  of  his  min- 
istry to  confine  the  Lent  services  to  Wednesday  and  Friday 
of  each  week.  That  was  then  the  prevailing  usage.  But  a 
change  had  taken  place;  there  was   multiplication  of   ser- 


^T.  45-46]     LEAVE  OF  ABSENCE  327 

vices  till  they  were  held  every  day  of  the  week,  and  in  Pas- 
sion week  each  day  was  observed  by  two  and  even  three  ser- 
vices. Mr.  Brooks  accommodated  himself  to  the  change,  but 
with  some  misgivings.  He  humorously  remarks  in  a  letter 
that  he  is  wearing  out  the  bricks  between  his  residence  and 
"the  meeting-house."  He  writes  to  Mr.  Cooper  accepting 
an  invitation  to  preach  at  the  consecration  of  the  Church  of 
the  Holy  Apostles  in  Philadelphia,  and  expressing  his  doubts 
about  Lent :  — 

233  Clabendon  Stbeet,  Boston,  March  2,  1882. 
Dear  Cooper,  — Of  course  I  '11  preach  at  the  Holy  Apostles 
on  the  evening  of  the  Second  Sunday  after  Easter.  That 's  half 
the  fun  of  coming  to  Philadelphia.  I  am  depending  immensely  on 
my  visit.  When  the  services  get  a  little  thicker  than  usual  I  say 
to  myself,  in  six  weeks  I  shall  be  in  Cooper's  study.  .  .  .  That 
cheers  me  up  and  I  go  on  with  the  services  again.  I  do  believe 
you  are  right  about  Lent.  We  have  got  the  thing  a  great  deal 
too  full  and  complicated.  No  one  service  amounts  to  much  in  the 
way  of  exciting  thought  or  feeling,  and  the  whole  long  stretch 
of  services  grows  tame  if  not  tiresome.  Besides  this  there  has 
got  to  be  a  sort  of  rivalry  between  Parishes,  as  if  the  one  which 
had  the  most  services  were  the  most  Godly  flock  and  shepherd. 
Men  get  each  other's  "Lent  Cards  "  and  compare  them,  to  see  who 
is  doing  the  most  "work."  There'll  be  a  great  collapse  some 
day.  Meanwhile  we  are  keeping  on  with  two  or  three  services  a 
day  and  counting  on  the  Second  Sunday  after  Easter.  When  that 
comes  we  '11  talk  things  over  and  set  the  whole  world  right.    .    .    . 

After  Easter  Mr.  Brooks  showed  signs  of  physical  weari- 
ness. He  continued  to  say  of  himself  that  he  was  as  well  as 
ever,  but  he  knew  and  admitted  that  he  needed  a  complete 
change,  and  a  long  one.  The  subject  was  mentioned  to  the 
wardens  and  vestry  of  Trinity  Church.  He  had  not  yet 
made  up  his  mind  definitely  how  long  he  should  wish  to  be 
absent  from  home,  but  intimated  that  he  might  possibly 
conclude  to  ask  for  an  entire  year.  The  answer  of  the  Pro- 
prietors of  Trinity  Church  was  prompt  and  generous.  These 
were  the  resolutions  they  adopted,  drawn  up  by  the  late 
Mr.  Robert  C.  Winthrop,  and  presented  by  Colonel  C.  R. 
Codman :  — 


328  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1881-82 

Resolved,  That  the  Proprietors  of  Trinity  Church,  deeply 
grateful  for  the  invaluable  services  which  have  been  rendered  us 
by  Mr.  Brooks,  during  the  more  than  twelve  years  of  his  rector- 
ship, and  fearing  that  he  may  be  in  need  of  a  longer  and  more 
continuous  rest  from  his  devoted  labors  than  he  has  even  yet  been 
willing  to  allow  himself,  desire  to  express  their  sincere  wish 
that,  in  going  abroad  this  Summer,  he  may  not  feel  bound  to 
limit  his  vacation  too  narrowly,  but  may  be  at  perfect  liberty  to 
linger  in  other  climates  for  the  Autumn,  Winter,  and  following 
Summer,  if  he  shall  deem  such  a  stay  more  likely  to  bring  him 
back  to  us  with  invigorated  health  and  strength  for  the  work 
which  we  count  upon  so  earnestly  in  future  years. 

Resolved,  That  the  Wardens  and  Vestry  be  instructed  to  com- 
municate the  foregoing  Resolution  to  Mr.  Brooks,  with  full  powers 
to  make  any  arrangements  which  may  be  agreeable  to  him,  and  to 
assure  him  that  much  as  we  should  regret  even  a  temporary  loss 
of  his  services,  we  should  still  more  regret  to  deprive  him  of  the 
rest  and  recreation  which  he  needs,  and  which  he  has  so  richly 
earned. 

Boston,  AprU  10, 1882. 
Easter  Monday. 

Just  before  sailing  for  Europe  Mr.  Brooks  wrote  this 
letter  to  Mr.  Cooper :  — 

June  20, 1882. 

Dear  Cooper,  —  While  I  am  waiting  for  the  carriage  which 
is  to  take  me  to  Europe  my  last  letter  shall  be  to  you.  I  got 
your  good  kind  letter  yesterday,  and  it  was  like  the  Benediction  I 
had  been  waiting  for,  the  last  blessing,  which  I  had  half  hoped  to 
get  on  board  the  Servia  at  New  York,  but  your  dear  old  hand- 
writing is  the  next  thing  to  it. 

What  lots  of  good  times  we  have  had  together!  Race  Street 
and  the  mountains  and  the  lakes  and  the  Tyrol  and  Switzerland 
and  Paris  and  Boston  and  Spruce  Street  for  twenty-two  years. 
And  now  it  seems  as  if  you  ought  to  be  going  with  me.  The 
journey  does  n't  look  lovely  or  attractive  this  morning,  but  of 
course  it  will  all  brighten  up  by  and  by  and  there  will  be  lots  to 
enjoy,  but  the  best  of  it  all  will  be  getting  home  again.  So  keep 
well  and  young  and  strong  so  that  we  may  have  still  a  lot  of  talks 
together. 

Thank  you,  dear  Cooper,  for  your  long  friendship  and  unfailing 
kindness.      May  God  be  good  to  you  as  you  have  been  to  me. 

Well,  well,  a  year  from  next  September. 

Good-bye,  Good-bye.  P.  B. 


CHAPTER  XII 

1882 

PLANS  FOR  THE  YEAR  ABROAD.  GERMANY.  CORRESPOND- 
ENCE. RELIGIOUS  CONVICTIONS.  EXTRACTS  FROM  NOTE- 
BOOK AND  FROM  JOURNAL  OF  TRAVEL 

It  seemed  to  Mr.  Brooks  a  simple  and  natural  thing  to  do 
when  he  asked  for  a  year's  leave  of  absence  from  his  parish. 
It  was  the  rule  at  Harvard  to  grant  its  professors  this  priv- 
ilege once  in  seven  years.  And  among  the  clergy  it  was 
not  uncommon,  especially  in  large  city  parishes  where  the 
strain  of  labor  was  severe,  to  seek  this  mode  of  relief.  But 
when  it  was  known  that  Phillips  Brooks  was  to  be  absent  for 
a  year,  that  his  voice  was  to  be  silenced  during  all  that  time, 
people  wondered,  and  were  amazed,  and  even  alarmed.  They 
were  asking  of  him  and  of  one  another  why  he  should  go 
away.  It  seemed  inexplicable  that  he  should  stop  preach- 
ing when  the  world  was  waiting  to  listen.  How  great  the 
work  was  which  he  had  been  doing  he  did  not  realize,  nor  was 
there  any  one  then  who  could  tell  him.  In  reality  he  had 
been  leading  people  in  all  the  land  through  one  of  the  dark- 
est, strangest  crises  in  religious  history.  The  popular  grati- 
tude and  devotion  to  him  seemed  overwhelming  in  its  length 
and  breadth  and  depth,  but  it  must  have  been  only  in  pro- 
portion to  some  service  of  immeasurable  value  he  had  ren- 
dered. That  at  such  a  moment  he  should  withdraw  himself 
seemed  unreasonable.  There  were  fears  that  something  was 
wrong.  Vague  rumors  were  in  the  air.  An  interruption 
like  this  of  his  unprecedented  work  seemed  to  portend  dis- 
aster. In  the  forecast  of  the  future,  it  was  feared  he  might 
not  return.  When  he  was  asked,  as  he  often  was,  why  he 
was  going,  he  answered  to  some  that  he  wanted  a  change; 


330  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

or  to  others  that  he  had  been  giving  out  for  a  long  time 
and  he  would  like  to  stop  for  a  moment  in  order  to  take 
in.  But  his  answers  seemed  unsatisfactory.  No  one  felt 
that  it  was  necessary  for  him  of  all  men  to  be  in  such  need. 
He  had  made  them  realize  the  meaning  of  the  words  that  it 
was  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive.  But  there  was 
another  side  of  the  truth,  that  one  must  first  have  received  in 
order  to  give;  and  one  must  continue  to  receive  if  one  would 
have  the  reward  of  giving. 

A  few  words  of  comment  upon  the  situation  are  required. 
They  must  take  the  nature  of  surmise,  for  he  was  silent  while 
all  were  talking,  as  he  had  also  kept  rigid  silence  during  the 
public  discussion  of  his  call  to  Harvard,  and  at  every  other 
turning  point  in  his  life.  It  must  then  be  said  that  his  health 
was  in  danger  from  the  severe  and  prolonged  strain  of  his 
twelve  years'  ministry  in  Boston.  There  were  no  impending 
signs  of  physical  collapse,  but  the  danger  was  real.  He  had 
no  misgivings  about  his  health,  and  when  the  subject  was 
alluded  to  would  simply  remark  that  he  wanted  a  change. 
But  he  had  been  undergoing  a  strain  during  these  years,  to 
which  flesh  and  blood  were  not  equal,  no  matter  how  perfect 
their  organization  in  the  human  body.  People  marvelled 
sometimes  at  his  powers  of  endurance,  but  for  the  most  part 
were  content  to  accept  the  fact  and  to  rejoice  in  it,  as  in  the 
regularity  of  natural  phenomena. 

When  we  stop  to  think  of  what  he  had  gone  through,  we 
recall  the  unbroken  line  of  wonderful  sermons,  each  one  bet- 
ter, so  it  seemed,  than  the  last.  It  was  no  slight  task  for 
him  to  be  always  equal  to  himself.  Those  who  thought  that 
it  was  as  easy  and  natural  for  him  to  preach  great  sermons 
as  it  was  for  the  sun  to  shine  are  now  seen  to  have  been 
mistaken.  Others  could  not  have  done  it  at  all,  but  neither 
could  he  accomplish  it  without  the  life  going  out  of  him.  To 
this  must  be  added  that  he  usually  preached  three  times  every 
Sunday,  that  he  preached  once  a  week  beside  in  the  Wednes- 
day evening  lecture,  and  in  addition  to  this  very  often  on 
other  days  in  the  week  as  the  call  came  to  him.  There  were 
also  the  occasional  addresses  of  which  it  is  useless  to  attempt 


^T.  46]     PLANS   FOR     YEAR  ABROAD      331 

the  record.  But  they  were  numerous,  for  he  was  wanted  in 
every  direction,  and  where  he  was  wanted  he  went.  He  was 
accustomed  to  go  abroad  for  his  vacation;  he  had  gone  six 
times  in  these  twelve  years,  while  the  other  six  summers  he 
stood  in  his  place  in  Boston,  preaching  to  the  strangers  that 
were  passing  through  the  city,  or  to  the  toilers  who  stayed 
at  home  because  they  were  unable  to  leave.  He  carried  the 
responsibility  of  a  large  parish,  involving  innumerable  calls 
on  his  time  and  strength.  This  was  the  inevitable  strain 
under  any  or  ordinary  circumstances.  But  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  those  years  of  the  seventies  were  also  no  ordi- 
nary years.  He  was  watching  the  trend  of  thought  and  dis- 
covery, as  it  necessitated  changes  in  his  own  attitude  to  meet 
the  spiritual  need  of  the  hour.  Those  who  lived  through  the 
seventies  realize,  now  that  they  have  passed  away,  the  trial 
and  strain  to  faith  and  to  life  which  they  brought.  Mate- 
rialism, fatalism,  pessimism,  agnosticism,  were  words  which 
describe  the  moment.  To  lift  the  world  above  them  into  the 
light  of  faith  was  the  task  which  had  been  assigned  him. 
To  this  end  he  must  cultivate  the  larger  faith  in  himself. 
He  lived  through  the  strain,  but  the  virtue  which  went  out 
of  him  was  a  drain  upon  the  vital  powers.  For  multitudes 
of  people  he  had  been  living  vicariously;  they  were  content 
so  long  as  he  believed. 

Then  again,  he  had  suffered,  and  it  cost  him  to  suffer,  from 
the  loss  in  such  rapid  succession  of  his  father  and  his  mother, 
and  at  last  of  Dr.  Vinton.  The  world  was  changing  to  him. 
There  was  inward  agony  as  he  adjusted  himself  to  the  new  stage 
of  his  life  when  he  was  to  be  henceforth  without  a  home. 
The  situation  was  the  harder  because  he  was  not  married, 
and  would  be  forced  to  realize  what  loneliness  meant.  Had 
he  been  married  he  would  not  have  felt  as  keenly  as  he  did 
the  changes  of  this  mortal  life.  They  would  indeed  have 
gone  over  him,  but  with  compensations  which  he  never  knew. 
His  large  heart,  with  its  vast  capacity  for  affection,  was  hun- 
gering for  human  love.  He  should  have  married,  and  yet 
perhaps  he  knew  that  if  he  had  now  attempted  to  give  himself 
to  one,  the  spirit  of  the  world  which  held  him  for  its  own 


332  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1882 

would  have  resented  the  attempt  and  made  it  impossible. 
He  realized  that  he  was  losing  the  richness  and  the  con- 
solation and  the  gift  which  God  so  freely  bestows  on  others, 
but  did  not  vouchsafe  to  him.  But  he  pondered  the  more 
deeply  on  what  it  was  to  lose  these  gifts  divine,  which  con- 
stitute the  joy  of  life,  and  out  of  his  musing  came  comfort 
and  hope  for  others. 

It  is  evident  that  the  health  of  Phillips  Brooks  was  now 
in  danger  from  the  lack  of  exercise  or  some  method  of  re- 
laxation from  the  incessant  strain  of  life.  He  felt  the  need 
of  it  the  more  as  the  opportunities  for  it  diminished.  He 
clung  to  the  Clericus  Club  as  offering  freedom  to  an  over- 
burdened man;  where  there  was  no  danger  that  he  should  be 
misunderstood  as  he  unbent  himself  in  the  amusement  which 
some  of  its  members,  himself  among  them,  were  wont  to 
furnish.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Saturday  Club.  He  took 
an  active  part  in  the  formation  of  the  St.  Botolph  Club  in 
1880,  whose  object  was  social,  artistic,  and  musical.  For  a 
few  years  after  its  establishment  he  went  occasionally  to  its 
weekly  gatherings. 

But  there  was  no  diminution  apparent  in  the  seemingly 
boundless  vitality  of  Phillips  Brooks.  He  will  be  recalled  at 
this  time  as  carrying  that  manner  of  boisterous  mirth  which 
has  heretofore  been  mentioned  to  an  almost  abnormal  extreme. 
If  he  suffered  at  all,  or  were  lonely,  or  ever  knew  what  de- 
pression meant,  the  world  would  not  have  guessed  it.  He 
seemed  to  be  the  very  soul  of  joy.  His  coming  was  always 
and  everywhere  the  signal  for  an  outburst  of  wild  hilarity. 
His  very  presence  on  the  street  seemed  to  have  power  to 
carry  happiness  and  content  to  hearts  that  were  heavy.  *'It 
was  a  dull  rainy  day,  when  things  looked  dark  and  lowering, 
but  Phillips  Brooks  came  down  through  Newspaper  Row  and 
all  was  bright."  This  was  one  of  the  items  in  a  Boston  daily 
paper. 

His  presence  in  a  house  was  so  exciting  that  it  seemed  to 
penetrate  every  part  of  it,  and  the  effect  was  long  in  subsid- 
ing after  he  had  left.  When  he  took  his  journeys,  the  tumult 
began  from  the  moment  he  landed  at  the  station.    He  walked 


>ET.  46]     PLANS   FOR   YEAR   ABROAD       233 

up  the  street,  the  observed  of  all  observers,  though  he  did 
not  know  it;  people  turned  to  look  at  him  and  stood  and 
watched  while  he  stopped  at  the  windows  of  shops  and  made 
humorous  comments  on  their  display,  or  paused  at  posts  or 
signboards  to  read  notices  and  to  detect  or  fabricate  some 
absurdity  or  incongruity  which  provoked  his  laughter.  When 
he  reached  the  house  he  threw  family  discipline  to  the  winds. 
He  would  call  in  a  loud  voice  for  the  children,  regardless  of 
considerations  of  convenience,  and  when  they  came  their  elders 
passed  into  the  background  and  the  scene  of  revelry  began. 
He  would  incite,  or  seem  to  do  so,  the  children  to  revolt  and 
disobedience,  as  though  law  and  order  in  the  household  were 
a  sham  j  but  he  deceived  no  one,  least  of  all  the  children.  To 
them  it  was  some  fairy  scene,  some  picture  from  "Alice  in 
Wonderland,"  where  all  things  were  reversed  or  lost  their 
normal  relations.  To  considerations  of  personal  dignity  of 
bearing  he  would  become  oblivious,  as  when  he  would  romp 
on  the  floor  or  stand  as  Goliath  for  some  small  David  of  a 
boy  to  use  his  sling.  This  was  his  amusement  and  recrea- 
tion, so  far  as  he  had  any.  But  at  times  there  seemed  to  be 
something  almost  desperate  about  it  all,  as  though  he  were 
striving  hard  to  escape  from  his  influence  for  a  moment  or  to 
throw  off  the  burden  he  was  carrying. 

But  the  worst  of  the  situation  was  that  he  had  little  time 
for  quiet  reading  or  thinking.  Only  by  the  strictest  economy 
of  his  opportunities  could  he  have  managed  to  read  as  much 
as  he  did.  This  diligent  improvement  of  the  casual  hours, 
coupled  with  his  power  of  taking  in  so  quickly  the  purport  of 
a  book,  still  enabled  him  to  do  what  to  others  seemed  a  large 
amount  of  solid  as  well  as  of  discursive  reading.  Thus  he 
placed  books  before  him  and  read  while  he  was  shaving. 
Twice,  as  we  have  now  seen,  he  had  endeavored  to  obtain 
for  himself  a  mode  of  life  in  which  there  would  be  leisure 
for  thought  and  study,  —  in  Philadelphia,  where  he  wished 
to  accept  the  offered  chair  in  the  Divinity  School,  and  again 
in  Boston,  when  he  was  called  to  Harvard.  "  The  years,"  he 
would  say,  "are  not  so  many  as  they  were."  Time  was  fly- 
ing and  there  was  much  that  he  wished  to  know.     He  admit- 


334  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

ted  there  were  great  questions  which  he  wished  to  think  out 
for  himself.  He  may  have  fondly  recalled  that  second  year 
in  the  Virginia  Seminary,  when  the  intellectual  world  in  all 
its  splendor  first  opened  to  his  view.  We  may  surmise  all 
this  and  other  things  to  fill  in  the  picture.  He  seemed  to 
tell  nothing  when  he  answered  those  who  asked  him  why  he 
was  going,  but  in  reality  he  told  all  there  was  to  tell.  Some 
deep  instinct  impressed  him  with  the  necessity  for  a  change 
which  should  be  as  prolonged  and  as  thorough  as  opportuni- 
ties in  this  world  would  allow,  and  he  would  fain  secure  one 
long  year  for  study  and  reflection. 

The  plan  for  spending  the  year  abroad  included  a  sojourn 
in  Germany,  India,  and  England,  giving  some  three  months  to 
each  country ;  and  it  also  provided  for  a  short  tour  in  Spain, 
to  glance  at  its  monuments  and  churches.  It  was  a  plan  for 
study,  but  he  proposed  to  study  from  life  as  well  as  from 
books.  He  wanted  to  know  for  himself,  by  personal  inquiry 
and  observation,  how  the  world  was  thinking  and  living  at  a 
moment  so  significant  in  its  history.  He  found  it  hard  at 
first  to  realize  that  he  had  a  long  year  before  him. 

And  so  the  year  of  wandering  has  begun.  It  is  not  easy  yet  to 
realize  that  it  is  more  than  a  mere  summer's  journey,  but  every 
now  and  then  it  comes  over  me  that  the  gap  is  to  be  so  great  that 
the  future,  if  there  is  any,  will  certainly  be  something  different 
in  some  way  from  the  past.  I  don't  regret  that,  for  pleasant  as 
all  these  past  years  have  been,  they  don't  look  very  satisfactory 
as  one  reviews  them ;  and  although  I  am  inclined  to  put  a  higher 
value  on  their  results  than  anybody  else  would  be  likely  to  do, 
they  'have  not  certainly  accomplished  much.  I  should  like  to 
think  that  the  years  that  remain,  when  I  get  home,  would  be 
more  useful.  There  is  surely  coming,  and  it  has  partly  come,  a 
better  Christian  Day  than  any  that  we  or  our  fathers  for  many 
generations  have  seen.  One  would  like  to  feel  before  he  dies  that 
he  had  made  some  little  bit  of  contribution  to  it. 

He  went  attended  by  his  friends  Eev.  W.  N.  McVickar 
and  Eev.  James  P.  Franks;  Mr.  Richardson,  the  architect, 
and  Mr.  John  C.  Ropes  were  also  fellow  passengers.  The 
appearance  of  three  such  men  together  as  Brooks,  McVickar, 
and  Richardson,  all  of  them  far  above  the  average  in  their 


^T.  46]     PLANS   FOR  YEAR  ABROAD       225 

stature  and  physical  proportions,  was  the  occasion  of  humor- 
ous anecdotes,  in  which  the  humor  ran  beyond  the  actual  fact. 
Their  stay  in  England  was  brief,  and  Mr.  Brooks  preached 
but  once,  at  St.  Botolph's  Church  in  old  Boston.  He  was 
invited  to  speak  at  the  English  Church  Congress  and  his  name 
was  advertised,  but  owing  to  some  delay  in  the  mails,  there 
was  misunderstanding  which  prevented  his  keeping  the  en- 
gagement. In  London  he  went  to  Stanley's  grave  and  had 
much  talk  about  him  with  Lady  Frances  Baillie.  He  called 
upon  Burne-Jones,  the  artist,  and  William  Morris,  the  poet. 
The  arrangement  was  here  made  with  Mr.  Richardson  to  visit 
southern  France  and  Spain.  Architecture  under  these  cir- 
cumstances must  be  the  main  interest,  but  "art,  life,  and 
scenery,"  he  writes,  "shall  not  be  forgotten."  The  journey 
was  a  delightful  one,  including  Provence,  with  its  wealth  of 
old  Roman  remains,  Genoa,  Leghorn,  Pisa,  Florence,  Bo- 
logna, Ravenna,  and  then  Venice.  "I  think  that  I  enjoyed," 
he  writes,  "the  re-seeing  of  old  places  almost,  if  not  quite, 
as  much  as  the  discovery  of  new  ones.  The  deepening  and 
filling  out  of  old  impressions  is  very  delightful."  At  Venice 
the  delightful  party  began  to  break  up,  Richardson  and  his 
friend  Mr.  Jaques,  then  a  student  of  architecture,  of  whom 
all  became  very  fond,  taking  their  way  toward  Spain.  With 
McVickar  and  Franks  he  went  to  Paris,  and  after  a  few 
days  together,  he  was  left  alone  to  follow  out  his  plan  of 
study.     On  August  28,  1882,  he  writes :  — 

After  three  pleasant  days  together  in  Paris,  they  have  gone 
this  morning,  and  I  am  all  alone.  It  has  been  a  delightful  sum- 
mer, and  now  I  feel  as  if  my  work  began.  A  week  from  to-day 
I  hope  to  reach  Berlin,  where  I  shall  stay  for  some  time.  I  am 
very  anxious  to  study,  and  the  prospect  of  unlimited  time  for 
reading  opens  most  attractively.  I  do  not  feel  as  if  it  were  a 
waste  of  time,  or  mere  self-indulgence,  for  all  my  thought  about 
the  work  which  I  have  done  for  the  last  twenty  years,  while  it  is 
very  pleasant  to  remember,  makes  it  seem  very  superficial  and 
incomplete.  I  do  not  know  that  I  can  make  what  remains  any 
better,  but  I  am  very  glad  indeed  of  the  opportunity  to  try. 

How  he  felt  on  being  left  alone  is  evident  from  this  letter 
to  McVickar :  — 


236  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

August  29,  1882. 
I  tell  you  it  was  a  lonely  fellow  that  walked  back  in  the  rain 
all  the  way  from  the  Gare  du  Nord  to  the  Hotel  de  1' Empire 
last  Monday  morning.  It  seemed  all  wrong  that  I  hadn't  got 
in  with  you.  I  had  a  sort  of  feeling  of  having  missed  the 
train.  I  felt  like  a  fool,  and  I  have  no  doubt  I  acted  like  a  fool, 
and  so  I  called  myself  a  fool.  It  is  better  now,  and  I  am  looking 
forward  to  a  very  pleasant  winter.  But  did  n't  we  have  a  good 
time  ?  I  like  to  sit  and  think  about  it  all,  and  one  by  one  the 
queer,  delightful  scenes  come  up,  and  I  find  myself  laughing  all 
alone  at  the  Brionde  kitchen  or  the  St.  Nectaire  Church,  or  the 
night  on  board  the  Indian,  and  then  to  think  that  it 's  all  over 
and  poor  little  Jimmie  is  already  crawling  sideways  down  the 
channel  in  the  Malta.  I  never  shall  cease  to  thank  you  for  com- 
ing. 

Before  leaving  Paris  he  wrote  this  letter  to  Mr.  Robert 
Treat  Paine :  — 

Paris,  August  29,  1882. 

My  dear  Bob,  —  I  have  come  to  a  sort  of  a  way  station  on 
this  long  journey  and  it  seems  as  if  it  were  time  for  me  to  report 
myself.  Besides  I  want  to  have  a  talk  with  you,  and  if  you  were 
in  Mt.  Vernon  Place  and  I  in  Clarendon  Street,  I  should  come  up 
and  spend  the  evening  with  you.  This  is  a  very  poor  substitute 
for  that,  but  it  is  all  I  can  get. 

To  talk  about  myself,  then :  the  summer  journey  is  over,  and 
you  have  no  idea  how  good  it  has  been.  "We  went  down  almost 
to  the  gates  of  Rome,  and  saw  the  beauty  of  northern  Italy  at  its 
most  beautiful.  My  eyes  swim  with  light  and  color  now.  We 
went  also  into  southern  France  and  saw  a  great  deal  of  soberer 
beauty,  —  quiet  old  towns,  and  queer,  quaint  churches,  and  kind, 
dirty  people.  Richardson  was  with  us  till  we  reached  Milan,  and 
then  went  off  into  Spain,  where  he  is  now.  You  should  have  seen 
the  man  in  Venice !  The  wonder  is  that  any  gondola  could  hold 
such  enthusiasm  and  energy,  or  that  he  ever,  having  once  got  there, 
came  away.  Fortunately  he  has  been  very  remarkably  well  all 
summer,  and  has  been  most  capital  company.  McVickar  and 
Franks  are  both  old  friends,  of  whom  I  am  very  fond,  and  they 
made  the  summer  even  more  delightful,  and  Mr.  Richardson's 
small  friend  Jaques  was  always  pleasant  and  kept  the  money 
accounts.  We  sent  you  a  counterfeit  presentment  of  the  party. 
Did  you  get  it  ?  You  will  find  Richardson  glowing  with  splendid 
projects  for  Trinity.  A  front  Porch,  a  Chapter  House,  and  the 
great  Piers  to  be  covered  from  top  to  bottom  with  mosaics.     You 


^T.  46]  GERMANY  337 

will  listen  with  interest,  and  dream  as  I  do  of  how  more  and  more 
beautiful  the  dear  old  Church  may  be  made  from  generation  to 
generation. 

Now  I  am  going  to  Germany,  and  for  a  good  while  to  come  I 
mean  to  be  very  quiet  in  or  about  Berlin,  certainly  somewhere  in 
Germany.  I  still  mean  to  start  as  near  the  1st  of  December  as 
possible  for  India.    .    .    . 

Well,  my  dear  fellow,  I  think  of  you  all  constantly.  What  a 
good  time  we  have  had  together  for  the  last  thirteen  years.  For 
myself,  I  am  almost  scared  when  I  think  how  happy  my  life  has 
been.  And  now,  when  it  seems  as  if  a  new  period  of  it  were 
beginning,  I  have  no  wish  except  to  go  forward  and  trust  the  same 
good  God.  Your  life,  too,  has  been  very  bright,  I  know,  and  in 
the  heart  of  your  deepest  sorrows  there  must  lie  some  of  your 
brightest  hopes. 

My  best  love  to  your  wife  and  children. 

Your  and  their  friend,  P.  B. 

To  the  Rev.  Percy  Browne  he  commended  the  interests  of 
the  Clericus  Club  while  he  is  away :  — 

You  won't  let  the  Club  flag  this  winter,  will  you?  It  seems 
to  me  that  we  all  owe  so  much  to  it;  and  while  we  have  grown 
used  to  it  and  don't  think  so  much  about  it  as  we  used  to,  it  has 
never  been  better  than  in  these  last  years.  .  .  .  You  don't  know 
how  pleasant  the  old  life  looks  from  this  distance,  when  one  un- 
derstands that  he  is  to  get  nothing  of  it  for  a  year.  What  good 
times  we  have  had !  and  how  few  the  dull  and  disagreeable  spots 
have  been!  May  the  winter  be  as  bright  as  possible,  and  yet  I 
hope  you  may  find  room  to  miss  me  a  bit. 

One  other  pleasant  incident  remained,  however,  before  the 
real  work  should  begin.  At  Cologne  he  met  his  brother 
Arthur  travelling  with  his  wife ;  and  of  this  he  writes :  — 

Hanover,  September  4, 1882. 
The  great  event  of  the  last  week  was  the  meeting  of  the  waters. 
Two  Brooks  boys,  Arthur  and  I,  came  together  in  the  ancient 
city  of  Cologne.  It  was  Thursday  evening  when  it  happened; 
Arthur  had  started  that  morning  from  Mayence  and  come  down 
the  Rhine,  —  the  way  you  know,  —  and  I  had  started  from  Paris, 
at  an  awful  hour,  and  come  all  the  way  through  by  rail,  and  we  met 
in  the  hall  of  the  Hotel  d'HoUande  at  about  eight  o'clock  p.  m. 
We  had  a  long  talk  that  evening,  and  the  next  morning  we  went 

VOL.  II 


338  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

through  the  sights  of  Cologne  once  more.  Then  we  took  rail  to 
Aix  la  Chapelle,  and  I  saw  that  again  in  this  new  company.  I 
had  been  there  once  before  this  year  with  James  and  McVickar. 

Then  we  went  to  Maestricht,  where  we  spent  the  night,  and  saw 
a  queer  cave.  Then  we  came  to  Brussels,  with  various  expe- 
riences on  the  way,  and  once  more  I  found  myself  in  that  very 
familiar  town.  There  we  spent  a  very  quiet,  pleasant  Sunday, 
went  to  church,  and  talked  to  each  other  a  great  deal.  Late  last 
night  we  bade  each  other  a  long,  long  farewell.  This  morning 
I  was  called  at  half  past  four,  and  have  come  to-day  (passing 
through  Cologne  again)  as  far  as  here.    .    .    . 

I  have  started  my  journey  three  or  four  times  already.  Now 
to-day  it  really  has  begun.  I  have  said  good-by  to  my  last  rela- 
tive, and  there  is  nobody  else  whom  I  have  any  engagement  to 
meet  until  I  land  in  New  York  a  year  hence.  I  am  quite  alone. 
To-morrow  I  am  going  to  Hildesheim  and  Magdeburg,  and  the 
next  day  to  Berlin. 

While  Mr.  Brooks  was  in  Germany  and  India  he  wrote  a 
large  number  of  letters,  many  of  them  long  letters,  in  which 
he  spoke  much  of  himself,  giving  expression  to  his  thought 
and  feeling  in  a  most  unwonted  degree.  He  seems  to  have 
felt  at  last,  in  his  separation  from  home  and  friends,  the 
absolute  necessity  of  letter- writing  for  his  own  satisfaction. 
Not  since  he  was  at  the  seminary  in  Alexandria  do  we  get 
such  a  complete  picture  of  the  man.  In  the  twelve  years  of 
his  life  in  Boston,  his  letters  had  been  comparatively  few, 
short,  and  conventional,  so  that  only  through  what  was  said 
of  him  by  others,  or  by  what  personal  allusion  might  be  read 
in  his  sermons  and  other  published  writings,  do  we  get  any 
strong  light  upon  his  character.  Some  of  these  letters, 
which  he  now  writes,  but  mostly  those  of  a  lighter  character, 
have  been  included  in  his  "Letters  of  Travel."  Even  these, 
however,  are  always  characteristic  in  their  quality.  Dr.  Oli- 
ver Wendell  Holmes  said  of  these  published  letters  that  only 
after  reading  them  did  he  feel  that  he  knew  the  man.  In 
them  we  see  the  great  child-heart  and  the  exquisite  humor, 
as  he  writes  to  little  children,  —  his  nieces  Agnes,  Gertrude, 
and  Susan,  who  were  to  him  as  his  own  children,  or  the  other 
little  nieces  in  the  home  at  Springfield.  While  he  was  away 
he  carried  all  the  interests  of  his  life  at  home  close  to  his 


^T.  46]  CORRESPONDENCE  ^39 

heart,  —  the  Clericus  Club,  Trinity  Church,  the  households 
of  his  friends,  and  the  varying  phases  of  ecclesiastical  life. 
Many  of  his  friends  at  home  charged  themselves  with  the 
duty  of  writing  to  him  often,  so  that  he  could  easily  follow 
the  familiar  stream  of  the  things  he  loved. 

So  voluminous  is  the  correspondence  and  other  material 
during  this  year  abroad  that  it  would  require  a  considerable 
volume  to  contain  it.  Only  a  small  part,  therefore,  can  be 
given  here. 

To  the  Rev.  Reuben  Kidner,  one  of  the  assistant  ministers 
at  Trinity,  in  charge  of  St.  Andrew's  Church,  he  writes :  — 

Berlin,  September  9,  1882. 

I  am  sorry  to  know  that  the  ecclesiastical  world  of  Boston  is 
being  stirred  up  again  by  troubles  at  the .  It  seems  some- 
times as  if  the  world  outside  the  Church  must  get  to  think  of  it 
solely  as  a  field  for  the  scramble  of  small  ideas,  and  small  men 
for  prominence  and  precedence.  We  know  how  small  a  part  that 
plays  in  church  affairs.  The people  have  worked  conscien- 
tiously and  faithfully.  Their  ideas  seem  to  me  to  be  vastly  fan- 
tastic, and  their  whole  conception  of  Christianity  is  one  that  I 
cannot  enter  into  at  all.  But  I  think  it  is  a  great  pity  when 
anything  happens  which  would  make  these  people  seem  what  they 
are  not,  —  partisans  ready  to  quarrel  with  each  other  for  personal 
preeminence. 

But  I  am  talking  about  all  this  at  a  distance  and  quite  in  the 
dark.  Very  likely  I  do  not  understand  the  case  at  all.  At  any 
rate  there  is  nobody  here  in  Berlin  whom  I  can  ask  about  it. 
The  people  in  the  streets  look  as  if  they  had  never  heard  of  the 

,  many  of  them  as  if  they  had  never  heard  of  Boston.    They 

are  discussing  whether  the  Jews  have  any  right  to  live  here,  and 
whether  there  ought  to  be  such  a  thing  as  property,  and  whether 
there  is  a  God.  There  is  plenty  to  interest  one  here,  and  having 
settled  myself  quietly  after  a  summer  of  hurried  travelling,  I  shall 
probably  be  here  for  some  time. 

Early  in  September  Mr.  Brooks  had  reached  Berlin, 
taking  up  his  residence  there  for  some  two  months,  but  in  the 
mean  time  visiting  other  university  towns,  Giessen,  Leipsic, 
and  Heidelberg.  For  Heidelberg,  where  he  spent  two  weeks, 
he  felt  a  strong  fascination,  as  combining  beauty  of  scenery 
with  history  and  with  thought.     It  was  unfortunate  that  the 


340  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

universities  did  not  open  till  the  middle  of  October,  so  that 
he  missed  in  consequence  conversations  with  many  distin- 
guished men  to  whom  he  carried  letters.  Thus  he  writes 
from  Berlin,  September  17 :  — 

I  am  going  out  to  dine  at  Wansee  (which  seems  to  be  a  sort  of 
Berlin  Brookline)  with  Baron  von  der  Heydt,  who  is  going  to 
have  some  of  the  Court  preachers  to  meet  me.  A  good  many 
other  people  have  called  on  me,  and  talked  about  German  things 
and  people ;  so  that  I  see  all  I  want  to  see  of  folks,  and  the  days 
are  only  too  short.  Unfortunately,  the  university  is  closed,  and 
the  professors  are  all  off  on  vacations,  so  that  I  miss  many  men 
whom  I  should  like  to  see. 

Here  are  some  hints  of  how  he  passed  his  days,  of  the 
effect  upon  him  of  being  for  a  moment  associated  with  men 
whose  whole  time  was  occupied  with  speculative  thought  and 
learned  investigation. 

I  get  up  in  the  morning  and  breakfast  at  eight  o'clock;  then 
I  go  to  my  room,  which  is  very  bright  and  pleasant,  where  I  have 
a  lot  of  books  and  a  good  table,  at  which  I  am  writing  now. 
Here  I  stay  until  eleven  or  twelve,  reading  and  studying,  mostly 
German;  then  I  go  out,  see  a  sight  or  two,  and  make  calls  until 
it  is  two  o'clock.  Then  I  go  to  Dr.  Seidel,  my  teacher,  and  take 
a  lesson,  reading  German  with  him  for  two  hours.  Then  it  is 
dinner  time,  for  everybody  in  Berlin  dines  very  early.  They 
have  North  Andover  fashions  here.  Four  o'clock  is  the  table 
d'hote  time  at  our  hotel,  and  that  is  rather  late.  After  dinner 
I  get  about  two  hours  more  of  reading  in  my  room,  and  when 
it  is  dark  I  go  out  and  call  on  somebody,  or  find  some  inter- 
esting public  place  until  bedtime.  Is  not  that  a  quiet,  regular 
life? 

This  week  I  have  been  like  a  college  student,  going  to  hear 
what  the  great  men  have  to  say  about  theology  and  other  things. 
I  have  German  enough  now  to  follow  a  lecture  quite  satisfactorily, 
and  you  do  not  know  how  I  enjoy  it.  Of  course  I  have  not  taken 
up  any  systematic  course  of  attendance.  My  time  is  too  short 
for  that.  I  only  roam  round  and  pick  up  what  I  can  and  fill  it 
out  with  reading  from  the  books  of  the  same  men,  a  good  many 
of  which  I  have.  There  are  four  thousand  other  students  here  in 
Berlin,  so  that  one  can  go  and  come  in  the  great  university  quite 
as  he  pleases,  and  be  entirely  unnoticed.   .  .   , 


^T.  46]  CORRESPONDENCE  341 

It  is  very  pleasant  to  see  how  quietly  and  simply  these  scholars 
live,  and  what  cordial,  earnest  folks  they  are.  I  have  also  seen 
something  of  the  ministers,  but  I  do  not  think  I  like  them  so 
much  as  the  scholars.  German  religion  seems  to  be  eaten  up  with 
controversy,  and  is  hampered  everywhere  by  its  connection  with 
the  state.  There  is  much  work  being  done  here,  and  the  thorough- 
ness of  their  real  scholars  makes  me  feel  awfully  superficial  and 
ashamed. 

To  Eev.  Arthur  Brooks  he  writes  more  fully  of  what  he  is 

doing :  — 

October  12,  1882. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  I  have  been  as  German  as  I  could,  and  while 
I  have  no  revelations  to  make  about  the  tendencies  of  German 
theology,  I  have  been  quite  successful  in  seeing  what  I  wanted 
most  to  see,  and  if  we  could  sit  down  and  talk  about  it  all  to- 
gether I  think  I  could  be  very  interesting,  but  I  shall  not  try  to 
put  it  in  a  letter.  I  will  only  say  that  every  one  who  seems  to 
know  best  gives  strong  assurance  that  there  is  indeed  a  strong 
awakening  of  religious  thought  in  Germany,  and  while  very  much 
calls  itself  Christian  here  which  would  puzzle  the  House  of  Bishops 
and  makes  even  the  broadest  of  us  open  his  eyes,  yet  still  a  candid 
and  respectful  interest  in  Christianity  and  a  decided  disposition 
towards  a  theistic  explanation  of  the  world  and  man  have  largely 
gained,  and  are  still  gaining,  among  men  who  think  about  religious 
things  at  all.  In  Berlin  everybody  says  that  Lotze  is  the  truest 
representative  of  the  prevalent  tendency  in  Metaphysics,  and  his 
death  so  soon  after  he  came  there  to  teach  is  almost  pathetically 
lamented. 

That  he  had  been  greatly  impressed  by  reading  Lotze  is 
evident  from  the  following  important  letter :  — 

Beblin,  October  29, 1882. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  I  got  a  real  good  letter  from  you  yester- 
day, which  told  me  all  the  things  that  I  liked  most  to  hear  and 
made  me  feel  as  if  we  were  very  near  indeed  together.  And  I 
wanted  to  write  off  at  once  and  tell  you  so  and  report  myself  to 
you,  but  I  am  only  at  it  now  after  your  letter  has  been  almost  two 
days  with  me.  For  this  morning  I  went  to  preach  at  the  Ameri- 
can Chapel,  and  after  service  I  met  your  friend  Evart  Wendell, 
who  is  a  very  nice  boy,  and  he  came  home  to  lunch  with  me ;  and 
then  he  wanted  me  to  go  home  with  him  and  see  the  photographs 
that  he  had  bought,  and  so  the  whole  afternoon  got  used  up,  and 


342  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

here  it  is  Sunday  Evening.  Understand  that  Wendell  sent  his 
best  love  to  you,  which  I  hereby  give.  I  am  now  back  something 
over  a  week  here  in  Berlin,  and  my  time  here  draws  to  a  close. 
Just  think  of  its  being  two  months  since  we  parted  in  Brussels ! 
Of  that  time  about  half  has  been  spent  in  Berlin  and  the  rest  in 
other  parts  of  Germany.  On  the  whole  I  have  been  as  successful 
in  carrying  out  my  rather  vague  plans  as  I  could  anyway  have 
hoped.  I  have  been  only  unlucky  in  being  rather  too  early  for 
the  universities,  which  did  not  begin  their  lectures  till  last  Mon- 
day ;  so  that  I  have  not  had  much  of  that  sort  of  life,  and  the 
vacation  time  also  prevented  a  good  many  men  whom  I  should 
have  liked  to  see  from  being  at  home.  On  the  other  hand  I  have 
found  people  everywhere  most  accessible,  and  although  very  few 
of  the  theologians  speak  English  they  mostly  understand  it,  and 
the  study  I  have  had  here  makes  their  German  quite  intelligible. 
Both  in  such  lectures  as  I  have  heard  here  in  the  last  week  and  in 
the  conversations  which  I  have  had  with  men  in  various  places, 
I  have  found  no  real  difficulty.  In  Halle  and  Heidelberg  and 
Leipsic  I  have  found  interesting  people  and  got  pretty  good  ideas 
of  what  theologians  were  at.  A  thoroughness  of  Exegesis  which 
is  beautiful,  and  an  inquiry  into  the  Old  Testament  History  which 
makes  it  very  living,  and  a  rearrangement  of  dogmatic  statements 
in  philosophical  systems :  —  these  are  their  great  works.  The 
books  which  I  have  read  with  considerable  struggle  are  the  new 
"Life  of  Jesus  "  by  Weiss,  of  Berlin;  the  "Life  of  Luther  "  by 
Kostlin,  whom  I  saw  at  Halle,  which  is  the  last  great  work  on  the 
Reformation;  the  "Christian  Belief  and  Morals"  of  Pfleiderer 
of  Berlin;  and,  above  all,  the  lectures  of  Hermann  Lotze  on  the 
"Philosophy  of  Religion"  and  on  the  "Foundations  of  Practical 
Philosophy."  Then  I  have  dipped  into  Schleierraacher,  of  whom 
I  knew  nothing  before.  But  Lotze  is  the  most  interesting  of  men. 
I  wish  you  would  get  somebody  to  translate  his  "GrundzUge  der 
Religionsphilosophie, "  —  somebody  who  knows  German  well.  It 
is  a  little  book,  the  mere  notes  of  one  of  his  students  from  his 
lectures,  which  has  been  published  this  year  in  Leipsic.  If  I  knew 
enough  German  to  be  quite  sure  that  I  was  n't  making  him  say 
just  what  he  did  n't  mean  to  I  would  translate  some  of  it  myself, 
for  it  is  full  of  as  rich  sound  meat  as  any  book  I  ever  read,  and 
with  my  poor  German  knowledge  I  know  I  have  got  at  the  gist  of 
it.  The  way  that  people  speak  of  him  here  is  very  impressive. 
I  have  heard  one  or  two  lectures  from  his  successor  Zeller,  who 
is  also  an  interesting  man.  It  is  the  jolliest  thing,  this  Univer- 
sity. There  it  stands  wide  open  and  anybody  can  go  in  to  any 
lecture  that  he  chooses.     I  have  heard  Dillman  and  Weiss  and 


MT.  46]  CORRESPONDENCE  343 

Pfleiderer,  who  are  the  best  of  the  theological  people  here  except 
Dorner,  who  is  the  Nestor  of  their  faculty,  but  is  now  very  ill  and 
off  at  Baden-Baden.  The  city  preachers,  of  whom  I  have  seen 
several,  seem  to  be  very  earnest  but  not  very  inspiring  men.  On 
the  whole  I  feel  as  if  there  were  not  in  Germany  just  the  type  of 
man  whom  we  have  in  England  and  America,  —  the  really  spiritual 
rationalist  or  broad  Churchman,  the  Maurice  or  the  Washburn. 
Their  positive  men  are  dogmatists  and  their  rationalists  are  nega- 
tive. Such  men  there  must  be  somewhere,  —  successors  of 
Schleiermacher  on  his  best  side,  —  but  nobody  seems  to  be  able  to 
point  them  out,  and  except  in  vague  and  casual  approaches  I  have 
failed  to  find  them.  Outside  of  theology  I  have  made  some  very 
pleasant  acquaintances.  I  have  seen  a  good  deal  of  Baron  von 
Bunsen  and  his  family.  He  is  the  son  of  the  Bunsen  of  many 
books,  the  Chevalier,  and  is  a  very  charming  man,  and  his  house  is 
always  full  of  pleasant  people.  Lately  I  have  seen  something  of 
Hermann  Grimm,  the  translator  of  Emerson,  and  the  author  of 
Goethe's  Life  and  of  Michael  Angelo's.  Then  there  is  a  most 
hospitable  doctor  (Abbot)  who  has  been  here  for  many  years,  and 
whom  I  knew  when  I  was  here  seventeen  years  ago,  whom  I  have 
found  a  kind  friend  and  at  whose  house  I  have  seen  lots  of  nice 
people.  All  this  about  my  Berlin  life,  but  I  hoped  you  would 
care  to  know  what  had  come  of  my  venture.  Now  I  leave  here 
on  Wednesday  for  Dresden,  and  then  Prague  and  Vienna  and  so 
to  Venice,  whence  I  am  booked  for  the  Poonah,  which  sails  for 
Bombay  on  the  1st  of  December. 

Is  your  new  church  coming  on  to  your  satisfaction  ?  How  I 
should  like  to  be  where  I  could  hear  all  about  its  details  and 
know  what  all  the  knotty  points  are  which  you  will  have  to  settle. 
Do  get  in  a  bit  of  La  Farge  glass  somewhere.  It  is  too  splendid 
a  chance  to  be  neglected  now  when  you  have  such  a  wonderful 
genius  living  at  your  doors  who  may  die  any  day.  The  more  I 
see  of  what  work  in  glass  is  being  done  abroad,  the  more  remark- 
able his  work  appears.  Just  think  of  Trinity  Church,  Boston, 
being  on  fire  the  other  day !  Do  you  know  young  Peters,  the  son 
of  your  friend  the  Reverend  Doctor  in  New  York,  who  came  to  see 
me  the  other  day  in  Leipsic  ?  He  seemed  to  be  a  fine  fellow,  an 
enthusiastic  scholar  and  a  wise  broad  Churchman.  Surely,  there 
ought  to  be  some  place  for  such  a  man  in  some  one  of  our  semi- 
naries. 

To  Professor  A.  V.  G.  Allen  he  writes,  with  reference  to 
an  article  on  the  "  Renaissance  of  Theology  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century:"  — 


344  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

Vienna,  November  13, 1882. 

My  dear  Allen,  —  I  have  been  reading  this  evening  your 
article  in  the  "Princeton  Review,"  and  before  I  go  to  bed  I  want 
to  tell  you  how  deeply  I  am  delighted  with  it.  Its  great  idea, 
the  distinction  between  the  ex^ra-mundane  and  the  intra-mandane 
conceptions  of  God's  revelation,  has  happily  grown  familiar  to 
multitudes  of  us  in  their  own  thinking  under  the  half-recognized 
influence  of  the  disposition  of  our  time.  Little  by  little  we  have 
awaked  to  the  knowledge  that  we  had  attained  to  such  a  richer 
and  worthier  idea  of  our  relationship  to  God.  Not  least  among 
the  delights  which  it  has  brought  has  been  the  sense  of  how  with 
it  belonged  all  the  best,  the  most  characteristic  work  of  the 
human  mind  in  our  time,  from  Emerson's  essay  on  the  Oversoul 
to  Darwin's  teaching  of  the  constant  presence  of  live,  creative 
force  in  nature.  Of  course  this  truth,  as  opposed  to  the  Napo- 
leonic conception  of  Deity,  verges  toward  Pantheism.  All  the 
Orthodox  ministers  of  Germany  say  that  Schleiermacher  was  a 
Pantheist,  as  some  Englishmen  say  of  Coleridge.  But  it  has 
been  a  great  joy  to  find  how  in  such  a  more  intimate  knowledge 
of  God  a  nobler  and  realler  sense  of  His  Personality  has  ever 
come. 

All  this  has  been  familiar  to  many  of  us.  But  to  trace  the 
history  of  the  Christian  thought  upon  the  subject,  and  to  show 
that  in  the  knowledge  of  God  that  is  true  which  the  Alt-Katho- 
liks  have  claimed  so  barrenly  to  be  true  of  Christian  institutions, 
that  the  youngest  is  the  oldest,  and  the  last  the  first,  —  this  you 
have  done  beautifully  in  your  essay.  Henceforth  I  am  an  old 
Greek.  I  wish  that  you  would  develop  that  part  of  your  Essay, 
the  presence  of  this  better  theology  before  Augustine,  into  a 
book.     It  would  be  a  flood  of  light  to  many  souls. 

But  I  only  wanted  to  thank  you,  and  to  say  how  glad  I  am  with 
all  my  heart,  away  off  here,  that  you  are  teaching  our  youngsters 
in  Cambridge.      God  bless  your  work. 

I  hope  that  you  are  all  well  and  happy.      You  ought  to  be. 

In  two  weeks  now  I  am  off  for  India,  but  I  shall  think  of  you 
from  the  Ends  of  the  Earth. 

With  best  remembrances  to  your  wife  and  boys. 
Ever  your  friend, 

Phillips  Bbooks. 

It  is  interesting  and  important  to  note  that  Phillips  Brooks 
was  impressed  by  Lotze's  philosophy.  We  have  seen  that  in 
his  youth  it  was  the  philosophy  of  Lord  Bacon  which  influ- 


^T.  46]     RELIGIOUS   CONVICTIONS  345 

enced  him.  For  the  abstractions  of  speculative  thought  he 
felt  no  attraction.  There  is  no  evidence  that  he  ever  made 
any  effort  to  understand  the  purpose  of  Hegel,  though  one 
sometimes  encounters  in  his  sermons  thoughts  which  are  akin 
to  those  of  the  Hegelian  philosophy.  But  they  may  have  an 
independent  origin.  There  are  also  traces  in  his  sermons  of 
the  influence  of  Plato,  as  in  the  sermon  on  the  text,  "See 
that  thou  make  all  things  according  to  the  pattern  showed  to 
thee  in  the  mount "  (Hebrews  viii.  5).  ^  On  this  sermon, 
which  was  preached  in  England,  at  old  Boston  and  at  the 
Chapel  Royal,  Savoy,  an  English  clergyman  remarked  to  him 
that  it  was  not  what  was  wanted  in  England.  The  influence 
of  Lotze  was  to  raise  the  question  whether  the  intellectual 
formula  at  any  moment  was  adequate  for  the  full  and  final 
expression  of  the  content  of  human  soul,  of  human  faith  and 
belief.  That  one  did  not  come  to  the  truth  solely  by  the  in- 
tellectual process  had  always  been  one  of  the  ruling  ideas  of 
Phillips  Brooks.  But  in  the  first  stages  of  his  development, 
he  has  assigned  the  lead  to  the  reason.  In  his  lectures  at 
Yale  College  on  the  "Teaching  of  Religion  "  he  had  assimied 
that  truth  came  first  to  the  reason,  then  from  the  reason  to 
the  feelings,  and  finally  from  the  feelings  to  the  will.  In 
some  degree  that  had  been  the  law  of  his  own  growth.  His 
temperament  was  predominantly  intellectual,  and  in  the 
early  years  of  his  ministry  this  tendency  was  prominent  in 
his  preaching.  But  as  he  passed  through  the  struggle  of  the 
seventies,  he  found  more  and  more  that  men  must  believe 
through  the  cognitive  power  of  the  feeling,  —  those  deeper 
instincts  of  the  human  constitution  which  do  not  originate  so 
much  in  the  mind  as  in  the  heart,  or  in  the  experience  of 
life.  With  this  growing  tendency  in  himself,  he  found  Lotze 
in  harmony,  as  also  in  another  direction  which  he  was  fore- 
casting, that  the  reason  had  been  given  a  predominance  in 
modern  philosophy  which  obscured  or  subordinated  the  mighty 
function  of  the  human  will. 

While  Phillips  Brooks  was  in  Germany  he  seems  to  have 
been  profoundly  moved  by  the  intellectual  environment.     It 

^  Cf .  Sermons,  vol.  iii. 


346  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

was  a  time  with  him  of  most  intense  activity,  affecting  the 
whole  man,  as  he  was  engaged  in  translating  into  terms  of 
life  the  thoughts  with  which  his  mind  was  teeming.  He 
appears  as  reviewing  his  experience,  religious  and  intellec- 
tual, in  the  light  of  a  more  satisfactory  philosophy.  He  en- 
ters in  his  journal  a  series  of  connected  statements  regard- 
ing his  religious  beliefs,  prefacing  it  with  the  words:  "I 
want  to  try  to  draw  out  in  order  and  connection  those  per- 
sonal convictions  about  religious  truth  which  have  slowly 
and  separately  taken  shape  in  my  mind."  The  paper  was  not 
exhaustive,  and  as  these  words  quoted  indicate,  it  was  the 
working  of  his  individual  experience  which  he  was  seeking 
to  trace.  Upon  this  point  something  remains  to  be  said  in 
another  chapter.  It  is  interesting  also  to  note  how  his  mind 
assumes  a  devotional  tone  in  dealing  with  theological  pro- 
blems. To  this  beautiful  and  impressive  paper,  the  reader 
will  now  turn  :  — 

1.    GOD. 

Man  does  not  seem  to  reach  the  idea  of  God  by  any  conscious 
process.  All  conscious  processes  appear  to  be  either  the  subse- 
quent analysis  of  what  has  gone  on  already  unconsciously,  or  else 
the  support  which  study  and  thought  bring  to  a  conviction  which 
already  exists  on  other  grounds;  very  much  as  the  filial  impulse 
or  instinct  finds  itself  supported  by  many  considerations  of  human 
nature  and  society,  but  was  not  made  by  any  of  them.^ 

If  we  look  into  this  first  idea  of  God,  which  seems  self-born,  a 
direct  impulse  of  the  heart  of  man,  its  origin,  I  think,  will  be 
found  to  lie  in  a  transference  by  man  to  the  universe  of  that  one 
sole  primal  cause  of  which  he  has  any  knowledge,  which  is  will. 
This  is  a  very  simple  transference  and  is  made  almost  uncon- 
sciously. Man  finds  only  one  stopping  place  in  tracing  back  the ' 
claim  of  cause  and  effect  in  his  own  activity.  That  stopping 
place  is  in  what  seems  to  him  to  be  truly  an  uncaused  cause. 
When,  then,  he  pictures  to  himself  the  stopping  place  of  the  chain 
of  cause  and  effect  in  the  greater  world  of  active  life,  then,  too, 
he  thinks  that  at  the  beginning  must  lie  will. 

This  seems  to  be  to  man  a  supposition  to  be  verified  by  experi- 

^  AUe  Beweise  sind  bios  Rechtfertigun^griinde  fur  nnseren  Glauben  und 
f iir  die  bestimmte  Art,  in  welcher  wir  dies  hochste  Princip  meinen  fassen  zu 
miissen.     Lotze,  Grundziige  der  Religionsphiloscphie,  §  5. 


^T.  46]     RELIGIOUS  CONVICTIONS  347 

ence.  God  is  first  to  the  world,  and  to  some  extent  to  every  man 
a  Working  Hypothesis.  It  is  in  the  way  in  which  this  working 
hypothesis  seems  to  meet,  and  abundantly  cover,  all  the  events  of 
life  and  conditions  of  the  world,  that  man  finds  himself  justified 
in  accepting  it  as  true. 

Of  course  for  every  individual  this  process  is  not  merely  in 
large  part  unconscious,  but  it  is  also  complicated  with  tradition. 
Each  man  receives  the  result  of  the  process  as  it  has  gone  on  in 
the  minds  of  men  before  him,  and  often  it  is  by  the  greater  or 
less  tendency  to  traditionalism  (that  is,  to  the  acceptance  of  the 
testimony  of  previous  men)  which  is  in  different  men's  disposi- 
tions that  they  are  led  to  adhere  to  or  react  from  the  witness 
which  this  process  bears  to  the  existence  of  God  in  their  own 
minds.  ^ 

We  must  not  understand  will  too  narrowly.  It  includes  the 
whole  creative  force  in  which  there  is  an  element  of  affection  and 
desire,  and  so  this  testimony  is  not  distinct  from,  but  includes,  the 
impulse  which  man  feels  to  believe  in  a  God,  because  he  craves  to 
be  loved  and  to  have  some  interested  purpose  outside  of  himself 
governing  his  creation  and  his  life. 

2.    REVELATION. 

How  does  such  an  Idea  of  man  arriving  at  the  Idea  of  God  by 
the  examination  of  himself  affect  the  doctrine  of  a  Revelation  ? 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  a  Doctrine  of  Revelation.  When  man 
has  thus  reached  the  Idea  of  God  he  adds  almost  of  necessity  the 
notion  that  God  meant  that  he  should  reach  it.  God's  first  revela- 
tion of  Himself  must  be  in  human  nature  itself.  All  other  kinds 
of  revelation  would  be  useless  unless  this  lay  behind  them  all. 
There  is  here  the  first  appearance  of  the  truth  that  man  is  the 
Child  of  God.  Both  the  wish  and  the  possibility  of  God  to  show 
Himself  to  man  in  man's  own  nature  are  involved  in  the  Idea  of 
Childship.  To  no  being  but  a  child  could  such  a  revelation  from 
the  Father  come. 

The  traditional  element,  of  which  I  spoke,  makes  the  access 
to  the  knowledge  of  God  seem  all  the  more  a  revelation.  God 
seems  to  the  man  to  have  been  using  not  merely  this  man's  own 
self,  but  the  selves  of  other  men  and  the  great  self  of  humanity, 
to  make  Himself  known  to  this  one  of  his  children. 

But  with  this  first  revelation  (which  is  often  not  called  a  Reve- 

^  Im  Gegentheil  hat  da3  religiose  Qefiihl  immer  die  expansive  Leibe,  die  znr 
Mittheilung  ihrer  Seligkeit  an  andre  Wesen  drangt,  als  das  Motiv  der  Schop- 
f  ung  angesehen.    Lotze,  §  52. 


348  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

lation,  but  is  spoken  of,  by  way  of  contrast,  as  a  part  of  natural 
religion,  —  an  unreal  distinction)  then  the  expectation  of  other 
revelations  immediately  follows.  Man  cannot  think  of  God  ex- 
isting and  creating  him  without  thinking  also  of  God  making  some 
effort  to  communicate  with  His  creature. 

The  result  is  a  searching  curiosity  to  find  God's  communication, 
which,  whatever  fantastic  form  it  takes,  is  still  valuable  as  testi- 
fying to  the  fundamental  conviction  of  man  that  there  is  a  God 
and  that  He  will  speak.  It  takes  form  in  the  belief  in  Visions, 
Oracles,  divinely  written  Bibles,  and  more  vaguely  in  an  undefined 
idea  that  at  the  origin  of  human  life  God  must  have  said,  in  some 
way,  things  to  man  of  which  man  has  preserved  the  tradition. 

The  degree  of  truth  in  each  one  of  these  is  a  separable  question 
from  the  fact  of  a  truth  being  resident  in  them  as  a  whole.  In 
this,  most  religious  men,  however  they  may  hesitate  about  each 
particular  Vision  or  Bible,  are  always  tending  to  believe. 

Still  in  close  association  with  what  I  said  about  man's  finding 
God's  first  witness  in  himself  (i.  e.,  in  man),  there  is  always  a 
half-consciousness  that  it  must  be  in  human  life  that  the  truest 
and  fullest  and  deepest  revelation  of  God  is  given.  No  other 
paper  is  fit  to  hold  that  awful  writing.  Hence  all  great  religions, 
however  they  may  rely  upon  their  sacred  books,  have  also  their 
sacred  man,  their  Prophet  or  Saint,  in  whom  God  is  supremely 
shown. 

This  comes  to  its  completeness  in  Christianity. 

3.    CHRIST. 

The  Principle  of  Christianity  is  that  God  was  in  Christ.  Not 
a  revelation  by  a  Book,  but  by  a  Being.  This  the  point  to  which 
all  disturbances  of  literal  faith  in  the  Book  are  tending,  and  so  in 
this  there  is  no  tendency  to  deny  or  to  depreciate  the  true  human- 
ity of  Jesus,  but  rather  a  necessity  of  exalting  and  emphasizing  it. 

The  Possibility  of  such  supreme  manifestation  of  God  in  Jesus 
must  lie  in  the  essential  nearness  of  humanity  to  Divinity.  Such 
revelation  in  a  person  could  not  take  place  in  any  person  which 
did  not  thus  naturally  belong  with  God. 

Hence  it  is  not  strange  that  there  should  be  much  in  the  lives 
of  the  best  men  which  seems  to  be  identical  with  the  life  of  Je- 
sus. In  them,  too,  there  is  the  capacity  to  manifest  God.  In 
them,  too,  God  is  endeavoring  to  manifest  Himself.  Here  is  the 
true  key  to  the  inspiration  of  Thinkers,  Poets,  and  Saints. 

And  this  has  been  always  and  everywhere,  so  that  Religion  has 
been  in  all  times  and  places.     What  we  call  the  heathen  religions 


.ET.  46]     RELIGIOUS   CONVICTIONS  349 

are  thus  real  utterances  of  God.  After  man  has  passed  beyond 
mere  fear  and  the  adoration  of  Power  in  the  forms  which  seemed 
to  him  to  represent  it  (as,  for  instance,  the  heavenly  bodies),  wher- 
ever he  has  tried  to  come  into  the  genuine  companionship  and 
communion  of  a  Great  Father,  there  has  been  a  vision  of  the 
same  truth  which  became  completely  manifested  in  the  Incarna- 
tion. Therefore  we  ought  to  welcome  and  not  disparage  every 
resemblance  between  heathen  religions  and  our  own,  and  find  in 
them  the  point  of  approach  to  heathen  minds.  Christ  certainly 
is  to  be  thought  of,  not  primarily  as  a  revelation  of  God's  will  or 
intended  way,  but  as  a  revelation  of  God's  character. 

This  does  not  do  away  with  the  separateness  of  Jesus,  but  only 
shows  the  way  in  which  His  separate  life  becomes  a  possibility. 
His  seemingly  contradictory  name,  the  "only  begotten  Son  of  the 
Father, "  seems  to  contain  this  double  idea  of  the  uniqueness  of 
His  life  and  at  the  same  time  its  being  the  consummation  of  the 
life  of  man.  The  testimony  to  its  uniqueness  is  in  His  own  words 
as  historically  recorded  (of  which  I  will  speak  later  when  I  come 
to  treat  of  the  Bible)  and  in  the  solitary  strength  of  His  influence. 

His  miracles  are  to  us  not  so  much  the  proofs  of  the  separate- 
ness and  superiority  of  His  life  (whatever  they  may  have  been  to 
his  contemporaries),  as  they  are  the  natural  and  altogether  to-be- 
expected  utterances  of  it  in  its  reaction  upon  the  material  world. 
Supposing  such  a  special  presence  of  God  in  any  human  life,  it 
would  seem  altogether  likely  that  that  life  would  have  a  peculiar 
relation  to  nature,  perhaps  a  peculiar  mode  of  entrance  on  the 
mortal  career  and  a  peculiar  mode  of  departure  from  it,  as  well 
as  peculiar  power  over  it  during  the  intervening  years.  Thus  the 
question  of  Christ's  miracles  becomes  purely  an  open  question  of 
historical  evidence. 

In  this  view  the  higher  power  over  nature  which  belongs  to 
man  as  God's  utterance  in  the  world,  compared  with  the  lower 
power  over  nature  which  the  brutes  possess,  is  also  of  the  nature 
of  miracle.  The  recognition  on  our  part  of  the  means  and  pro- 
cesses of  the  exercise  of  that  power  seems  not  to  change  the 
nature  of  the  case,  and  the  miracles  ascribed  to  other  men  than 
Jesus  (using  the  word  "miracle  "  in  its  ordinary  sense)  become  the 
natural  expression  of  God's  superior  life  in  them  and  are  also 
pure  questions  of  history.  There  is  no  antecedent  presumption 
against  their  truth.  The  supernatural  is  only  the  manifestation 
of  a  higher  nature  and  so  is  natural. 

Hence,  also,  no  man  who  believes  in  them  can  reasonably  deny 
the  possibility  of  present  miracles. 

I  cannot  but  think  also  that  the  whole  present  tendency  of 


3 so  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

physical  science,  which,  with  its  theories  of  evolution,  dwells  upon 
the  presence  in  the  world  of  nature  of  a  continually  active  forma- 
tive force,  is  in  the  line  of  Christianity.  Christ  not  merely  taught 
that  the  divine  Power  was  always  at  work  in  the  world.  He  was 
Himself  that  present  active  divine  power,  and  so,  in  some  sense, 
not  merely  made  miracles  seem  occasionally  possible,  but  made  all 
events  seem  miraculous,  which  is  not  the  abolition  of  the  idea  of 
the  miraculous  any  more  than  the  flooding  of  the  world  with  sun- 
shine is  an  extinction  of  the  sun. 


4.    PRAYER. 

The  revelation  in  Christ  of  the  intrinsic  relationship  of  man  to 
God  furnishes  the  true  ground  for  the  Idea  of  prayer,  the  presence 
of  prayer  outside  of  Christian  influence  being,  as  in  the  other 
points  mentioned  before,  an  indication  that  the  essential  truth  of 
Christianity  is  everywhere  present  in  the  world.  Prayer,  as 
Christ,  not  merely  by  His  practice  and  precept,  but  by  His  nature, 
makes  it  known  to  us  is  the  entire  expression  of  loving  and  depend- 
ent sonship,  —  the  complete  resting  of  the  life  of  man  upon  the 
life  of  God,  of  the  child  upon  the  Father.  While  Petition  will 
be  certainly  included  in  the  utterance  of  this,  it  will  not  be 
limited  to  petition.  Confidence,  love,  sympathy,  thankfulness, 
all  will  be  part  of  Prayer.  And  when  Petition  comes  it  never 
will  be  absolute,  but  always  conditioned  on  the  higher  knowledge 
and  complete  love  of  the  Father  to  whom  the  Prayer  is  offered. 
See  the  Lord's  Prayer,  "Thy  will  be  done,"  and  the  Prayer  in 
Gethsemane,  which  is  the  pattern  of  all  petitions. 

In  this  view  the  so-called  "difficulties  of  prayer  "  by  no  means 
disappear,  but  are  seen  to  be  identical  with  the  difficulties  of 
moral  life  in  general.  They  are  not  involved  in  any  relation  of 
a  subordinate  to  a  superior  will,  one  working  within  the  other. 
They  do  not  make  prayer  impossible  or  unmeaning  any  more  than 
the  difficulties  of  free-willed  life  make  choice  and  action  impos- 
sibilities or  fictions. 

The  evidence  of  the  reality  of  Prayer  and  of  its  efficacy  must 
lie  not  in  our  recognition  of  its  specific  answer,  but  in  our  assur- 
ance of  the  nature  of  the  Being  to  whom  it  is  offered. 

5.    ATONEMENT. 

Of  such  a  revelation  of  God  in  a  human  life  what  should  we 
say  beforehand  would  be  the  results?  First,  Suffering  to  the 
Humanity  in  which  the  Revelation  is  made ;  and  second,  Recon- 


^T.  46]      RELIGIOUS   CONVICTIONS  351 

ciliation  or  assertion  and  establishment  of  the  essential  oneness 
between  God  and  man.  The  first  of  these  is  accidental,  belonging 
to  the  special  circumstance  of  human  sin  in  the  midst  of  which 
the  Revelation  must  be  made.  In  a  pure,  though  imperfect  hu- 
manity the  Revelation  by  Incarnation  might  be  painless.  The 
second  result  is  essential,  and  must  come  under  whatever  circum- 
stances God  thus  showed  Himself  to  man. 

In  other  words  Atonement  by  suffering  is  the  Result  of  the 
Incarnation  ;  Atonement  being  the  necessary  and  Suffering  the 
incidental  element  of  that  result. 

But  Sacrifice  is  an  essential  element,  for  Sacrifice  truly  signifies 
here  the  consecration  of  human  nature  to  its  highest  use  and 
utterance,  and  does  not  necessarily  involve  the  thought  of  pain. 
It  is  not  the  destruction  but  the  fulfilment  of  human  life. 

Inasmuch  as  the  human  life  thus  consecrated  and  fulfilled  is  the 
same  in  us  as  in  Jesus,  and  inasmuch  as  His  consecration  and  ful- 
filment of  it  makes  morally  possible  for  us  the  same  consecration 
and  fulfilment  of  it  which  He  achieved,  therefore  His  Atonement 
and  His  sacrifice,  and  incidentally  His  suffering,  become  vicarious. 

It  is  not  that  they  make  unnecessary,  but  that  they  make  pos- 
sible and  successful  in  us  the  same  processes  which  were  perfect 
in  Him. 

The  Vicariousness  of  Jesus  is  of  the  same  sort  with  and  has  its 
distant  repetitions  and  illustrations  in  the  Sacrifices  by  which  the 
men  in  whom  God  is  most  revealed  open  for  other  men  the  way  to 
God  and  the  divine  life. 

6.    THE    BIBLE. 

If  the  true  revelation  of  God  is  in  Christ,  the  Bible  is  not  pro- 
perly a  Revelation,  but  the  History  of  a  Revelation.  This  is  not 
only  a  Fact  but  a  necessity,  for  a  Person  cannot  be  revealed  in  a 
Book,  but  must  find  revelation,  if  at  all,  in  a  Person. 

The  centre  and  core  of  the  Bible  must  therefore  be  the  Gospels 
as  the  Story  of  Jesus.  There  is  no  necessity  of  supposing  them 
to  be  other  than  the  natural  records  of  the  events  of  the  life  of 
Jesus  which  they  appear  upon  their  face  to  be.  The  critical  dis- 
cussion of  them  has  in  the  larger  part  confirmed  their  genuineness 
and  authenticity.  The  Fourth  Gospel  has  sufficient  claims  to  be 
accepted  as  the  work  of  John ;  but  even  if  that  were  doubtful  there 
would  be  abundant  authority  in  it  as  issuing  very  early  from  the 
Church's  consciousness  and  tradition  and  holding  the  Church's 
loyalty  of  faith. 

The  course  of  our  thought  with  reference  to  the  Gospels  is  this ; 


2S2  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

(1)  They  set  before  us  the  character  of  Jesus  in  such  way  as 
demands  our  supreme  honor  for  His  knowledge  and  His  truthful- 
ness. (2)  Then  upon  His  own  word  we  accept  His  higher  claims ; 
there  being,  as  I  have  already  said  in  speaking  of  Him,  no  ante- 
cedent impossibility  or  even  contrary  presumption. 

The  Epistles  have  their  natural  value  as  the  commentary  of 
those  most  likely  to  know  the  mind  of  Christ,  or  what  He  was 
and  did  and  said. 

The  Old  Testament  gets  its  value  from  the  New.  It  is  the 
story  of  the  gradual  shaping  of  the  world  for  Christ.  For  the 
purpose  of  giving  this  story  there  is  brought  together  the  whole 
literature  of  the  very  peculiar  nation  in  whose  midst  He  came. 
That  literature  consists  of  History,  Poetry,  Biography,  Essay, 
and  Discourse.  It  was  formed  under  the  same  laws  under  which 
all  literature  is  formed,  only  made  peculiar  by  the  facts  that  (1) 
the  Jews  were  under  special  divine  training  for  a  peculiar  pur- 
pose, and  that  knowing  this  fact  themselves  they  were  (2)  very 
careful  of  their  national  Records,  and  (3)  very  anxious  to  find 
signs  of  the  divine  interposition  in  their  affairs. 

There  is  in  these  facts  nothing  to  prevent  the  occurrence  in  the 
Bible  of  mistakes  or  misconceptions;  on  the  contrary,  there  is 
strong  reason  to  believe  that  certain  great  tendencies  (e.  g.,  love 
of  the  miraculous)  will  distort  special  facts,  while  the  great  spirit- 
ual current  of  the  story  will  be  preserved  more  faithfully  than 
that  of  any  other  ancient  history. 

Inspiration  is  primarily  in  the  events  with  which  the  Bible 
deals;  secondarily  in  the  nature  of  the  Bible  writers;  only 
through  these  in  their  literal  words.  It  was  a  noble  story  told 
by  noble  men.  So  comes  the  nobleness  of  the  narrative.  The 
Bible  claims  nothing  else  for  itself.  We  must  not  give  it  quali- 
ties which  simply  seem  to  us  necessary.  It  is  the  word  of  God, 
speaking  not  through  passive  trumpets,  but  through  living  History 
and  acting  characters. 

7.    MORAL    LIFE. 

Taking  the  Bible  thus,  not  as  a  series  of  oracles  but  as  the 
utterance  to  the  world  of  the  Revelation  of  God  in  Christ,  its 
treatment  of  man's  moral  condition  and  hope  is  clear. 

Its  great  characteristic  is  that  it  is  positive  and  not  negative. 
The  Idea  of  Jesus  is  of  a  true  personal  moral  life  for  every  man, 
which  belongs  to  every  man  as  the  son  of  Grod,  to  which  by  his 
deepest  nature  every  man  tends,  from  which  sin  hinders  him,  into 
which  he  is  to  be  set  free.     It  is  the  need  that  every  man  should 


^T.  46]      RELIGIOUS   CONVICTIONS  253 

thus  fulfil  his  own  true  life  which  makes  the  obligation,  and  must 
ultimately  make  for  every  man  the  attractiveness,  of  dtity. 

While  this  is  the  distinctive  New  Testament  Idea  of  Duty,  the 
other  Ideas  of  Duty  have  their  true  place.  Always  "mere  moral- 
ity," as  it  used  to  be  called,  is  included  and  involved,  not  set 
aside  by  the  Gospel.  Such  motives  as  the  fear  of  the  conse- 
quences of  sin,  the  honorable  gratitude  to  God,  the  regard  for  the 
well-being  of  humanity,  the  instinctive  sense  of  the  beauty  of  con- 
forming to  the  moral  law,  are  freely  used  to  surround  and  sustain 
the  central  motive  which  comes  of  the  soul's  revealed  possibilities. 
Indeed  some  of  these  motives  may  be  considered  only  as  other 
forms  of  this  motive. 

The  entrance  into  this  deeper  consciousness  and  into  the  motive 
power  which  it  exercises  is  Regeneration,  the  new  Birth,  not 
merely  with  reference  to  time,  but  with  reference  also  to  pro- 
foundness. Because  man  has  something  sinful  to  cast  away  in 
order  to  enter  this  higher  life,  therefore  Regeneration  must  begin 
with  Repentance.  But  that  is  an  incident.  It  is  not  essential 
to  the  idea.  A  man  simply  imperfect  and  not  sinful  would  still 
have  to  be  born  again. 

The  presentation  of  sin  as  guilt,  of  release  as  forgiveness,  of 
consequence  as  punishment,  have  their  true  meaning  as  the  most 
personal  expressions  of  man's  moral  condition  as  always  measured 
by,  and  man's  moral  changes  as  always  dependent  upon,  God. 


8.    PERSONALITY. 

Christ's  whole  conception  of  life  is  Personal.  Every  man  is  a 
true  and  distinct  will  and  nature.  There  is  no  shadow  of  Pan- 
theism or  Fate  in  His  teaching.  It  is  the  union  of  this  clear 
sense  of  personality  with  the  full  declaration  of  God's  all-pervad- 
ing life  which  makes  the  greatest  wonder  and  power  of  His  life 
and  doctrine.  It  is  put  forth  in  His  teaching  of  the  Father  and 
the  Son.  Here  is  the  strong  irreconcilable  issue  of  Christianity 
and  Buddhism. 

This  personality  of  Christianity  is  involved  in  the  fact  of  its 
being  a  moral  religion,  and  not  a  system  of  ideas  or  a  condition  of 
feeling.  It  is  in  moral  life,  in  responsibility  and  duty,  in  per- 
sonal attainment  of  character  and  personal  suffering  for  sin,  that 
personality  becomes  clear. 

We  want  to  be  very  clear,  in  speaking  of  Christianity,  about  the 
real  meaning  of  Salvation.  Only  when  it  means  the  release  from 
sin  and  the  attainment  to  holy  personal  character  does  it  keep  the 
essential  peculiarity  of  Christ's  teaching,  which  is  personality. 

VOL.  II 


354  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

9.    THE    CHURCH. 

The  struggle  of  man  for  personal  character  directly  and  con- 
sciously pursued  must  to  some  extent  defeat  itself.  It  must  be- 
come self-conscious  and  selfish.  Men's  social  relations  giving  birth 
to  constant  duties  are  provided  for  the  training  of  character  in 
self-sacrifice  and  self-forgetfulness.  Man  forgets  even  to  question 
about  his  own  growth  in  goodness  while  he  serves  the  souls  con- 
nected with  him  and  the  great  whole  of  humanity. 

Although  society  gets  its  value  from  the  individuals  of  which 
it  is  composed  and  has  no  existence  apart  from  them,  yet  as  made 
up  of  them  it  is  capable  of  being  conceived  of  as  a  Being,  with 
duties,  with  rights,  with  character,  able  to  be  developed  indefi- 
nitely in  wisdota  and  goodness. 

It  is  this  ideal  society  which  Christ  contemplates  when  he 
established  the  Christian  Church.  In  other  words  the  Church  is 
simply  the  Ideal  world.  A  perfect  church  would  be  a  perfect 
world.  The  church  is  imperfect  so  long  as  it  is  not  coterminous 
with  the  world. 

The  church  therefore  possesses  no  real  existence  or  character 
except  those  of  the  men  and  women  who  compose  it. 

The  sacraments  in  their  largest  view  are  human  rites,  that  is, 
they  indicate  the  universal  facts  of  humanity. 

Baptism  is  the  declaration  of  the  universal  Fact  of  the  Sonship 
of  man  to  God. 

The  Lord's  Supper  is  the  declaration  of  the  universal  fact  of 
man's  dependence  upon  God  for  supply  of  life.  It  is  associated 
with  the  death  of  Jesus  because  in  that,  as  I  said,  the  truth  of 
God  giving  himself  to  man  found  its  completest  manifestation. 

10.    DEATH. 

The  soul  which  has  lived  in  society  passes  through  death  alone. 
Death  is  the  point  where  it  is  reminded  of  its  individuality  and 
where  the  points  of  its  life  in  society  are  gathered  up.  This  is 
the  real  criticalness  of  Death,  the  way  in  which  it  becomes  proper 
to  speak  of  it  as  a  Judgment  Time  and  of  the  period  which  pre- 
cedes it  as  Probation. 

The  continuance  of  Life  through  death  is  the  natural  assump- 
tion of  humanity,  conscious  in  itself  of  something  which  the  appar- 
ently wholly  physical  phenomenon  of  Death  seems  not  to  touch. 
Man  believes  in  continued  existence  because  the  burden  of  proof 
seems  to  him  to  be  upon  the  other  side  and  no  one  has  proved 
that  death  ends  all. 


^T.  46]      RELIGIOUS   CONVICTIONS  355 

According  to  the  strength  and  clearness  of  the  sense  of  person- 
ality will  be  the  strength  and  clearness  of  men's  belief  in  Immor- 
tality. 

The  ordinary  argument  for  immortality,  like  that  drawn  from 
the  need  of  moral  adjustments,  of  the  need  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments, never  could  create  the  Faith.  They  are  only  its  occasional 
helpers  in  its  weaker  moments. 

The  Resurrection  of  Jesus  has  power  in  assuring  our  resurrec- 
tion, in  the  fact  that  it  confirms  and  illustrates  that  expectation 
which  the  consciousness  of  our  own  personality  had  produced. 

Here,  as  in  other  cases,  the  sense  of  our  own  personality  in 
some  weak  times  will  resort  to  and  rest  upon  the  sense  of  individ- 
ual personal  life  which  is  strong  in  other  men,  and  which,  as  I 
said,  was  supremely  asserted  first  in  Christ's  own  self -conscious- 
ness, and  then  in  the  way  in  which  He  treated  the  lives  of  other 
men.  This  is  one  of  the  deepest  ways  in  which  He  "  brought 
Life  and  Immortality  to  light." 

11.    ETERNITY. 

The  more  natural  Death  seems  the  more  truly  the  world  beyond 
Death  will  seem  to  be  one  with  the  life  on  this  side  of  it.  Christ, 
therefore,  in  redeeming  Death  (which  we  must  remember  was  a 
true  redemption  or  bringing  it  back  to  its  ideal  self)  redeemed 
also  Eternity. 

At  the  same  time,  death,  while  not  the  end  of  Life,  must  cer- 
tainly be  a  very  significant  event  in  Life,  and  therefore  there  may 
well  be  a  criticalness  in  it  which  will  make  it  a  true  time  of 
Judgment. 

There  is  no  possibility  of  logically  denying  the  eternal  continu- 
ance of  sin  and  suffering.  It  is  bound  up  with  the  continuance 
forever  of  free  will. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  possibility  of  asserting  it,  for 
that,  too,  assumes  a  determination  of  men's  free  wills  which  has 
not  yet  been  made  and  which  nobody  can  know. 

This  life  is  probationary,  but  only  as  every  period  of  existence 
is  probationary  with  reference  to  the  times  which  follow  it.  It 
is  not  ended  in  a  fixed  decree,  but  in  a  more  strongly  assured 
character. 

Heaven  is  the  soul  finding  its  own  perfect  personality  in  God. 

The  activity  of  the  Eternal  Life  must  be  intense.  Stated  phi- 
losophically, it  will  be  the  soul  working  without  resistance  or  re- 
luctance in  perfect  harmony  with  its  surroundings.  Stated  reli- 
giously,  it  will  be   the  child  reconciled   in  perfect  love  to  the 


2s6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

Father  and  serving  Him  in  the  delight  of  love  forever.      "Which 
hope  we  have  as  an  anchor  of  the  soul,  sure  and  steadfast!" 

The  strong  undercurrent  of  Phillips  Brooks's  life  during 
the  year  abroad  was  religious.  Natural  scenery,  art,  architec- 
ture, historical  monuments  and  inscriptions,  everything  relat- 
ing to  famous  men,  the  customs  and  manners  of  people,  the 
course  of  ordinary  life  —  in  these  he  was  deeply  interested. 
But  beneath  them  all  he  was  seeking  for  the  spiritual  mean- 
ing of  human  existence  in  this  world.  He  took  the  opportu- 
nity which  his  leisure  gave  him  to  study  the  life  of  Luther, 
visiting  every  spot  connected  with  his  career.  He  made 
himself  the  possessor  of  many  of  the  original  editions  of  the 
great  reformer's  writings,  surprised  to  find  that  they  could 
be  bought  so  cheaply.  Kostlin's  "Martin  Luther,"  which 
had  just  appeared,  was  eagerly  read.  Next  to  Luther  in 
his  admiration  stood  Goethe.  He  studied  the  Second  Part 
of  Faust,  and  witnessed  an  attempt  to  reproduce  it  in  the 
theatre,  which  he  pronounces  a  failure.  He  devoted  much  of 
his  time  to  Lessing.  He  had  long  been  familiar  with  Les- 
sing's  ideas  regarding  the  education  of  the  human  race,  but 
he  now  gave  himself  up  to  a  thorough  study  of  that  most 
suggestive  work,  "Die  Erziehung  des  Menschengeschlechts," 
writing  out  in  his  note-book  an  abstract  of  each  one  of  its 
paragraphs. 

Much  of  his  time  was  given  to  writing  in  his  note-book  the 
thoughts  with  which  his  soul  was  glowing  or  the  impressions 
he  was  receiving.  Not  for  many  years  had  he  done  such 
systematic  work  in  recording  what  passed  through  his  mind. 

The  lateral  and  terminal  moraine,  —  that  refuse  of  miscon- 
ception, superstition,  etc.,  which  an  old  institution  or  faith  throws 
off  on  its  sides  as  it  moves  while  it  is  still  living,  and  that  which 
it  leaves  as  refuse  at  the  end  after  it  has  exhausted  itself  and 
perished. 

The  heaven  of  Truth  lies  deep  and  broad  and  still, 

And  while  I  gaze   into  it,  lo,  I  see 
Some  human  thought,  instinct  with  human  will, 

Gather  from  out  its  deep  serenity. 


iET.  46]   EXTRACTS  FROM  NOTE-BOOK     357 

Awhile  it  hovers,  changes,  glows,  and  fades, 

Then  rolls  away;  and  where  it  used  to  be 
Naught  but  the  heaven  of  Truth  from  which  it  rose 

Looks  down  upon  me  deep  and  broad  and  free. 
So  have  I  seen,  shaped  in  the  noontide  blue, 

A  floating  cloud  attain  to  gradual  birth. 
And  then,  absorbed  in  that  from  which  it  grew, 

Leave  only  the  great  Sky  which  domes  the  earth. 
What  are  men's  systems,  thoughts,    and  high  debates 

But  clouds  which  Truth  creates  and  uncreates  ? 

Standing  in  the  cloud  and  seeing  the  dew  upon  the  mountain 
tops  in  front  of  us. 

The  sad  story  of  the  earnest  minister  who  went  to  give  himself 
to  study  so  that  he  might  be  more  useful.  And  as  he  learned 
more  and  more  his  faith  more  and  more  decayed,  until  at  last  he 
was  a  learned  skeptic,  and  knew  himself  that  he  had  destroyed 
the  vessel  in  filling  it  with  its  true  wine.  The  awful  dilemmas 
which  his  life  must  have  presented  to  his  mind. 

The  truth  and  value  of  George  Eliot's  remark  in  "Romola, " 
apropos  of  Savonarola,  that  it  is  not  always  the  strongest  spirits 
of  a  time  who  are  most  free  from  its  superstitions.  The  illus- 
trations in  one's  own  time. 

"  Show  thy  servants  thy  work  and  their  children  thy  glory " 
Psalm  xc.  16  (Prayer  Book  version).  One  generation  doing  a 
piece  of  the  work  of  God,  and  the  next  generation  seeing  how 
splendid  it  is. 

The  day  returns,  and  street  and  lane 
Throb  with  the  human  life  again ; 
As  if  one  poured  the  rich,  red  wine 
In  the  dull  glass  and  made  it  shine. 

The  mosaic  work,  whose  pieces  being  long  they  can  cut  the 
mass  across  at  various  points  and  find  the  same  figure  or  face  less 
a  quarter  in  size,  but  keeping  the  same  expression.  So  perhaps 
of  various  ages  in  history. 

"Lord,  not  my  feet  only,  but  also  my  hands  and  my  head." 
The  answer  of  Christ.  The  cry  of  dissatisfied  men  who  only  need 
more  impulse  and  "go  "  for  a  complete  change  of  thoughts  and 


358  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

principles;    when    what    they  want    is  only  to  put  to  use  more 
conscientiously  and  vigorously  what  they  have. 

In  Schiller's  "Wilhelm  Tell,"  when  Gessler's  cap  is  on  the 
pole  the  priest  comes  with  the  host  and  stands  beside  the  pole,  and 
the  people  bow  themselves  down  to  that  and  so  avoid  the  appear- 
ance of  disobedience. 

As  the  one  test  of  a  well-tied  knot  is  that  it  shall  be  so  tied 
that  the  more  the  strain  is  put  upon  it  the  stronger  it  holds. 

As  when  you  fling  your  window  open  on  the  crowded  street  it 
seems  as  if  the  noises  then  began. 

The  way  you  sit  in  a  great  square  in  some  foreign  town  (Erfurt) 
and  see  the  monument  of  some  dead  local  hero,  but  do  not  care  to 
go  and  examine  it,  sure  that  you  would  know  nothing  about  him ; 
but  yet  you  get  a  clear  and  deep  and  pleasant  feeling  of  past  life 
and  history  from  it  all. 

The  blessed  little  towns  which  have  no  sights,  where  you  may 
just  wander  about  the  streets  and  take  it  in. 

Herder's  Wahlspruch,  —  "Licht,  Liebe,  Lehre."  It  is  on  his 
tombstone  in  Weimar  and  on  the  scroll  which  he  holds  in  his 
hand  in  his  statue  in  Herder  Platz. 

Text:    "Living  or  dying,  we  are  the  Lord's." 

Text:  "And  my  people  love  to  have  it  so."  The  final  criti- 
cal decision  of  what  the  preaching  is  to  be  is  in  the  people. 

Text:  "And  what  shall  be  done  in  the  end  thereof?"  The 
culmination  of  processes.  The  "entering  wedge."  The  danger 
and  duty  of  anticipation. 

One  of  the  old  Heidelberg  professors  in  the  Jesuit  days  used  to 
say,  "wenn  die  Fragen  der  Schiller  ihn  in  die  Enge  brachten, 
'Unus  asinus  plus  protest  negare  quam  decem  docti  probare.*  " 

"No  fine  view  to-day,"  says  the  guide  who  shows  the  castle; 
"there  is  too  much  cloud."  And  so  the  glory  of  the  cloud  view 
goes  for  nothing.  His  one  idea  is  that  the  greatness  of  a  view  is 
measured  by  the  distance  you  can  see.  Sometimes  you  can  almost 
see  Strassburg  minster  eighty  miles  away.     So    talk  often   the 


JET.  ^6}  EXTRACTS  FROM  NOTE-BOOK    359 

guides  into  the  regions  of  truth.      But  constantly  it  is  the  very 
clouds  that  make  the  landscape  most  worth  studying. 

In  the  old  church  which  fronts  the  square, 
By  the  third  altar  in  the  southern  aisle 
There  hangs  a  picture  radiant  and  fair, 

The  Virgin  Mother  with  the  heavenly  smile. 
Then  describe  the  same  picture  standing  there  still,  even  in 
the  dark  with  no  one  to  see,  but   the   same  beauty  in  it   all  the 
while.     The  blessing  of  knowing  it  is  there.      So  of  God's  unseen 
grace. 

Comparison  of  the  people  to  a  fountain  (Warzblirg  Schloss 
Garden,  Sunday  afternoon,  October  15,  1882).  The  constancy 
of  it,  though  its  particles  are  constantly  changing.  The  constant 
effort  to  go  higher  and  yet  the  ever  undiscouraged  failure.  The 
power  proceeding  from  a  mysterious  and  hidden  source  —  the  power 
telling  on  each  separate  particle,  yet  seeming  to  move  the  whole 
as  one  mass,  etc. 

The  figure  of  the  "Stream  "  of  time  (or  life)  is  true  not  only 
in  other  respects  but  also  in  this,  that  it  expresses  the  constant 
change  along  with  constant  identity  which  life  possesses. 

Text:  "He  taught  them  as  one  having  authority,  and  not  as 
the  scribes."  This  text  in  the  light  of  the  idea  that  original 
utterance  of  God's  true  prophecy  had  ceased  since  Ezra's  time,  and 
that  since  that,  "Halacha,  Midrash,  and  Hagada  had  become  the 
forms  of  all  literary  effort."  (See  Robertson  Smith,  Old  Testa- 
ment in  Jewish  Church,  p.  141.) 

"A  little  while  and  ye  shall  not  see  me,  and  again  a  little 
while  and  ye  shall  see  me."  Text  for  sermon  on  the  passage 
through  darkened  periods  of  Life  and  Faith. 

Lessing's  "Der  Junge  Gelehrte  "  must  be  more  than  an  amazing 
farce.  In  it  we  certainly  can  see  two  things,  one  temporary  and 
local,  the  other  universal  and  eternal.  The  universal  teaching  is 
that  mere  pedantry  is  not  true  learning,  and  that  life,  no  less  than 
books,  has  lessons  for  the  learning  man.  The  local  application 
must  be  to  a  state  of  Germany  in  his  time,  when  the  studying 
people,  filled  with  the  new  enthusiasm  of  study,  were  often  using 
it  foolishly,  as  if  it  were  a  valuable  and  noble  thing  for  its  own 
sake,  —  the  crude  condition  of  the  ordinary  German  student  in 
those  days,  of  which  we  see  many  signs. 


36o  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1882 

In  all  this  travelling  one  is  overcome  and  oppressed  with  the 
multiplicity  of  life.  The  single  point  where  we  stand  is  so 
small,  yet  it  is  the  best  and  dearest  of  all.  I  would  not  for  the 
world  be  anything  but  this,  if  I  must  cease  being  this  in  order  to 
be  that  other  thing.     But  I  would  fain  also  he  these  other  things, 

—  these  College  Students,  these  soldiers  in  their  barracks,  these 
children  playing  round  the  old  fountain,  these  actors  on  their 
dotage,  these  merchants  in  their  shops,  these  peasant  women  at 
their  toil,  these  fine  ladies  with  their  beauty ;  I  want  somehow, 
somewhere,  to  he  them  all!  and  the  simplicity,  the  singleness  of 
my  own  life,  with  its  appointed  place  and  limits,  comes  over  me 
oppressively.  Where  is  the  outlook  and  the  outlet?  Must  it 
not  be  in  the  possibility,  which  is  not  denied  to  any  of  us,  of  get- 
ting some  conception  of  life  which  is  large  enough  to  include  and 
comprehend  all  these  and  every  other  form  in  which  men  live,  or 
have  lived,  6r  will  live  forever  ?  And  is  not  such  a  conception  to 
be  found  in  Christ's  large  truth  of  God  the  Father?  Oh,  to 
preach  or  hear  some  day  a  worthy  sermon  on  "  In  Him  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  Being  "  ! 

This  morning  as  I  looked  up  at  the  castle  [Heidelberg],  the  sun 
streaming  through  a  vacant  windowpane  just  caught  a  branch  of 
autumn  vine  and  made  it  burn  so  that  it  seemed  as  if  the  room 
within  was  glowing  with  the  light  of  fire.  All  the  rest  was  dull 
and  brown  and  sombre.  Only  this  one  window  shone  like  a  lighted 
palace  window  on  a  winter  .night.  It  was  as  if  Frederick  and 
Elizabeth  had  come  back  to  the  English  Bau  again. 

Text:  "Till  the  time  of  the  restitution  of  all  things."  Acts 
iii.  21.  Pointing  to  a  great  reUirn,  but  not  to  a  previously 
realized  condition  of  things,  which  would  be  terribly  disheartening 

—  rather  to  that  ideal  conception  of  things  which  is  the  true  "be- 
fore," the  antecedent  of  all  intelligible  being.     Apply  to  Genesis. 

You  complain  of  the  details  of  life  and  duty,  but  after  all  they 
are  to  the  great  principles  what  the  countless  objects  of  the 
Earth's  scenery  are  to  the  sunlight,  the  points  of  manifestation. 
What  a  world  empty  of  everything  but  sunlight  it  would  be! 
That  would  be  a  life  with  noble  principles,  but  no  details  of  duty 
or  lines  of  small  events. 

Oxenstein's  speech  to  his  son,  "See,  my  boy,  with  how  little 
wisdom  the  world  can  be  governed." 


^T.  46]  EXTRACTS  FROM  NOTE-BOOK    361 

The  present  condition  of  our  churches  is  something  like  an 
orchestra  tuning  up.  Each  instrument  trying  itself  altogether  hy 
itself.  Some  time  they  must  all  strike  in  together  and  the  great 
Symphony  begin.  The  high  unselfishness  of  the  instruments  in 
an  orchestral  piece. 

The  way  in  which  each  speaker  in  a  play  must  make  the  situa- 
tion ready  for  the  player  who  is  to  follow  him,  prepare  for  his 
speech  or  action. 

Text:  "The  Son  of  Man  cometh  like  a  thief  in  the  night; 
watch  therefore."  The  whole  subject  of  suddenness;  nothing  is 
sudden  and  yet  everything  is  sudden.  Examples  in  history,  Christ, 
Luther,  Darwin,  — the  illustrations  which  you  '11  find  in  your  own 
life.  The  value  of  the  knowledge  of  this  in  bringing  about  the 
true  poise  of  temperament.  Expectation  without  terror,  a  sense 
of  naturalness  and  wonder  together. 

Sermon  on  the  verse  about  the  Lord  God  walking  in  the  garden 
in  the  cool  of  the  day. 

Text:  "Sacrifice  and  meat  offering  Thou  wouldst  not,  but 
my  ears  hast  Thou  opened."  Ps.  xl.  8.  Sermon  on  God's  love 
for  intelligent  worship  and  for  a  desire  after  the  truth  upon  His 
people's  part. 

Text:  "This  is  the  victory  that  overcometh  the  world,  even 
your  faith. "  The  absolute  creed  that  only  by  belief  in  something 
higher  should  man  master  the  lower.  Oh,  the  necessity  of  loving 
purity  and  great  thoughts  about  great  things,  not  merely  being 
driven  to  them.  This  the  child's  salvation  from  brutal  vice  and 
infidel  cynicism.  Point  also  to  the  men  who  are  overcome  by  the 
world  for  want  of  Faith. 

In  connection  with  the  above  think  of  the  great  danger  of 
abolishing  that  for  which  we  give  no  substitute.  Sometimes  it 
must  be  done,  and  the  development  or  discovery  of  the  substitute 
must  be  left  to  wisdom  and  power  greater  than  ours,  but  there  is 
always  terrible  danger. 

We  in  America  have  no  complete  substitute  for  the  military 
training  which  we  rejoice  to  be  free  from.  The  mercantile  rivalry 
is  not  a  substitute.  It  lacks  the  possible  self-devotion  and  noble- 
ness. 


262  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

The  "Rundschau"  for  October,  1882,  contains  a  most  interest- 
ing address  delivered  by  Professor  Haeckel,  of  Jena,  in  Septem- 
ber, 1882,  at  the  meeting  of  German  naturalists  and  physicians  in 
Eisenach.  It  is  called  "  Die  Naturanschauung  von  Darwin,  Goethe, 
und  Lamarck."  It  is  really  a  eulogy  on  Darwin.  It  opens 
with  an  allusion  to  the  place  of  meeting  and  a  claim  that  the  New 
Era  which  Darwinism  opens  is  a  fit  successor  to  that  with  which 
Eisenach  and  the  Wartburg  must  always  be  associated  in  connec- 
tion with  Luther.  It  is  interesting  to  think  what  degree  of  truth 
and  what  amount  of  fallacy  there  is  in  this.  Luther's  protest  in 
behalf  of  freedom  was  indeed  the  opening  of  a  new  world,  but  its 
real  value  was  measured  by  the  worth  of  the  positive  authority  to 
which  he  appealed.  Darwin's  protest  against  the  crudeness  of 
popular  Creationism  must  be  his  real  claim  to  remembrance  in 
spite  of  the  very  striking  letter  from  Darwin  to  one  of  Haeckel's 
pupils,  which  the  Professor  quotes,  in  which  Darwin  says  that 
"Science  has  nothing  to  do  with  Christ."  It  may  perhaps  turn 
out  after  all  that  Science  has  wiser  teachers  than  the  Great  Scien- 
tist knew,  that  Christ's  truth  of  the  Father  Life  of  God  has  the 
most  intimate  connection  with  Darwin's  doctrine  of  Development, 
which  is  simple,  the  continual  indwelling  and  action  of  Creative 
Power. 

I  do  believe  that  it  is  a  real  test  of  men's  character  to  ask 
yourself  whether  you  can  think  of  them  in  connection  with  their 
mothers  and  fully  realize  the  association.  The  greatest,  the 
wisest,  the  oldest,  if  only  they  have  kept  simplicity  and  freshness, 
if  they  have  genuine  reality  and  truth,  will  easily  enough  allow 
such  thoughts.  But  the  sophisticated,  the  unreal,  the  vicious  and 
untrue,  repel  them.  You  cannot  bring  the  mother  thought  home 
to  them.  It  does  not  seem  as  if  they  ever  had  mothers.  Try  it 
with  the  thorough- going  man  of  the  world  and  you  will  see. 

Some  people  seem  to  have  almost  exactly  the  influence  of  Music, 
It  is  an  inarticulate  influence.  It  does  not  communicate  ideas, 
but  it  creates  moods.  It  is  incapable  of  analysis.  Men  ask  you 
to  give  an  account  of  these  people's  power  over  you,  and  you  can- 
not. You  tell  your  story  and  the  listener  asks,  "Is  that  all?  " 
and  wonders  at  your  delusion.  All  that  you  can  do  is  to  say, 
"  Come  and  see, "  as  after  vainly  trying  to  describe  the  power  of  a 
piece  of  music  you  take  your  friend  to  hear  it.  All  influence  of 
man  over  man,  however  rich  it  may  be  in  the  imparting  of  ideas 
and  the  awakening  of  the  moral  sense,  seems  to  be  incomplete 
unless  there  is  in  it  something  of  this  musical  power  of  creating 
moods. 


^T.  46]   EXTRACTS  FROM  NOTE-BOOK    363 

Stein  had  great  contempt  for  what  he  called  metapolitieians, 
who  are,  as  Seeley  in  his  "Life  of  Stein"  defines  it,  "those  who 
stand  in  the  same  relation  to  politicians  as  metaphysicians  to  the 
students  of  nature. "  The  same  feeling  which  crudely  and  coarsely 
breaks  out  in  our  time  against  the  "scholar  in  politics,"  those 
"damned  literary  fellows."  There  are  reason  and  unreason 
in  it  both. 

Text:  "Sir,  thou  hast  nothing  to  draw  with,  and  the  well  is 
deep."  Spoken  in  perfect  honesty.  A  naive  expression  of  the 
worldly  man's  sense  of  the  difficulty  of  life  and  of  the  inadequate 
equipment  of  merely  spiritual  natures  to  cope  with  it.  "I  really 
do  not  see  what  the  world  would  come  to  if  all  men  were  Chris- 
tians."    Let  us  see. 

Text:  2  Cor.  v.  11.  "We  are  made  manifest  to  God  and  I 
trust  also  to  your  consciences."  The  two  great  objects  of  the 
true  man's  appeal. 

Text:  "Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God." 
A  sermon  on  the  need  of  essential  purity,  unselfishness,  and  lofti- 
ness of  purpose  as  a  condition  for  all  special  entrance  into  the 
Reality  of  Things,  which  is  God. 

The  beasts  in  a  zoological  garden  always  trying  to  get  out; 
their  pathetic,  brutal  inability  to  be  convinced  that  it  is  hopeless. 
You  come  back  after  years,  and  there  is  that  same  bear  walking 
up  and  down  just  as  you  left  him,  trying  the  same  bars,  and 
never  giving  up  the  hope  that  somewhere  he  may  find  a  gap.  It 
is  the  dim  memory  of  savage  free  life  —  nay,  see  how  even  the 
beasts  born  in  captivity,  who  have  never  known  by  experience  the 
freedom  of  the  desert,  they  too  are  at  the  same  endless  undiscour- 
aged  effort  to  escape. 

Apply  to  man's  everlasting  working  away  at  the  problems  of 
existence.      (Berlin  Zoological  Garden,  October  27,  1882.) 

Like  the  bear  in  his  disgraceful  humiliation  begging  for  nuts. 

The  remembrance  which  we  leave  behind  us  when  we  die  only 
like  the  blue  smoke  which  floats  off  from  the  candle  for  a  moment 
or  two  after  you  blow  it  out. 

Launce,  in  the  "Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,"  says,  "Thou  shalt 
never  get  such  a  secret  from  me  but  by  a  parable."  So  some 
people  give  out  their  new  ideas  about  religion. 


364  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1882 

What  was  the  dream  which  long  ago 

Filled  this  sweet  face  with  pensive  pain? 

What  pity  at  some  tale  of  woe 

Or  longing  for  some  hopeless  gain? 

Gone  are  the  dreamer  and  the  dream, 
Yet  still  among  the  things  of  earth 

The  pensive  pain,  like  sunset's  gleam, 
Outlives  the  sun  which  gave  it  birth. 
(Picture  by  Bronzino,  in  the  Dresden  Gallery.) 

In  the  palace  of  the  Countess  Nostitz,  at  Prague,  is  a  most 
curious  picture  by  Van  Eyck  which  singularly  illustrates  the  way 
in  which  mysticism  opens  on  the  one  side  into  coarse  materialism, 
as  we  see  so  constantly  in  the  history  of  the  church.  Christ 
stands  literally  in  a  winepress.  On  His  bent  back  the  great 
board  is  crowded  down  by  the  great  screw,  and  out  of  the  gash  in 
His  side  the  pressure  drives  a  torrent  of  blood  which  flows  into  the 
vat  in  which  He  stands.  Out  of  mouths  in  the  sides  of  this  vat 
the  blood  comes  flowing  in  smaller  streams,  and  angels  catch  it 
in  cups  and  hand  it  to  the  faithful  all  about,  who  are  drinking  it 
before  one's  eyes.  Yet  there  is  nothing  in  all  this  horrible  realism 
which  is  not  easily  enough  matched  in  the  writings  of  Calvinistic 
and  Romish  theologians. 

The  Franz  and  Carl  of  Schiller's  "Die  Rauber  "  is  another 
illustration  of  that  disposition  to  disparage  respectability  as 
against  vagrant  generosity  which  is  always  appearing.  It  is  the 
same  thing  whose  real  key  we  have  in  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal 
Son. 

The  nature  of  the  cause  in  which  heroism  is  shown  does  not 
affect  our  honor  for  the  heroism  itself.  We  do  not  like  confes- 
sion, but  the  constancy  of  this  St.  John  Nepomuk,  who  would  not 
reveal  to  Emperor  Wenzel  (1383)  what  the  Empress  had  told  him 
in  the  confessional,  wins  our  honor  nevertheless. 

In  the  old  castle  at  Prague  the  Bottle-Shaped  Dungeon,  where 
they  put  victims  for  starvation,  has  in  its  floor  a  hold  leading  to  a 
lower  cavern  still.  When  any  prisoner  was  put  into  the  horrid 
place  the  dead  body  of  the  last  occupant  was  thrust  into  this  hole 
and  there  decayed,  the  new  wretch  dying  in  the  horrid  stench  of 
his  predecessor's  corpse.  So  sometimes  with  doomed  Ideas  and 
Institutions. 


^T,46]  EXTRACTS  FROM  NOTE-BOOK    365 

The  English  minister  at  Prague  compelled  eveiy  week  to  send 
his  text  to  the  police  authorities;  sometimes  compelled  to  send 
his  whole  sermon  too. 

Like  a  bell  buoy  got  adrift  and  ringing  wildly  all  over  the 
ocean. 

The  conversation  of  Jesus  with  the  woman  of  Samaria  comes 
out  very  strongly  as  the  type  of  the  narrowness  of  orthodox  con- 
servatism (in  this  case  combined  with  a  life  of  sin)  set  over  against 
the  breadth  which  had  its  root  in  first  principles.  "Our  fathers 
worshipped  in  this  mountain,  and  ye  say  that  in  Jerusalem  is  the 
place  where  men  ought  to  worship;  "  "How  is  it  that  thou,  being 
a  Jew,  askest  drink  of  me,  a  woman  of  Samaria  ?  "  How  often  I 
have  heard  this  sort  of  talk  from  the  true  sectarian.  And  then 
the  richness  and  depth  of  Jesus,  "The  hour  cometh,  and  now  is, 
when  the  true  worshipper  shall  worship  the  Father  in  spirit  and 
in  truth." 

As  when  the  music  of  the  organ  suddenly  stops  and  leaves  only 
the  solid,  stolid  tramp  of  outgoing  feet. 

We  are  not  called  upon  to  set  in  opposition  the  two  great  con- 
ceptions of  the  results  of  conduct,  one  of  which  thinks  of  them  as 
inevitable  consequences  naturally  produced,  and  the  other  as  the 
rewards  and  punishments  meted  out  by  the  superior  insight  and 
justice  of  a  ruling  Lord.  Each  conception  has.  its  value,  which 
we  cannot  afford  to  lose  in  seeking  for  the  total  truth.  The  first 
gives  reasonableness  and  reliability  to  the  whole  idea.  The 
second  preserves  the  vividness  of  personality.  The  time  was  when 
the  second  conception  monopolized  men's  thought.  In  the  present 
strong  reaction  from  the  second  to  the  first  conception  it  would 
be  a  great  loss  if  we  let  the  second  be  denied  or  fade  into  forget- 
fulness. 

When  St.  Francis  Xavier  had  been  buried  at  Goa,  "le  corps 
du  saint  fut  officiellement  d^clard  vice-roi  des  Indes  et  lieutenant 
g^ndral;  et  c'est  de  lui  que  le  veritable  gouverneur  ^tait  cens^ 
tenir  ses  pouvoirs;  encore  au  commencement  du  dix-neuvieme 
sifecle,  il  allait  les  demander  en  grande  pompe  a  Bon  Jesus  avant 
de  prendre  possession  de  son  gouvernement."  (Reclus,  India,  iii. 
447.)  A  picturesque  illustration  of  the  way  the  living  are  rul- 
ing by  the  work  the  dead  have  done.  The  great  dead  still  really 
rule. 


^66  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

The  Ten  Commandments  based  on  the  idea  of  liberty.  "Thus 
spake  Jehovah  who  brought  you  out  of  the  house  of  bondage, " 
and  issuing  in  the  injunctions  of  duty  and  righteousness  "Thou 
shalt  and  thou  shalt  not ;  "  so  Liberty  and  Duty  lie  together  here. 
(See  Robertson  Smith's  Prophets  of  Israel,  pp.  40,  41.) 

It  seems  to  be  almost  an  indication  of  the  incompleteness  of 
each  thing  by  itself,  and  of  how  each  needs  all  the  rest  to  make 
a  whole,  that  we  find  the  full  illustration  of  the  qualities  of  each 
in  other  things  than  itself,  —  often  in  those  things  which  are  its 
opposites.  Thus  we  say  of  the  frank  man  that  he  is  "simple  as 
a  child,"  and  then  we  bid  the  boy  "behave  like  a  man."  The 
hero  is  "bold  as  a  lion,"  and  the  strong  voice  rings  "like  a  trum- 
pet." It  is  in  the  individual  and  the  host  coming  to  their  several 
completenesses  together  that  the  final  completeness  of  the  whole 
must  be  attained. 

I  read  in  a  religious  paper,  "Nothing  short  of  this  can  differ- 
ence the  gospel  from  any  other  ethical  system  in  kind."  Do 
we,  then,  want  to  difference  the  gospel  from  the  ethical  systems 
of  the  human  soul?  Is  the  impulse  which  makes  us  want  to  do 
so  the  highest  impulse  of  the  soul?  Is  there  not  yet  a  higher 
and  a  truer  impulse  whereby  we  may  rejoice  to  see  the  gospel 
sweep  into  itself  all  of  man's  moral  effort,  and  prove  itself  the 
highest  utterance  of  Him  who  in  the  million  cravings  of  man  for 
righteousness  has  always  been,  is  always,  making  Himself  known  ? 

There  are  who  hold  life  like  a  precious  stone, 

Hither  and  thither  turning  it  to  see 

The  rich  light  play  in  its  mysterious  depths ; 

And  other  men  to  whom  life  seems  a  bridge 
By  which  they  pass  to  things  which  lie  beyond ; 

And  others  still  who  count  life  but  as  wine, 
In  which  they  drink  their  pledges  to  their  friends. 

But  then  there  are  to  whom  life's  dearness  lies 
In  that  it  is  the  pressure  of  Grod's  hand. 
With  which  He  holds  our  feeble  hand  in  love, 
And  makes  us  know  ourselves  in  knowing  Him. 

There  is  a  stronger  and  stronger  reluctance  to  have  religion 
treated  purely  as  a  regulative  force  for  conduct.  That  it  will 
surely  be,  but  that  it  will  be  most  surely  if  it  be  primarily  con- 
sidered as  the  power  of  a  higher  consciousness,  the  power  by 
which  the  soul  knows  itself  divine,  and  enters  into  conscious  com- 
mimion  with  God.      So,   if  I  could  do  what  I  would,   I  would 


^T.  46]    EXTRACTS  FROM  JOURNAL         367 

reveal  the  power  of  religion  to  a  soul,  and  thus  it  should  arrive 
at  lofty  contempt  for  sin ,  which  should  be  its  perpetual  safety  and 
strength.  And  is  not  this  the  real  thought  which  was  in  all  the 
ancient  talk  about  works  and  Faith  ? 

As  when  a  mother  proudly  holds  the  hand 
Of  children,  walking  one  on  either  side, 
Who  fight  their  fights  across  her,  and  yet  still 
Are  one  in  being  hers,  howe'er  they  fight; 
So  walk  we  'mid  our  struggling  fears  and  hopes. 

The  way  in  which  the  fact  that  Nelson  was  mortally  wounded 
was  kept  from  the  knowledge  of  the  men  as  they  fought  on  to 
victory  at  Trafalgar.  (See  Rossetti's  Sonnets,  p.  271.)  Some 
people  seem  to  think  they  can  do  so  with  a  dying  doctrine. 

The  Banyan  Tree,  dropping  its  supplementary  branches,  which 
take  root;  then  the  main  trunk  decaying,  and  the  tree  supported 
by  these  secondary  supports.  So-  of  institutions  and  doctrines, 
and  their  history  and  first  evidences. 

"Is  there  not  a  lie  in  my  right  hand  ?  " 

The  tragedy  and  misery  of  having  falsehood  at  the  very  seat  of 
power,  not  merely  an  accident  of  the  life,  but  in  possession  of  its 
very  citadel. 

In  addition  to  his  letters  and  the  note-book  from  which 
these  extracts  are  taken,  Mr.  Brooks  kept  a  journal  where 
he  records  his  impressions  of  travel.  By  its  aid  we  may  fol- 
low the  lonely  man  in  his  wanderings  from  place  to  place. 
It  is  too  voluminous  to  be  given  in  full,  but  a  few  extracts 
from  it,  which  are  as  characteristic  as  they  are  beautiful, 
bring  us  near  to  the  man  himself,  nearer  than  his  friends 
could  come  as  he  moved  in  and  out  among  them. 

Beklin,  Thursday,  September  7,  1882. 
The  first  day  in  Berlin  certainly  does  not  impress  one  with 
anything  like  brightness  or  gayety.  Everything  is  dull  and  lum- 
bering. The  people,  for  the  most  part,  very  homely,  the  shops 
tiresomely  ugly,  and  the  whole  having  the  look  of  a  piece  of 
coarse  material  which  has  not  well  taken  polish,  perhaps  which 
has  not  yet  found  the  right  way  of  being  polished,  but  has  tried 
other  people's  ways  and  so  has  failed.  At  the  same  time  there 
is  an  evident  strength,  the  constant  suggestion  of  not  being  yet 


368  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

finished,  but  having  a  future,  and  the  general  homeliness  in  which 
the  simplest  affections  show  out  not  unpleasingly. 

He  comments  on  the  picture  of  George  Gisze,  the  mer- 
chant, by  the  younger  Holbein  in  the  Museum :  — 

Berlin,  Friday,  September  8,  1882. 

It  is  a  picture  perfect  in  its  kind,  of  the  best  sort  of  northern 
life  and  mercantile  character.  No  southerner,  no  dealer  with 
the  abstract  as  the  business  of  his  life,  ever  looked  like  that. 
He  knew  affairs.  The  lovely  green  wall,  before  which  he  sits, 
is  covered  with  the  apparatus  of  concrete  concerns.  He  writes 
and  receives  letters,  which  are  what  fasten  men  to  common,  pre- 
sent things.  And  yet  he  thinks.  Those  eyes  look  beyond  his 
ledgers.  And  he  has  suffered.  Not  idly  is  his  motto  written  on 
the  wall,   "Nulla  sine  merito  voluptas." 

Where  shall  such  a  merchant  meet  such  a  painter  now  ?  It  is 
a  sober  strength  which  comes  from  such  a  picture,  a  genuine  in- 
spiration to  good  and  faithful  work. 

Sunday,  September  10,  1882. 

Took  tea  with  Baron  George  von  Bunsen  and  his  family,  who 
were  most  interesting  people,  old  friends  of  Stanley's,  son  of  the 
famous  Bunsen,  now  member  of  German  Parliament,  a  broad 
churchman  and  liberal  in  politics.  Is  under  prosecution  for  libel 
by  Bismarck,  who,  it  seems,  makes  three  hundred  such  prosecutions 
every  year.  Baron  Bunsen  gives  but  poor  accounts  of  religious 
conditions.  Liberal  church  empty;  dogmatists  and  unbelievers 
have  things  their  own  way.  But  it  is  good  to  hear  of  the  power 
of  what  he  calls  the  second  class,  — professors,  judges,  etc.,  — 
who  are  the  real  power,  the  higher  society  having  no  power  to 
oppose  them. 

Tuesday,  September  12,  1882, 

Spent  some  time  in  the  Kunst  Gewerbe  Ausstellung,  where 
they  have  a  sort  of  show  and  salesroom  of  the  present  artistic 
manufactures  of  the  town.  One  thing  pervades  it  all,  a  certain 
heaviness  and  lack  of  inspiration  and  careless  ease,  which  is  the 
delight  of  all  such  work.  "Go  to,  now,  and  let  us  make  our 
furniture  beautiful,"  they  have  said,  and  the  result  is  what 
we  might  have  expected.  The  old  German  work  is  delightful 
because  it  is  unconscious  and  quaint,  very  little  of  intrinsic  or 
eternal  beauty  in  it.  Take  the  unconsciousness  away  and  let 
the  race  try  to  be  beautiful,  and  they  fail  just  where  the  Greeks, 
whom  they  seem  to  worship  with  a  sort  of  despairing  adoration, 
so  wonderfully  succeeded. 


^T.  46]    EXTRACTS  FROM  JOURNAL         369 

Berlin,  September  15, 1882. 

I  paid  a  long  visit  to  Dr.  Carl  Abel,  and  found  a  very  intelli- 
gent and  learned  man.  He  told  me  of  the  strong  tendency  which 
he  believes  exists  at  present  among  the  better  German  classes 
towards  religion;  not  distinctively  towards  Christianity,  but  in 
general  towards  theism,  although  some  of  it  still  keeps  a  pan- 
theistic aspect,  towards  reverent  thoughts  of  the  mystery  of  the 
causal  powers  of  life  and  death.  Lotze,  who  seems  to  have  been 
highly  honored  here,  represents  the  real  tendency  of  German 
thought.  Of  course  there  is  also  the  growing  irreligiousness  of 
a  great  busy  community,  and  there  is  the  narrow  materialism  of 
absorbed  scientists,  but  these  are  special  phenomena  with  their 
own  explanations.    .    .    . 

Monday,  September  18,  1882. 

In  the  morning  to  the  Royal  Library,  —  a  free  public  library, 
where  whoever  will  may  come  and  read,  and  with  simplest  pre- 
cautions books  may  be  taken  out,  —  every  way  apparently  as  free 
as  our  own  Public  Library.  It  is  the  love  and  care  for  learning 
that  mitigates  the  hardness  of  this  northern  city.  Without  that, 
and  with  its  all-pervading  military  habits,  it  would  be  barba- 
rian. In  the  library  are  many  interesting  manuscripts,  but  per- 
haps the  most  interesting  is  the  Bible  and  Prayer  Book  which, 
on  the  morning  of  his  execution,  Charles  I.  of  England  gave  to 
Archbishop  Jaxon.     How  comes  it  here? 

Dined  at  Baron  von  der  Heydt's.  A  lovely  view  over  a  quiet 
lake  not  far  from  Potsdam,  royal  estates  all  around.  Dr.  and 
Mrs.  Henry  Potter  dined  there;  also  Dr.  Strauss,  the  court 
preacher  at  Potsdam.    ... 

Berlin,  Wednesday,  September  20,  1882. 

The  beautiful  picture  of  the  dead  Christ  in  the  Museum,  which 
was  formerly  ascribed  to  Mantegna,  is  now  called  by  the  name  of 
John  Bellini.  It  is  rather  hard  to  give  up  the  old  association, 
and  though  no  doubt  the  evidence  is  sufficient,  one  cannot  help 
feeling  that  the  old  name  suited  best  the  picture's  character.  It 
is  a  greater  picture  than  Bellini,  with  all  his  wonderful  sweetness 
and  beauty,  ever  made.  The  greatness  of  the  Christ,  and  the 
tenderness  of  the  sorrowing  angels  who  support  him,  are  both 
wonderful. 

A  pleasant  dinner  at  Dr.  Abbott's  with  Herr  von  Bunsen,  Dr. 
Abel,  Mr.  Sargent,  our  new  minister,  and  Dr.  Frommel,  Hof 
Prediger,  the  last  a  very  interesting  man,  full  of  eloquence  and 
imagination,  a  bit  too  declamatory  for  private  life,  but  very 
earnest.     He  differs  altogether  from  Stocker  about  the  Jew  ques- 

VOL.  n 


370  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

tion ;  thinks  Christianity  is  suffering  the  reward  of  its  misdoings 
but  sees  the  outcome  in  the  return  of  the  Jews. 

Berlin,  Friday,  September  22,  1882. 

A  long  morning  with  Herr  von  Bunsen  at  the  Falk  Real  Schule 
in  the  Charlottenberg  district.  The  bright  little  boys  and  their 
oral  arithmetic,  the  tendency  to  guess,  the  frequent  mistakes, 
but  the  general  quickness  and  correctness.  The  gymnasium  full 
of  boys  of  about  fifteen  at  their  physical  exercise,  the  absence  of 
manly  games  among  German  boys,  the  consumptive  look,  the  pale 
faces  and  thin  frames.  Then  the  melancholy  religious  teaching, 
boys  being  taught  to  analyze  and  explain  the  Epistle  to  the  Gala- 
tians,  evidently  very  tiresome  to  them ;  a  strong  confirmation  of 
the  belief  that  the  Bible  is  not  suited  to  such  ways  of  being 
taught.   .   .   . 

Berlin,  Saturday,  September  23,  1882. 

I  leave  Berlin  to-day  after  a  little  over  two  weeks'  visit. 
The  people  impress  me  not  wholly  pleasantly.  The  enormous 
power  of  the  army  overshadows  everything.  Great  commercial 
activity  is  everywhere.  Social  life  is  generous  and  free,  and  in 
its  best  specimens  unsurpassed  doubtless  in  all  the  world,  but  in 
its  ordinary  aspects  it  is  crude  and  rude.  A  coarse  personality 
is  everywhere,  and  through  the  whole  community  there  runs  a 
certain  restlessness  and  fear,  a  disappointment  that  the  nation 
has  not  won,  out  of  the  wonderful  success  of  1870,  the  advan- 
tages which  were  so  confidently  looked  for ;  a  sense  of  constant 
pressure  from  without,  the  two  great  neighbors,  France  and 
Russia,  never  being  forgotten  for  a  moment,  and  a  sense  of 
watchful  surveillance  within,  which  makes  liberty  a  partial  and 
always  precarious  possession. 

Wittenberg,  Sunday,  September  24, 1882. 
A  delightful  Luther  Sunday.  In  the  morning  at  eight  to  his 
old  parish  church,  where  a  dull  sermon  wearied  a  quite  numerous 
congregation.  The  singing  was  good,  and  all  the  time  there  was 
the  association  of  his  having  preached  there,  and  of  this  having 
been  the  place  where  first,  in  1522,  the  communion,  in  both 
kinds,  was  given  to  the  laity.  How  formal  an  event  it  sounds, 
and  how  essential  it  really  is.  The  standing  of  the  people  while 
the  text  is  read  is  very  good.  The  Augustinian  Convent,  with 
the  great  Reformer's  rooms,  is  a  perfect  monument.  And  that 
strange  wife  of  his,  who  is  said  to  have  been  so  pretty,  and  looks 
so  ugly  in  all  the  pictures,  gives  a  homely  reality  to  it  all.  His 
little  fourteen-year-old  girl's  picture,  hanging  in  the  chamber 
where  he  died,  is  very  pretty.   .   .   . 


^T.  46]    EXTRACTS  FROM  JOURNAL         371 

Halle,  Monday,  September  25,  1882. 
Halle  has  grown  greatly  since  I  saw  it  seventeen  years  ago. 
Now  it  has  80,000  people,  and  all  the  new  fine  streets  which 
every  growing  town,  it  seems,  must  have.  But  still  the  University 
is  here,  and  Francke's  Institute.  The  latter  is  enormous,  and 
seems  as  if  it  must  be  very  difficult  to  guard  from  false  develop- 
ments, and  perhaps  also  from  corruption.  But  its  look  of  sim- 
plicity is  very  charming,  and  the  German  teacher,  with  his  class 
of  girls,  was  the  very  picture  of  unsophisticated  earnestness. 
One  is  ready  very  seriously  and  literally  to  ask  who  has  left  a 
more  enviable  name  in  the  world  than  Francke.  The  University 
has  the  same  simplicity.  Its  class  rooms  are  as  plain  as  rooms 
can  be  made,  and  even  its  Fest  Hall  has  not  succeeded  in  being 
fine.  But  its  library  building  is  superbly  arranged.  Professor 
Conrad  went  through  the  buildings  with  me,  —  a  youngish  man, 
Professor  of  Political  Economy.  I  took  tea  afterwards  at  his 
house :  a  strong  man,  talking  as  they  all  talk  about  the  poverty 
of  Germany  and  the  crushing  effects  of  the  war.  I  saw  with 
him  the  very  curious  and  interesting  cast  from  Luther's  face 
after  death,  which  is  made  into  a  sitting  statue,  and,  with  his 
own  Bible  before  him,  sits  at  the  window  and  looks  into  the 
market. 

EiSLBBEN,  Tuesday,  September  26, 1882. 
Professor  Conrad  rode  with  me  in  the  train  almost  to  Eisleben, 
getting  out  at  the  station  before,  where  he  has  a  little  country 
place.  He  talked  of  the  Church  and  its  lack  of  hold  upon  the 
people,,  their  slight  religiousness.  He  ascribed  it  to  the  dead  life 
of  the  clergy,  who  study  theology  but  not  life,  cultivate  the  head 
and  not  the  heart,  and  have  not  sympathy  with  the  people.  It 
is  the  old  story,  with  probably  about  the  usual  amount  of  truth 
in  it.  At  least  he  earnestly  regretted  that  there  was  not  more 
religion.  He  talked  also  of  the  superabundance  of  students, 
more  than  Germany  can  provide  for  in  learned  occupations. 
Divinity  students  are  increasing.    .   .   . 

Wbimab,  Wednesday,  September  27,  1882. 
The  poetic  character  of  this  town,  with  its  long  worship  of 
Goethe  and  Schiller,  has  something  artificial,  an  eighteenth  cen- 
tury look  about  it,  but  very  pretty,  and  the  town  suits  it  per- 
fectly. It  is  like  a  very  well-kept  room  of  an  unforgotten  but 
dead  friend.  One  can  see  Goethe  going  in  and  out  of  Herder's 
door,  and  the  park  all  about  the  town  is  a  beautiful  setting  for 
it.  And  Luther  preached  here  in  the  Stadt  Kirche,  they  say, 
on  his  way  to  Worms.   .   .    . 


372  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

Weimar  and  Gotha,  September  28,  1882. 
Of  all  the  pretty  Thuringian  towns  there  seem  to  be  none  so 
pretty  as  these  two.  Weimar  is  a  monumental  town.  It  is  a 
sort  of  German  Concord,  with  most  characteristic  differences. 
.  .  .  The  new  Museum,  quite  at  the  other  end  of  the  town,  has 
the  Odyssey  frescoes  of  Preller,  which  are  models  of  their  kind 
of  decorative  art.  The  pale  and  quiet  colors  keep  the  dreamlike 
vagueness  and  distance  of  the  whole  story.  No  one  can  help 
Tbeing  interested,  but  no  one  can  become  anxious  or  excited  over 
the  doings  or  the  fate  of  these  far-away  people.  It  is  as  if  the 
transparent  veil  of  twenty-five  centuries  were  between  them  and 
us.  Then,  in  the  Bibliotek,  you  come  to  the  startling  reality 
of  Luther's  coarse  and  ragged  cloak  which  he  wore  when  he  was 
an  Augustinian  monk  at  Erfurt. 

Frankfort,  Sunday,  October  1,  1882. 
There  must  have  been  something  in  the  early  Reformation 
times  which  tended  to  bring  out  the  best  German  character. 
Luther  is  constantly  interesting.  It  must  have  been  partly  the 
fresh  sense  of  discovery  and  the  feeling  of  an  opening  future, 
which  is  always  suited  to  the  German  mind,  and  inspires  it  to  its 
"best.  It  may  also  have  been  the  presence  of  conflict,  which  the 
German  also  loves.  But,  whatever  it  was,  it  has  strangely  disap- 
peared. Modern  German  Protestantism  is  the  driest  thing.  It 
seems  to  have  had  no  power  to  develop  any  poetry  or  richness. 
At  present  it  seems  to  be  ground  between  the  upper  millstone  of 
a  military  state  and  the  lower  millstone  of  the  learned  universi- 
ties. It  was  almost  a  relief  to  be  again  in  the  Catholic  worship 
in  the  Cathedral  here  this  morning. 

Heidelberg,  Tuesday,  October  10,  1882. 
...  In  the  early  evening  on  the  great  terrace,  where  after 
all  is  the  finest  point  of  view.      I  watched  the  lights  gradually 
kindling  in  the  darkening  town,  and  thought  of  the  Reformation 
breaking  out  at  point  after  point  in  Europe.    .    .    . 

Heidelberg,  Wednesday,  October  11,  1882. 
Goethe  chose  a  most  beautiful  spot  in  the  Elizabeth  Garden  for 
his  point  of  outlook  over  the  town,  which  looks  very  grim  and 
gray  and  sets  off  richly  the  broad  sweeps  of  color  which  are  on 
either  side  of  it.  A  still  finer  point  is  further  on  towards  the 
brink  of  the  castle  hill,  where  the  garden  seems  to  sweep  out  for 
the  very  purpose  with  a  sudden  jut  into  the  air.  Here  the  leaves 
were  falling  thick  as  I  sat  taking  my  last  view  of  it  all  to-day. 
Last  Sunday  the  English  minister  preached  a  very  dreary  and 


^T.  46]  EXTRACTS  FROM  JOURNAL    373 

dull  sermon  about  "we  all  do  fade  as  a  leaf."  Here  was  the 
real  sermon.  It  was  inspiring,  but  terrible  to  see  each  leaf  fall, 
carrying  with  it  its  whole  history  since  it  was  a  bright  little 
green  thing  last  spring,  falling  with  such  perfect  quietness,  but 
having  done  its  duty  all  summer.    .    .    . 

WiJKZBtrRG,  Sunday,  October  15,  1882. 
It  is  something  of  a  notable  Sunday  in  Wurzburg  to-day,  for 
it  is  the  anniversary  of  St.  Burkard,  one  of  the  many  planters  of 
Christianity  in  this  region,  —  for  it  seems  to  have  been  planted 
and  destroyed  and  replanted  again  and  again.  This  morning  the 
Mass  in  the  Neumtlnster  Kirche,  under  which  St.  Kilian,  the 
martyr,  another  of  the  early  apostles  of  Wurzburg  lies  buried, 
was  fine  and  crowded.  The  singing  of  the  people  was  splendid. 
There  was  a  strange  spontaneousness  about  it.  It  burst  out 
almost  as  if  it  were  a  common  thought  of  the  moment.  So  dif- 
ferent from  our  "giving  out  "  hymns.    .   .    . 

Leipsic,  Thursday,  October  19,  1882. 
The  religious  question  in  Germany  has  suffered  from  that  fate, 
which  always  is  disastrous  to  it,  of  being  made  a  political  ques- 
tion. But  leaving  aside  those  whose  whole  interest  in  the  ques- 
tion is  to  be  explained  on  political  grounds,  there  remain  certain 
clearly  recognizable  classes :  First,  the  Virchows  and  Haeckels, 
the  simply  naturalistic  people,  whose  hatred  to  church  and  reli- 
gion is  something  quite  unknown  among  us.  Second,  the  oppo- 
site extreme,  the  dogmatic  churchmen,  whose  whole  theological 
position  is  retroactive  and  obstructive.  Third,  the  liberal  church 
party,  who  esteem  the  church  purely  for  its  social  and  police  value, 
and  take  little  or  no  interest  in  its  missionary  aspects.  Such 
are  some  of  the  rationalistic  preachers.  Fourth,  there  is  not 
clearly  shaped  nor  very  prominent  a  school  of  thoughtful,  earnest, 
and  enlightened  men,  to  whom  the  real  future  of  Christianity  in 
Germany  belongs,  the  men  of  reasonable  faith  like  Lotze. 

Leipsic,  Friday,  October  20,  1882. 
The  life  of  young  students  here  is  very  curious,  supposing  them 
to  be  real  students,  and  genuinely  in  earnest  with  regard  to  what 
they  are  about.  They  are  all  specialists,  none  of  them  are  seek- 
ing a  complete  or  rounded  education.  Each  of  them  is  dealing 
with  a  people  not  imitable  by  him,  however  admirable  they  may 
be  in  themselves,  out  of  whose  learning  he  is  to  pluck  the  special 
knowledge  he  desires.  And  they  are  mostly  at  an  age  when  a 
special  hero-worship  or  enthusiasm  seems  to  satisfy  the  life  and 
when  the  habits  of  the  life  are  being  very  deeply  founded.     There 


374  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

certainly  could  be  no  circumstances  in  which  the  value  of  loftiness 
of  purpose  and  purity  of  life  could  come  out  more  strongly,  — 
and  with  many  it  does  seem  to  have  these  inspirations,  I  mean 
among  the  young  Americans. 

Berlin,  Saturday,  October  21,  1882. 
As  one  gets  back  again  to  Berlin,  after  a  month's  absence, 
there  is  a  new  sense  of  how  modern  the  town's  life  is,  and  of 
how  plain  and  prosaic  the  people  are.  German  art  so  lacks 
spontaneity,  is  so  scholastically  overridden,  and  German  taste  is 
so  enterprising  and  so  bad.  One  is  very  much  struck  with  the 
lack  of  humor  which  is  the  rectifying  sense.  There  is  immense 
heartiness  and  good  feeling,  enthusiasm  for  country,  pride  in 
their  heroes,  and  devotion  to  ideas ;  but  of  easy  and  graceful  ex- 
pression of  it  there  is  very  little.  The  public  monuments  are 
generally  most  unpleasing.  The  officers  of  the  army  are  the  only 
well-built  and  well-dressed  men.     The  streets  lack  lightness  and 

liveliness.    .    .    . 

Berlin,  Monday,  October  23,  1882. 

The  minute  divisions  of  the  Established  Protestant  Church  of 
Prussia  within  itself  are  very  complicated  and  numerous.  They 
suggest,  of  course,  the  one  thing  to  be  said  in  favor  of  a  State 
Church,  that  it  keeps  the  different  schools  of  thought  in  associa- 
tion with  each  other.  On  the  other  hand,  it  certainly  develops 
animosities  and  jealousies  which  are  exasperated  by  the  forced 
union  of  antagonistic  minds.  It  is  the  old  question  which  we 
have  settled  for  ourselves  by  the  free  liberty  of  sects.  In  all 
their  preaching  there  is  too  much  eloquence  and  too  little  thought. 

Berlin,  Friday,  October  27,  1882. 
A  visit  to  Dr.  Hermann  Grimm,  the  author  of  the  "Life  of 
Michael  Angelo, "  "Life  of  Goethe,"  etc.,  translator  of  some 
small  parts  of  Emerson,  lecturer  on  art  in  the  university.  The 
picture  which,  from  his  point  of  view,  he  gives  of  religion  in 
Germany,  and  the  way  in  which  it  has  affected  his  whole  feeling 
about  religion,  is  most  interesting.  He  speaks  of  all  that  goes 
on  in  the  churches  as  something  that  does  not  appeal  to  him  in 
any  way,  and  so  he  never  goes  to  church.  He  claims  that  there 
are  no  men  who  are  what  Schleiermacher  seems  to  have  been, 
distinct  both  from  the  dogmatists  on  one  side,  and  from  the 
equally  acid  rationalists  upon  the  other.  And  certainly  I  myself 
have  failed  to  find  any  such  either  in  personal  intercourse  or  in 
reading  contemporary  books.  Professor  Grimm  then  curiously 
talked  of  a  certain  power  which  distinctly  belonged,  he  said,  to 
the  Boman  Catholic  ceremonial,  and  made  many  educated  men 


^T.  46]    EXTRACTS  FROM  JOURNAL         375 

feel  it  as  they  felt  nothing  in  Protestantism.  It  was  historical 
and  it  was  self-possessed.  The  priest  at  the  altar,  with  a  certain 
disregard  of  the  people,  busied  himself  directly  with  God.  He 
did  not  attempt  to  teach  what  is  unteachable,  but  he  stood  be- 
tween the  soul  and  God,  and  in  some  vague  way  made  the  divine 
present.  Strange  enough,  surely,  to  find  a  man  like  Professor 
Grimm  feeling  all  this,  and  at  the  same  time  feeling  the  power 
of  the  preaching  of  Channing  and  of  Parker,  of  both  of  whom  he 
spoke.  He  speaks  hopelessly  of  religion  in  Germany,  but  surely 
there  can  be  no  room  for  despair  until  first  the  trial  of  a  volun- 
tary religion  shall  be  made,  and  some  attempt  at  a  higher  priest- 
hood than  either  the  Romanist's  or  Channing 's  shall  be  seen. 

Berlin,  Saturday,  October  28,  1882. 

It  is  strange  how,  in  a  great  gallery  like  this  of  Berlin,  one 
finds  his  special  mood  met  by  one  class  of  pictures  and  special 
rooms  attracting  him  on  special  days.  .  .  .  One  day  you  go 
there  and  Holbein's  portraits  fascinate  you  completely,  and  sat- 
isfy your  cravings,  while,  if  you  wander  into  the  other  room,  the 
faults  and  crudities  of  Botticelli  are  all  that  you  can  see.  But 
to-day  his  St.  John  in  the  Madonna  picture  seemed  full  of  myste- 
rious beauty,  and  even  the  Eve,  with  yellow  hair  on  the  black 
ground,  appeared  to  appeal  to  something  very  real  in  one's  power 
of  enjoyment.   .   .    . 

Berlin,  Monday,  October  30,  1882. 

Professor  Zeller's  lecture  room  at  eleven  o'clock  was  crowded 
with  students-  who  had  come  to  hear  him  discourse  on  the  History 
of  Philosophy.  He  was  talking  especially  of  the  Greek  philoso- 
phies as  they  influenced  mediaeval  times.  The  lecture  was  inter- 
esting, but  still  more  interesting  the  audience.  One  wondered 
what  had  brought  them  there,  and  what  they  proposed  to  do  with 
the  knowledge  they  were  getting.  They  had  not  the  look  of 
pure  students  for  the  pure  sake  of  knowledge,  nor  did  they  seem 
intellectually  ready  for  great  thought.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
profitable  purposes  to  which  such  knowledge  could  be  turned  it 
was  impossible  to  see.  Professor  Herman  Grimm,  who  lectured 
from  one  till  two  on  the  Earliest  History  of  Christian  Art, 
gave  a  very  good  sketch  of  the  changes  of  early  German  art  in 
the  way  of  representing  the  persons  of  the  Trinity.  A  well-put, 
intelligent  account,  with  nothing  particularly  suggestive  or  pro- 
found. In  the  afternoon  I  walked  a  long,  long  way,  and  came 
at  last  down  Schleierraacher  Strasse  to  the  Dreifaltigkeit  Kirch- 
enhof,  where  I  saw  Schleiermacher's  tomb,  and  in  the  evening, 
on  my  way  home  from  hearing  Pastor  Frommel  talk  to  the  coach- 


376  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

men  and  postilions,  I  passed  the  Dreifaltigkeit  Church,   where 
Schleiermacher  used  to  preach. 

Berlin,  Tuesday,  October  31,  1882. 
It  is  very  interesting  indeed,  in  the  Dorotheen  Burial  Ground, 
to  see  the  two  quiet  simple  monuments  of  Fichte  and  Hegel 
facing  each  other  across  the  narrow  path,  which  was  all  wet  this 
afternoon  with  rain,  and  covered  with  dead  autumn  leaves  trod- 
den into  the  ground.  Fichte 's  monument  hears  on  one  of  its 
three  sides  his  name,  with  dates  of  birth  and  death ;  and  on  an- 
other that  of  his  wife,  with  the  assurance  that  she  was  the  worthy- 
wife  of  such  a  man;  and  on  the  third,  the  Old  Testament  text 
which  tells  how  those  who  turn  many  to  righteousness  shall  shine 
like  the  stars.  One  feels  how  late  all  German  greatness  is.  In 
the  Reichstag  Chamber  the  things  that  interest  you  are  the  seats 
of  Bismarck  and  Von  Moltke,  and  the  tablets  of  great  Germans 
in  the  corridors  go  back  no  farther  than  a  century.   .   .   . 

Dresden,  Saturday,  November  4,  1882. 
One  comes  back  to  the  sight  of  anything  which  he  has  seen  in 
his  mind's  eye,  so  long  as  he  has  seen  the  Dresden  Madonna, 
with  a  sort  of  fear  whether,  in  all  these  years,  the  memory  has 
not  been  deceived  by  the  imagination ;  whether,  dreaming  of  the 
world's  most  perfect  picture,  his  dream  has  not  passed  into  a 
region  where  no  actual  power  of  human  art  can  follow  it,  and  so 
the  point  from  which  it  started  will  fail  to  satisfy  one  who  comes 
back  to  it.  This  is  the  sort  of  question  which  is  in  one's  mind 
as  he  passes  through  the  curtained  doorway  which  leads  into  the 
shrine  of  the  great  picture.  And  he  finds  it  greater  than  his 
dream!  A  deeper  wonder  than  his  memory  has  been  able  to 
carry  is  in  the  Mother's  eyes.  The  Child  looks  into  a  distance 
farther  than  his  thoughts  have  run.  The  faint,  rich  heaven  of 
angel  faces  behind  the  scene  is  sweet  and  holy  beyond  any  con- 
ception which  his  senses  have  been  fine  enough  to  keep.  Before 
the  picture  begins  to  open  to  him  again  its  special  treasures  of 
detail,  it  blesses  him  with  this  renewed  knowledge  of  the  wonder- 
ful power  of  the  highest  art. 

Dresden,  Sunday,  November  5,  1882. 

Among  the  religious  manifestations  of  Germany  one  finds  it 
hard  to  discover  any  trace  of  that  which  in  England  and  America 
seems  to  many  of  us  at  the  present  day  to  be  most  full  of  attrac- 
tiveness and  hope,  —  the  devout  and  spiritual  rationalism  of 
Maurice  and  Erskine  and  Washburn,  all  the  more  spiritual  for 
the  freedom  of  its  thought,  free  in  its  thought  just  because  of  the 
profoundness  of  its  faith  in  G^d.     This  may  exist,  but  it  is  cer- 


JET.  46]  EXTRACTS  FROM  JOURNAL    377 

tainly  not  a  prominent  or  powerful  element  in  the  religion  of  the 
land.  There  is  Pietism;  there  is  scholarly  Dogmatism;  there 
is  hard,  critical  Liberalism;  but  unless  it  be  in  some  trace  of 
Schleiermacher's  influence,  or  possibly  in  some  power  of  Tholuck 
and  such  men  as  he,  making  their  followers  broader  than  they 
were  themselves,  it  is  hard  to  find  the  religious  life  of  which  I 
speak.  The  Orthodox  all  call  Schleiermacher  pantheistic,  as  if 
every  attempt  to  depict  the  essential  closeness  of  God's  life  to 
His  world  must  not  incur  that  charge. 

Dbesden,  Tuesday,  November  7,  1882. 

After  seventeen  years  I  come  back  to  the  Sistine  Madonna,  and 
find  it  greater  than  I  thought.  One  of  the  things  that  most  im- 
presses me  about  the  picture  is  the  wonderful  life  that  is  in  it. 
There  is  such  a  stillness  in  it  that  it  hushes  the  room  in  which 
it  hangs,  but  yet  it  is  all  alive.  The  Virgin  is  moving  on  the 
clouds.  Her  garments  float  both  with  the  blowing  of  the  wind 
and  also  with  her  motion.  Strangely  different  it  is  in  this  re- 
spect from  the  many  pictures  in  which  the  Divine  Group  simply 
stands  and  meditates,  or  gazes  from  the  canvas.  The  nobleness 
of  the  arrangement,  too,  is  most  impressive.  Every  rule  of  high- 
est art  is  there,  but  swallowed  up  by  the  sublime  intention  of  the 
work.  The  pyramid  of  figures  has  built  itself.  What,  one  won- 
ders, were  Raphael's  feelings  as  he  sent  his  work  off  to  Piacenza? 
Did  he  know  what  a  marvel  he  had  done  ?  For  among  the  wonder- 
ful things  about  this  picture  is  the  immeasurable  degree  in  which 
it  surpasses  everything  else  of  Raphael's. 

Dresden,  Wednesday,  November  8,  1882. 

A  perception  of  the  wonderfulness  of  the  art  of  painting  comes 
nowhere  more  strongly  than  in  some  of  the  great  portraits.  Here 
are  the  Rembrandts,  which  get,  more  than  any  others,  the  total 
conception  of  the  man  they  portray.  No  detail  detains  you. 
Just  as  it  lay  in  the  artist's  mind,  a  distinct  human  thing,  not 
a  mere  composition  of  features  and  beard.  The  person  looks  out 
at  you  from  the  canvas.  There  are  the  Vandykes,  so  full  of 
lofty  refinement,  gentlemen  and  ladies  always,  appealing  to  the 
part  of  us  which  always  feels  the  power  of  good  taste,  even  in 
Charles  I.  and  Henrietta  Maria.  Titian,  with  the  sumptuousness 
of  Venice,  and  yet  able  to  portray  something  as  sensitive  and 
delicate  and  shy  as  the  timidity  of  the  girl  in  white,  who  holds 
the  fan,  full  of  the  quality  as  distinct  from  the  quantity  of  color. 
Battoni's  St.  John  Baptist,  which  one  sees  through  the  door  if  he 
turns  his  head  from  looking  at  the  Madonna,  is  a  beautiful,  sunny, 
living  picture. 


378  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

Prague,  Friday,  November  10, 1882. 
Two  figures  occupy  the  eye  at  Prague.  One  is  John  Huss, 
who  once  was  university  professor  here,  and  who  has  left  behind 
him  a  power  that  passed  through  the  great  defeat  as  a  spirit 
passes  through  a  solid  wall  and  leaves  the  wall  puzzled  and  de- 
feated behind  it.  Huss's  power  is  in  the  liberal  thought  and  in- 
telligence of  the  university  to-day.  There  is  nothing  left  of 
him  by  way  of  relic  except  a  very  doubtful  house,  which  perhaps 
stands  where  he  used  to  live,  and  may  have  in  its  walls  some  of 
the  old  material  of  his.  The  other  figure  is  Count  Wallenstein, 
the  very  type  of  earnest,  fiery  mediaevalism,  strong,  able,  true 
to  conviction,  narrow,  cruel,  dark,  and  spreading  darkness.    .   .   . 

Vienna,  Monday,  November  13,  1882. 
The  first  sight  of  Austria  to  one  who  comes  from  Germany  is 
full  of  suggested  contrasts.  The  people  in  Vienna  are  brighter' 
and  handsomer  than  in  Berlin.  The  whole  movement  of  life  is 
gayer.  But  at  once  is  felt,  what  I  believe  all  later  observation 
will  confirm,  that  the  people  to  whom  we  have  come  are  not  the 
really  interesting  and  respectable  people  we  have  left.  Germany 
teems  with  ideas,  conceives  of  itself  as  having  a  mission  in  the 
world,  and  expects  a  future.  Neither  of  these  things  is  true  o£ 
Austria. 

Vienna,  Wednesday,  November  15,  1882. 

In  the  Belvedere  there  is  a  picture  of  St.  Catherine  of  Sienna, 
which,  if  the  story  of  that  very  unpleasing  person,  that  canoniza- 
tion of  hysterical  young  womanhood,  is  ever  to  be  put  in  paint 
at  all,  paints  it  aright.  It  is  hard  and  white,  but  there  is  a  real 
ecstasy  about  it,  the  ecstasy  of  intense,  distracting  pain.  Xt  is 
no  comfortable  damsel,  pluming  herself  on  the  romance  of  a 
celestial  lover,  and  enjoying  the  ^clat  which  her  adventure 
brought  her  among  her  earthly  friends  who  were  less  fortunate. 
It  is  the  eager,  straining,  yearning  after  a  mysterious  love  which 
is,  indeed,  more  than  life  to  her,  for  which  she  would  rejoice  to 
die,  nay,  for  which  she  is  dying  as  we  look  at  her.  She  does 
not  make  the  subject  pleasing  or  profitable,  but  at  least  it  gives 
the  only  ideality  of  which  it  is  capable. 

Vienna,  Thursday,  November  16,  1882. 

A  figure  carved  on  a  gem  such  as  are  the  most  beautiful  in  the 
great  collection  here  seems  to  have  reached  a  sort  of  apotheosis. 
It  floats  in  light.  When  it  receives  the  sunlight  through  it,  it 
seems  to  bathe  itself  in  the  luminous  color,  and  yet  to  keep  its 
own  brilliant  identity  and  shape,  to  be  a  brighter  and  distincter 
form  of  light  within  the  light  that  bathes  it.      Somewhat  as  we 


^T.  46]    EXTRACTS  FROM  JOURNAL        379 

conceive  of  how  in  the  great  world  of  spirit  one  spirit,  while  it 
is  part  of  all  around  it,  has  its  own  special  personal  glory  inten- 
sified and  made  more  personal.  There  is  also  something  in  the 
sense  of  fineness  and  eternity  combined  with  the  brightness  and 
glory  of  a  gem  that  makes  it  beautiful  and  impressive  to  the 
imagination.  Size  is  nothing  except  to  connoisseurs.  There  is 
a  very  small  green  stone  down  in  the  corner  of  the  case  hung  in 
front  of  the  window  which  is  glorious. 

Vienna,  Friday,  November  17,  1882. 
In  the  great  Treasury  there  is  what  seems  as  if  it  must  be  the 
most  glorious  opal  in  the  world.  It  is  as  large  as  a  small  pear, 
and  as  it  hangs  there  with  the  light  upon  it,  it  quivers  through 
and  through  with  fire.  The  flame  which  you  see  seems  not  to 
come  from  any  surface  lustre,  but  out  of  its  very  heart.  The 
mystery  of  it  and  the  life  of  it,  every  one  must  feel.  Indeed, 
standing  before  the  whole  wonderful  collection  one  feels  very 
strongly  the  preciousness  of  precious  stones.  It  is  no  fanciful  or 
conventional  value,  but  something  which  springs  as  truly  from 
a  real  relation  to  human  nature,  though  on  another  side,  as  the 
value  of  a  beautiful  face  or  of  a  noble  thought.  It  does  not  de- 
pend on  rarity.  If  sapphires  like  that  which  tops  the  Imperial 
crown  were  as  plentiful  as  are  gray  pebbles,  the  healthy  eye 
would  see  their  beauty  all  the  more,  not  less. 

Vienna,  Saturday,  November  18,  1882. 

In  the  Belvedere  the  greatest  wealth  is  in  the  paintings  of  the 
Venetian  school.  Titian  is  there  in  quite  bewildering  profusion, 
but,  as  seems  always  true,  it  is  not  in  his  great  compositions  such 
as  the  Ecce  Homo,  which  is  here,  that  he  is  most  admirable,  but 
in  the  single  portrait  where  an  individual  life  glows  with  the  rich- 
ness which  it  seems  to  have  gathered  from  generations  of  ances- 
tors who  have  basked  in  the  sunlight  of  the  south.  On  the  other 
hand,  Tintoretto,  who  is  represented  here  only  by  some  noble 
portraits,  is  equally  great  in  splendid  compositions,  as  Venice 
bears  abundant  witness.  There  is  at  least  one  glorious  picture 
of  Giorgione's,  where  the  vine-crowned  youth  is  caught  by  the 
mysterious  person  who  holds  him  by  the  collar  and  gazes  into  his 
astonished  face.  Only  those  two  heads,  but  wonderful  union  of 
color  and  expression. 

Vienna,  Wedneaday,  November  22,  1882. 

One  building  at  least  our  cities  at  home  cannot  share,  and  that 
is  the  barracks  of  an  army.  One  sound  is  not  heard  on  our 
streets,  with  which,  in  the  streets  of  Europe,  one's  ears  become 


38o  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

awfully  familiar.  It  is  the  bugle  which  summons  the  soldiers 
to  their  drill.  They  may  say  all  that  they  can  about  the  value 
of  the  military  discipline  in  Germany  and  Austria  as  a  school  for 
raw  youths,  and  we  ourselves  may  sometimes  fear  lest,  in  the 
absence  of  anything  corresponding  to  it  among  ourselves,  a  certain 
lameness  may  settle  down  upon  our  young  men's  life,  and  hero- 
ism and  obedience  to  authority  may  fail;  but,  after  all,  when  we 
come  to  speak  seriously  about  it,  words  cannot  express  the  privi- 
lege we  enjoy.  Of  course  its  danger  and  responsibilities  come 
with  it.  Its  dangers  are  those  to  which  I  just  alluded.  Its 
responsibilities  are  summed  up  in  the  duty  which  must  rest  upon 
us  of  finding  new  and  higher  cultures  for  the  virtue  which  the 
army  does  no  doubt  rudely  train,  and  of  developing  a  purer  and 
loftier  social  life  out  of  a  soil  which  is  not  cursed  and  exhausted 
by  the  rank  weed  of  military  life. 

Venice,  Thursday,  November  23,  1882. 
The  Pont  Ebba  route  from  Vienna  to  Venice  is  the  very  poetry 
of  railroad  travel.  It  is  very  long.  We  left  Vienna  at  seven  in 
the  morning  and  did  not  arrive  much  before  midnight.  As  we 
left,  Vienna  looked  its  dreariest,  dark,  cold,  and  rainy,  with  the 
comfortless,  need-driven  people  crawling  to  their  early  work. 
But  soon  after  we  got  out  of  its  gloomy  shadow,  came  the  ap- 
proach to  the  hills,  and  they  were  streaked  and  flecked  with 
snow.  Sometimes  a  sloping  side  would  be  completely  covered, 
then  the  fields  of  thin  snow  would  try  to  make  their  way  up  to 
the  heights,  for  all  the  world  like  great  waves  breaking  on  a 
rocky  shore.  .  .  .  The  afternoon,  rich  with  sunset,  lights  up  the 
valleys,  which  seemed  to  lead  to  heaven;  the  moonlight  superb 
and  full  on  mountains  made  of  silver,  and  afterwards  on  cold 
plains  and  marshes  which  stand  guard  round  Venice. 

Venice,  Friday,  November  24,  1882. 
Strange  how  there  is  nothing  like  St.  Mark's  in  Venice,  no- 
thing of  the  same  kind  as  the  great  church.  It  would  have 
seemed  as  if,  standing  here  for  so  many  centuries,  and  always 
profoundly  loved  and  honored,  it  would  almost  of  necessity  have 
influenced  the  minds  of  the  generations  of  architects,  and  shown 
its  power  in  their  works.  But  there  seems  to  be  no  sign  of  any 
such  influence.  It  stands  alone.  Either  because  it  seems  a  work 
beyond  all  chance  of  being  copied,  or  else,  as  is  more  probable, 
because  the  whole  disposition  to  be  consistent  in  architectural 
work,  to  preserve  characteristic  styles  in  certain  places,  is  a 
modern  and  artificial  idea;  or  perhaps  because  the  Eastern  influ- 
ence, which  made  St.  Mark's,  died  away,  and  Western  influences, 


^T.  46]  EXTRACTS  FROM  JOURNAL   381 

such  as  made  the  Prari  and  Salute,  came  in  instead.  Whatever 
be  the  reason,  there  it  stands  alone,  and  there  is  nothing  like  it 
in  the  rest  of  Venice. 

Venice,  Monday,  November  27,  1882. 

Venice  has  two  aspects,  one  sensuous  and  self-indulgent,  the 
other  lofty,  spiritual,  and  even  severe.  Both  aspects  appear  in 
its  history,  and  both  are  also  in  its  art.  Titian  often  represents 
the  former.  The  loftier,  nobler  Tintoretto  gives  us  the  second. 
There  is  something  in  his  greatest  pictures,  as,  for  instance,  in 
the  Crucifixion,  at  St.  Rocco,  which  no  other  artist  approaches. 
The  lordly  composition  gives  us  an  impression  of  intellectual 
grasp  and  vigor.  The  foreground  group  of  prostrate  women  is 
full  of  a  tenderness.  The  rich  pearly  light,  which  floods  the 
centre,  glows  with  a  solemn  picturesqueness,  and  the  great 
Christ,  who  hangs  like  a  benediction  over  the  whole,  is  vocal  with 
a  piety  which  no  other  picture  in  the  world  displays.  And  the 
Presentation  of  the  Virgin,  in  Santa  Maria  del  Orto,  is  the  con- 
summate presentation  of  that  beautiful  subject,  its  beauty  not 
lost  in  its  majesty. 

Venice,  Thursday,  November  30,  1882. 

The  sun  arose  to-day  at  a  quarter  past  seven  superbly  over  the 
Lido,  and  promised  Venice  at  its  best  and  richest.  But  directly 
after  sunrise  came  the  clouds,  so  that  the  last  day  here  is  cold 
and  dreary.  But  in  the  Academia  there  is  the  sunshine  of  three 
hundred  years  ago.  Paris  Bordone's  glowing  picture  of  the 
Fisherman  who  brings  the  Ring  of  St.  Mark  to  the  Doge,  burned 
like  a  ray  of  sunlight  on  the  wall.  Carpaccio's  delightful  story 
of  St.  Ursula  brought  the  old  false  standards  of  other  days  back 
to  one's  mind,  but  brought  them  back  lustrous  with  the  splendor 
of  summers  that  seemed  forever  passed,  but  are  perpetually  here. 
Tintoretto's  Adam  and  Eve  was,  as  it  always  is,  the  most  de- 
lightful picture  in  the  Gallery,  and  Pordenone's  great  St.  Augus- 
tine seemed  a  very  presence  in  the  vast  illuminated  room. 

Venice,  Friday,  December  1,  1882. 
As  one  who  parts  from  Life's  familiar  shore, 

Looks  his  last  look  in  long-beloved  eyes. 

And  sees  in  their  dear  depths  new  meanings  rise 
And  strange  light  shine  he  never  knew  before; 
As  then  he  fain  would  snatch  from  Death  his  hand 

And  linger  still,  if  haply  he  may  see 

A  little  more  of  this  Soul's  mystery 
Which  year  by  year  he  seemed  to  understand ; 


382  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882 

So,  Venice,  when  thy  wondrous  beauty  grew 

Dim  in  the  clouds  which  clothed  the  wintry  sea 

I  saw  thou  wert  more  beauteous  than  I  knew, 

And  longed  to  turn  and  be  again  with  thee. 

But  what  I  could  not  then  I  trust  to  see 

In  that  next  life  which  we  call  memory. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

DECEMBER,    1882-MARCH,    1883 
INDIA.      LETTERS   AND   EXTRACTS   FROM   JOURNAL 

The  journey  to  India  was  strewn  with  letters  all  along  the 
way.  In  his  leisure  on  shipboard  he  recalled  his  friends, 
and  seemed  to  be  taking  a  review  of  his  life.  His  imagina- 
tion was  excited  by  the  fascinating  interest  of  the  land  to 
which  he  was  going,  —  the  first  home  of  the  human  race, 
where  religion  was  in  strange  and  rich  exuberance,  as  was 
outward  nature.  He  was  to  realize  the  brilliant  pictures  of 
Oriental  life  and  history,  with  which  he  had  long  been  famil- 
iar through  books.  With  his  power  of  vision  in  reading  life 
and  detecting  its  hidden  meaning,  the  opportunity  meant  to 
him  a  vast  increase  in  knowledge  and  in  wisdom.  But  with 
this  prospect  before  him,  his  memory  carried  the  past  and 
made  him  feel  the  changes  in  his  life.  To  his  aunt,  Miss 
Susan  Phillips,  living  in  the  old  house  at  North  Andover, 
he  had  written  while  he  was  in  Vienna :  — 

It  is  eighteen  years  since  I  was  in  Vienna,  on  my  first  Euro- 
pean journey.  Then  I  was  on  my  way  to  Palestine.  One  dif- 
ference between  that  year  abroad  and  this  I  feel  all  the  time. 
Then  the  old  home  in  Chauncy  Street  was  still  there,  and  father 
and  mother  were  both  waiting  to  hear  what  one  was  doing,  and 
one  of  my  pleasures  was  to  write  to  them  and  to  think  how  I 
would  tell  them  all  about  it  when  I  got  back.  I  miss  all  that 
part  of  the  interest  of  travel  very  much  now.  Sometimes  it  is 
hard  to  realize  that  they  are  not  still  there,  and  that  I  am  not  to 
write  to  them.  At  this  distance  all  that  has  come  since  I  was 
here  before  seems  like  a  dream. 

He  wrote  to  the  Rev.  Frederick  B.  Allen,  the  assistant 
minister  of  Trinity  Church,  who  had  kept  him  supplied  with 


384  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

information  in  advance,  as  to  the  preachers  on  successive 

Sundays :  — 

Beblin,  November  1,  1882. 

My  dear  Allen,  —  I  can't  tell  you  how  constantly  and  ear- 
nestly I  thank  you,  first  for  the  devotion  with  which  you  are 
looking  after  that  blessed  Parish  on  the  Back  Bay,  and  then  for 
the  fulness  with  which  you  have  told  me  all  about  it.  I  put  one 
of  your  kind  letters  next  my  heart  and  go  out  on  some  delightful 
excursion,  with  the  comfortable  sense  that  everything  is  right  at 
home,  and  that  the  Church  would  just  as  lief  have  me  here  as 
there.  When  I  get  back  I  hope  you  '11  have  a  host  of  things 
saved  up  that  I  can  do  for  you  in  small  token  of  my  gratitude. 
My  advices  thus  far  have  covered  the  visits  of  Bishops  Beckwith 
and  Williams.  The  former  I  hardly  know,  but  I  have  pleasant 
impressions  of  him.  We  smoked  together  in  Stephen  Tyng's 
study  at  the  last  General  Convention  in  New  York.  I  am  glad 
you  liked  him.  And  all  the  people  who  have  written  to  me  about 
his  preaching  are  quite  enthusiastic.      Bishop  Williams  is  a  jewel 

of  a  man,  —  the  Prince  of  all  our  Bishops.      I  hope  that is 

safely  over,  and  will  not  come  again.  Did  he  really  ask  to  be 
invited?  The  insolence  of  the  wretch!  I  shivered  all  over  when 
I  opened  a  paper  one  day  and  saw  the  paragraph  headed  "Trinity 
Church  on  Fire."  Fortunately  I  did  not  pack  my  trunk  for 
home  until  I  had  read  on  and  seen  that  the  fire  was  out  and  that 
the  bill  was  only  fifty  dollars.  Then  I  gave  thanks  for  the 
escape,  and  concluded  to  stay.  But  I  am  awfully  sorry  to  hear 
how  much  trouble  the  bad  roof  is  causing.  I  hope  that  Mr. 
Richardson,  since  his  return,  has  given  his  mind  to  it,  and  made 
some  helpful  suggestions.  By  the  way,  when  the  time  comes, 
why  can't  you  see  that  the  vines  are  properly  covered  for  the 
winter?  I  have  always  seen  to  that,  and  I  doubt  if  anybody 
would  look  after  it  if  you  did  n't.  How  I  would  like  to  see  you 
all,  and  shut  the  study  door  and  have  a  good  long  talk  with  you 
and  Parks  and  Percy.  But  the  Unter  den  Linden  i&  rattling 
with  carriages  under  my  window,  and  across  the  street  the  hosts 
of  unknown  German  youth  are  thronging  into  the  University, 
and  just  above  us  there  is  a  crowd  of  people  waiting  to  see  the 
Kaiser  start  out  for  his  drive,  and  Boston  is  thousands  of  miles 
away.  Be  sure  that  I  think  of  the  dear  old  place  more  confi- 
dently and  happily  because  you  are  there  running  Trinity  Church. 
My  best  love  to  your  children.  I  hope  the  new  house  is  all  you 
wanted  it  to  be. 

Ever  afEectionately  yours, 

P.  B. 


^T.  46-47]  INDIA  385 

On  December  1,  he  sailed  from  Venice  for  India,  on  the 
steamship  Poonah,  by  the  way  of  the  Suez  Canal,  then  a  new 
experience  to  travellers.  To  Kev.  Arthur  Brooks  he 
writes;  — 

Steamship  Poonah,  getting  pretty  near  Alexandria 
December  6,  1882. 

So  far  the  voyage  thither  has  gone  very  well,  but  has  not  been 
particularly  interesting.  The  first  days  out  of  Venice  were  very 
rough,  and  many  of  the  passengers  were  sick  and  most  of  them 
uncomfortable  and  cross.  We  took  most  of  our  passengers  at 
Brindisi,  and  since  then  the  weather  has  been  better  and  the  sea 
more  calm,  so  that  the  souls  of  the  Englishmen  begin  to  revive 
and  they  are  growing  a  little  bit  more  sociable.  They  are  mostly 
the  sort  of  Englishman  who  is  full  of  information  and  intelligence, 
totally  destitute  of  imagination  or  of  humor,  and  absolutely  de- 
termined to  bring  all  the  world  to  his  own  standard.  He  makes 
you  mad  and  amuses  you  and  wins  your  respect  all  at  once,  all 
the  time.    .    .    . 

I  have  got  lots  of  books  about  the  country,  and  by  the  time 
we  get  to  Bombay  I  expect  to  have  learned  a  good  deal  about  it 
and  to  be  somewhat  prepared  for  what  I  have  to  see.  It  all 
looks  more  and  more  attractive  the  more  I  learn  about  it.  Your 
young  friend,  Evart  Wendell,  opened  correspondence  with  me 
soon  after  I  left  Berlin,  and  proposed  to  go  to  India  if  his  father 
would  consent ;  and  the  result  was  that  he  joined  me  at  Venice 
the  day  before  the  steamer  sailed  and  is  with  me  now.  I  find 
him  a  very  bright,  pleasant,  good-natured  boy,  and  he  will  make 
excellent  company,  I  think. 

What  has  become  of  Bishop  Littlejohn  since  he  tried  to  sit 
down  on  the  two  young  giants  of  the  Boston  Club  and  found  it 
such  uncomfortable  sitting?  And  have  you  read  Allen's  paper 
in  the  Princeton  ?  Is  it  not  a  genuine  contribution  to  a  rational 
philosophy  of  that  whole  movement  of  which  we  are  a  part,  and 
whose  meaning  in  the  midst  of  the  ages  has  been  often  such  a 
wonder  to  those  who  were  in  the  very  midst  of  it?  ...  I  want 
to  see  what  Chunder  Sen  thinks  about  it  all  when  I  see  him  next 
month.    .    .    . 

It  is  hard  to  believe  that  almost  six  months  of  my  year  is 
gone.  It  has  been  all  that  I  hoped ;  and  while  I  am  in  no  hurry 
for  the  rest  to  go,  I  shall  be  glad  to  get  back  into  the  stream  of 
work  again.     Your  letter  makes  me  feel  very  much  outside  of  it. 

To  the  Kev.  George  A.  Strong,  rector  of  Grace  Church, 

VOL.  II 


386  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

New  Bedford,  he  writes  after  the  manner  of  an  old  and  famil- 
iar friendship :  — 

December  5,  1882. 

I  am  glad  the  consecration  ceremony  is  safely  over,  though  I 
can't  help  feeling  as  if  we  consecrated  it  long  ago.  But  now  the 
Bishop  has  been  there,  and  he  feels  better  about  it  if  you  don't. 
A  large  part  of  our  relation  to  our  bishops  seems  to  consist  in 
efforts  on  our  part  and  theirs  to  make  them  feel  good.  How 
well  I  can  see  the  whole  scene:  Bishop  Paddock's  arrival  with 
his  bag;  his  breaking  up  the  service  into  little  bits  among  the 
clergy  like  the  five  loaves  and  the  two  fishes,  to  be  set  before  the 
people,  and  his  voice  beginning  the  sentences  as  he  went  up  the 
aisle,  and  the  sermon  and  the  collation  and  the  Episcopal  de- 
parture. But,  dear  me,  how  far  away  all  that  is,  and  how  ab- 
surd for  me  to  get  mad  about  it  at  this  distance !  It  is  a  lovely 
forenoon,  halfway  across  from  the  heel  of  Italy  to  the  mouth  of 
the  Nile.  The  stewards  are  setting  the  table  for  lunch,  and 
through  the  open  skylight  I  can  hear  the  brogue  of  the  English- 
men on  the  deck,  who  are  my  fellow  passengers  for  Bombay. 
The  Lascar  sailors,  who  are  all  Mohammedans  and  never  heard  of 
Bishop  Paddock,  are  going  back  and  forth  in  their  red  turbans, 
and  the  wind  that  comes  in  through  the  portholes  is  like  June. 

Truly  the  Diocese  of  Massachusetts  need  not  trouble  one  here. 
And  not  only  a  few  thousand  miles,  but  almost  six  good  months 
of  pleasant  wanderings,  are  between  me  and  it.  Many  a  time 
in  these  months  I  have  found  myself  on  ground  where  you  and 
I  have  been  years  ago  together.  London  and  Paris  and  Geneva 
and  Chamouni  and  Maggiore  and  Domo  d'Ossola,  and  a  lot  of 
other  places,  all  brought  back  recollections  of  that  first  journey 
when  we  were  young.      Dear  me,  a  week  from  to-morrow  I  am 

forty-seven!      Tell  M I  have  not  forgotten  about  the  French 

novels,  but  so  far  my  reading  has  not  run  that  way.  All  summer 
I  read  nothing,  and  this  autumn  up  in  Germany  I  confined  my 
reading  to  their  crooked  text  and  queer  constructions,  trying,  as 
much  as  my  time  would  allow,  to  get  the  hang  of  what  they  were 
thinking  about,  and  what  books  they  were  writing.  It  was  all 
very  delightful,  and  I  shall  always  look  back  on  it,  especially 
upon  my  life  in  Berlin,  with  the  greatest  pleasure.  When  you 
get  this  I  shall  be  in  Bombay,  and  now  my  only  reading  is  in 
Indian  books,  which  will  prepare  me  somewhat  for  that  absurd 
land.  In  March  I  shall  come  back  to  Europe.  April  I  expect 
to  spend  in  Spain,  May  and  June  in  England,  and,  through  it 
all,  I  shall  wish  ever  so  many  times  that  I  could  take  a  train  for 


^T.  46-47]  INDIA  387 

New  Bedford  and  have  a  good  long  talk  by  your  fireside. 
Cooper  and  I  have  arranged  that  you  are  certainly  to  go  to  the 
General  Convention  in  Philadelphia  next  autumn  as   a   sort   of 

Delegate  at  Large.      Don't  fail!      My  love  to  M ,  and  my 

best  regards  to  the  Hathaways  and  other  New  Bedford  friends. 
Good-by,  dear  fellow.      Lunch  is  ready ! 

Ever  affectionately  yours,  P.  B. 

He  kept  his  birthday  on  December  13,  when  he  was  forty- 
seven,  by  a  letter  to  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine :  — 

Steamship  Poonah,  December  13,  1882. 

Dear  Bob,  —  Halfway  down  the  Red  Sea  and  a  glorious 
morning!  What  can  I  do  better  than  to  have  a  little  bit  of  a 
talk  with  you  and  answer  the  letter  which  I  know  you  have  writ- 
ten to  me,  and  which  I  shall  get  at  Bombay.  I  am  the  more 
moved  to  it  because  I  have  a  birthday  to-day  and  am  forty-seven 
years  old.  It  is  a  sort  of  comfort  to  talk  with  an  old  fellow  who 
was  forty-seven  long  ago,  and  who  makes  one  feel  young  by  con- 
trast. Well,  I  don't  believe  that  many  fellows  have  had  a  hap- 
pier forty-seven  years  than  I  have  had.  It  seems  quite  absurd, 
sometimes,  when  I  think  how  everything  has  gone  about  as  I 
should  have  wished.  How  good  eveiybody  has  been  to  me,  and 
how  the  world  has  kept  its  troubles  out  of  the  sea!  Why,  here 
is  this  Red  Sea.  Everybody  has  been  talking  about  how  uncom- 
fortable it  always  is,  how  you  can't  breathe  for  the  heat,  nor 
sleep  for  the  closeness  of  the  nights;  but  here  we  are,  and  it  is 
like  an  exquisite  June  day  at  home,  and  the  punkas  are  swinging 
from  mere  habit ;  and  this  morning  came  two  splendid  showers 
such  as  the  Captain  says  he  never  saw  at  this  season  on  the  Sea 
before.  They  are  a  queer  set,  the  people  who  are  on  board,  — 
almost  all  Anglo-Indians,  full  of  intelligence  and  as  hard  as 
rocks.  They  hardly  talk  anything  but  India,  which,  of  course, 
is  very  good  for  us  who  want  to  learn  all  we  can  about  the  coun- 
try we  are  sailing  to,  but  very  monotonous,  I  should  think,  for 
them.  We  have  been  on  board  now  two  weeks,  and  have  ten 
days  more  of  it  before  we  reach  Bombay.  Everybody  has  set- 
tled down  to  the  life.  This  morning,  as  I  passed  the  captain's 
cabin,  he  was  quietly  painting  a  picture,  and  the  boys  and  girls 
are  getting  up  concerts  and  farces  as  if  they  meant  to  live  upon 
the  Poonah  all  the  rest  of  their  lives. 

The  Church  seems  to  flourish  splendidly  without  its  minister 
or  its  two  front  roofs.  I  hope  that  Trinity  House  got  all  the 
money  that  it  wanted,  and  I  hear  good  news  from  the  Chapel. 


388  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

Every  Sunday  I  think  of  things  that  I  would  like  to  say,  and 
preach  myself  little  sermons.  But  I  am  afraid  that  I  shall  kill 
you  all  with  much  preaching  when  I  get  home.  Good-by,  my 
dear  fellow,  and  my  best  love  to  you  all.     Ever  your  friend, 

P.  B. 

To  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell  he  writes,  dating  his  letter  from 
the  Ked  Sea :  — 

December  15,  1882. 

Dear  Weir,  —  I  hope  that  you  are  well,  and  your  wife,  the 
little  lady,  and  Jack,  —  all  of  you  well  and  happy.  How  I  wish 
that  you  were  here,  and  that,  instead  of  this  poor  letter-writing, 
we  could  go  up  on  deck  and  get  into  the  breeze  which  comes  over 
from  the  Mocha  Hills,  and  light  our  cheroots  and  talk  out  the 
last  six  months.  That  is  quite  long  enough,  I  think,  for  old 
friends  to  be  out  of  hail  of  one  another,  and  so  I  want  to  send 
you  at  least  this  Christmas  and  New  Year's  greeting,  and  let 
you  know  that  I  keep  thinking  of  you  and  of  the  pleasant  old 
days,  one  of  the  pleasantest  things  about  which  was  that  I  saw 
you  all  the  time. 

I  have  had,  since  June,  a  summer  in  France  and  Italy,  and  an 
autumn  in  Germany,  where  I  studied  their  ways  and  what  they 
call  their  language,  and  went  to  lectures  in  the  University,  and 
made  some  pleasant  friends,  and,  what  is  most  of  all,  stopped 
preaching.  On  the  1st  of  December  I  sailed  from  Venice  for 
Bombay,  and  ever  since  that  we  have  been  lounging  along  in  a 
slow  old  craft,  crossing  the  Mediterranean,  running  through  the 
Suez  Canal,  and  now,  all  this  week,  sailing  down  the  Red  Sea. 
To-night  we  came  to  Aden,  and  to-morrow  we  shall^  be  out  in 
the  Indian  Ocean.  My  fellow  passengers  are  Englishmen,  hard, 
narrow,  and  intelligent,  like  all  their  race.  They  are  of  all 
sorts  and  classes.  Some  of  them  have  titles;  all  of  them  have 
brogues.  Here  is  the  General  who  led  the  cavalry  charge  at  Tel 
el  Kebir,  and  Lord  Charles  Beresford,  who  ran  his  little  boat  in 
under  the  forts  at  Alexandria,  and  the  ritualistic  head  of  the 
Missionary  Brotherhood  at  Delhi,  and  the  Judge  of  the  Hindu 
court  at  Hyderabad.  Among  them  all  one  finds  plenty  of  inter- 
esting information  about  India,  —  enough  to  make  him  very  glad 
that  he  is  going  to  have  a  two  months'  visit  there,  and  thankful, 
from  the  bottom  of  his  heart,  that  he  has  not  got  to  live  there,  but 
can  come  away  when  the  two  months  are  over.  It  must  be  an  awful 
thing  to  be  a  conquered  race  with  the  Englishman  for  your  master. 

Good-by,  my  dear  fellow.      May  God  bless  you  always. 

Your  old  friend,  P.  B. 


\ 


\ 


MT.  46-47]  INDIA  389 

On  the  23d  of  December  he  reached  Bombay,  and  was  in 
India  at  last.  His  first  act  was  to  telegraph  home  his  safe 
arrival,  and  then  the  vision  of  the  gorgeous  pageantry  began. 
Of  his  first  impressions  on  the  day  of  his  arrival  he  writes :  — 

We  drove  about  the  town  and  began  our  sight  of  Indian  won- 
ders: Hindoo  temples,  with  their  squatting  ugly  idols;  Moham- 
medan mosques;  bazaars  thronged  with  every  Eastern  race; 
splendid  English  buildings  where  the  country  is  ruled ;  a  noble 
university ;  Parsee  merchants  in  their  shops ;  great  tanks  with 
the  devotees  bathing  in  them;  oflBcers'  bungalows,  with  the  hand- 
some English  fellows  lounging  about ;  wedding  processions,  with 
the  bride  of  six  years  old  riding  on  the  richly  decorated  horse 
behind  the  bridegroom  of  ten,  surrounded  by  their  friends,  and 
with  a  tumult  of  horrible  music;  markets  overrunning  with 
strange  and  delicious  fruits;  wretched-looking  saints  chattering 
gibberish  and  begging  alms,  —  there  is  no  end  to  the  interest  and 
curiosity  of  it  all!  And  this  is  dead  winter  in  the  tropics.  I 
have  out  all  my  thinnest  clothes,  and  go  about  with  an  umbrella 
to  keep  off  the  sun.  This  morning  we  started  at  half  past  six 
for  a  walk  through  the  sacred  part  of  the  native  town,  and  now 
at  ten  it  is  too  hot  to  walk  any  more  till  sundown.  But  there 
are  carriages  enough,  and  by  and  by  we  go  to  church.  I  was 
invited  to  preach  at  the  cathedral  but  declined. 

Although  his  anticipations  were  great,  he  writes  that  he 
finds  the  country  far  more  interesting  than  he  expected. 
He  remained  in  Bombay  for  a  week,  where  every  facility  for 
seeing  what  was  most  important  to  be  seen  was  afforded 
him  under  the  best  guidance  and  advice.  He  lunched,  by 
the  invitation  of  the  Governor,  Sir  James  Fergusson,  at  the 
Government  House,  where  he  met  very  pleasant  people. 
He  made  excursions  to  old  Buddhist  temples  in  the  vicinity, 
and  to  the  Ellora  Caves.  But  the  heat  was  so  excessive  that 
he  suffered,  and  was  glad  to  escape  to  a  cooler  climate. 
From  Bombay  he  went  to  Ahmadabad,  taking  letters  from 
Sir  James  Fergusson  to  Mr.  Phillpotts.  Here  he  struck 
Mohammedan  influences,  and  visited  the  great  mosques. 
From  thence  he  came  to  Jeypore,  with  letters  to  the  Presi- 
dent, Dr.  Stratton.  The  Rajah  sent  him  in  a  carriage  to 
the  entrance  to  Amber,  from  whence  he  made  the  ascent  on 
elephants  to  the  deserted  town,  with  its  splendid  palaces  and 


390  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

temples.  At  Jeypore  he  preached  in  the  English  church. 
On  January  8  he  reached  Delhi.  Here  his  young  travelling 
companion,  Mr.  Evart  Wendell,  was  taken  ill  with  the  small- 
pox, so  that  two  weeks  were  spent  there  waiting  for  his  re- 
covery. He  felt  deeply  the  kindness  shown  to  him  under 
these  circumstances  by  the  English  residents,  Mr.  Eobert 
Maconachie,  of  the  English  Civil  Service,  and  his  wife,  who 
surrendered  their  house  to  the  invalid.  He  himself  put  up 
at  the  Cambridge  Mission,  with  Rev.  G.  A.  Lefroy,  whose 
acquaintance  he  had  made  on  the  steamship  Poonah,  and  his 
companions,  Mr.  Carlyon  and  Mr.  Allnutt,  of  whom  he 
writes :  — 

Three  young  fellows,  graduates  of  Cambridge,  scholars  and 
gentlemen,  live  here  together,  and  give  themselves  to  missionary 
work.  They  have  some  first-rate  schools,  and  are  just  starting 
a  high-class  college.  They  preach  in  the  bazaars,  and  have  their 
mission  stations  out  in  the  country,  where  they  constantly  go. 
I  have  grown  to  respect  them  thoroughly.  Serious,  devoted,  self- 
sacrifiicing  fellows  they  are,  rather  high  churchmen,  but  thought- 
ful and  scholarly,  and  with  all  the  best  broad  church  books  upon 
their  shelves.  They  are  jolly,  pleasant  companions  as  possible, 
and  yesterday  I  saw  a  cricket  match  between  their  school  and  the 
Government  school  here,  in  which  one  of  these  parsons  played  a 
first-rate  bat.  Under  their  guidance  I  have  seen  very  thoroughly 
this  wonderful  old  city,  the  great  seat  of  the  Mogul  Empire, 
excessively  rich  in  the  best  Mohammedan  architecture. 

To  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine :  — 

Lahore,  January  15,  1883. 

I  wish  that  I  could  give  you  some  idea  of  the  enjoyment  I 
have  had  in  the  last  three  weeks.  Ever  since  I  landed  in  Bom- 
bay it  has  been  one  ever-changing  and  always  delightful  picture, 
but  a  picture  which  not  only  delighted  the  eye  with  color,  but 
kept  the  mind  busy  with  all  sorts  of  interesting  thoughts.  I 
cannot  begin  to  tell  you  about  it.  That  will  come  in  the  long 
evenings  when  we  sit  together  over  your  fire  or  mine,  and  I  tire 
your  patience  out  and  you  make  believe  that  you  are  not  bored. 
But  do  you  know  I  have  seen  the  Brahmin  and  Buddhist  Rock 
Temples  at  Elephanta  and  Karli  and  Ellora,  in  many  respects 
the  most  remarkable  monuments  which  religion  ever  wrought  ? 
And  I  have  seen  the  exquisite  art  of  Allmadabad  and  Jeypore, 


MT.  4.6-4J']  INDIA  391 

and  I  have  been  at  the  great  seat  of  the  old  Mogul  power  at 
Delhi,  and  I  have  studied  the  most  perfect  mosque  that  ever  was 
made,  with  a  tower  like  a  dream,  at  Kittub,  and  now  I  am  in 
the  land  of  the  Sikhs,  and  to-morrow  I  shall  see  the  Golden 
Temple  at  Umritsar,  and  before  next  Sunday  I  shall  have  looked 
at  the  Taj  at  Agra,  the  gem  of  all  the  gems  of  India.  And  all 
the  while  the  most  interesting  problems  of  the  past,  the  present, 
and  the  future,  have  been  crowding  on  the  mind.  The  efforts 
of  these  conscientious,  blundering  Englishmen  to  do  their  duty  by 
the  Hindu,  whom  they  don't  like,  and  who  don't  like  them,  are 
constantly  pathetic.  I  have  just  been  spending  some  days  with 
a  household  of  five  young  English  clergymen  at  Delhi,  who  are 
doing  the  best  kind  of  missionary  and  education  work.  They  are 
splendid  fellows,  whom  you  would  immensely  like.  The  hospi- 
tality of  everybody  here  in  India,  and  the  way  they  put  them- 
selves out  to  make  you  comfortable  and  to  let  you  see  every- 
thing,  is  a  continual  wonder  and  embarrassment. 

Well,  when  I  try  to  talk  about  it  all,  it  is  so  immense  that  I 
talk  like  an  incoherent  fool,  but  I  have  got  it  all  safely  put  away 
in  my  mind,  and  I  hope  the  poor  old  mind  is  the  better  for  it. 
In  the  midst  of  it  all  you  may  be  sure  that  I  think  of  you  all 
very  often,  and  would  like  to  see  you  step  out  from  some  old 
Mufti's  tomb  some  day  more  than  I  can  tell.  I  am  on  my  way 
to  Calcutta,  which  I  shall  reach  early  in  February,  then  to  the 
mountains,  then  to  Madras  and  Ceylon,  whence  I  sail  again  for 
Aden  some  time  in  March.  My  best  love  to  you  all,  and  may 
God  keep  you  all  safe  and  happy. 

Your  old  friend,  P.  B. 

Through  the  kindness  of  his  parishioner,  the  late  Dr. 
Samuel  Eliot,  he  carried  letters  of  introduction  from  Sir 
Eichard  Temple  to  the  Lieutenant-Governor,  Sir  Charles 
Atchison,  by  whom  he  was  invited  to  a  "swell  dinner  in  a 
gorgeous  tent,  with  about  thirty  persons,  and  no  end  of 
picturesque  servants  to  wait  on  us."  While  he  lingered  in 
Delhi  he  preached  in  the  English  church.  One  who  heard 
him  for  the  first  time,  with  no  previous  knowledge  of  him, 
recalls  how  he  listened  in  wonder  and  a  sense  of  awe.  As  the 
congregation  were  leaving  the  church  he  heard  the  comments 
on  every  side:  "It  was  a  wonderful  sermon!"  "Who  is 
he?"  "He  must  be  some  man  of  high  distinction  in  the 
world." 


392  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

From  Delhi  he  made  a  trip  to  Amritsir,  in  the  Sikh  coun- 
try, —  a  people  with  a  religion  of  their  own. 

At  Amritsir  is  their  great  place  of  worship,  the  Golden  Tem- 
ple, a  superb  structure,  with  the  lower  half  of  most  beautiful 
mosaic  and  the  upper  half  of  golden  plates,  standing  in  the  mid- 
dle of  an  enormous  artificial  lake,  called  the  Lake  of  Immor- 
tality. There  is  a  beautiful  white  marble  bridge  connecting  the 
island  with  the  shore.  I  saw  their  picturesque  worship  one  morn- 
ing, just  after  sunrise. 

He  was  so  much  associated  with  the  English  at  Delhi,  that 
he  felt  as  if  an  American  must  be  a  strange  sort  of  creature. 
The  English  Civil  Service  he  admired  as  something  which 
ought  to  be  a  pattern  to  all  the  world.  He  found  Delhi  so 
"wonderfully  interesting,"  as  the  old  centre  of  Mohammedan 
power  in  India,  that  he  did  not  regret  his  enforced  detention 
there.  From  Delhi  he  went  to  Agra,  visiting  the  Taj  Mahal, 
the  most  beautiful  building  in  India;  then  to  Cawnpore, 
where  he  was  interested  in  the  mission  work,  and  saw  the 
Divinity  School;  from  there  to  Lucknow,  where  he  again 
met  with  English  missionaries;  then  to  Allahdbad,  at  the 
meeting  of  the  Jamna  and  the  Ganges.  He  was  now  in  the 
region  where  Buddhism  originated,  and  made  a  pilgrimage  to 
Asoka's  Pillar.  And  so  he  came  to  Benares,  the  most  sacred 
city  in  India,  with  its  five  thousand  temples,  one  of  the  most 
ancient  cities  of  the  globe.  Here  he  paused  for  a  moment, 
and  letters  were  written  to  Herr  von  Bunsen  and  to  his  sister- 
in-law,  Mrs.  Arthur  Brooks :  — 

Benares,  January  28,  1883. 

My  dear  Herr  von  Bunsen,  —  Do  you  really  care  to  know 
that  this  last  week  I  have  seen  the  Taj  Mahal?  It  is  one  of  the 
few  buildings  which,  like  a  few  people  whom  one  sees  in  his  life, 
make  an  epoch.  In  the  midst  especially  of  this  Indian  architec- 
ture which,  rich  and  interesting  as  it  is,  is  almost  always  fantas- 
tic and  profane,  what  a  wonder  it  is  to  find,  as  the  culmination 
of  it  all,  as  the  perfect  flower  which  has  grown  out  of  all  this 
gross  and  heavy  soil,  a  building  whose  one  absorbing  impression  is 
its  purity.  One  almost  feels  that  here  that  essence  of  pure  reli- 
gion which  is  lurking  somewhere  under  all  the  degradation  and 
superstition  of  this  land  has  broken  forth  in  an  exquisiteness  which 


JET.  46-47]  INDIA  393 

surpasses  anything  that  even  Christian  architecture  has  attained. 
Some  day  you  must  come  and  see  it,  and  get  a  new  memory  and 
dream  for  all  your  life. 

India  has  interested  me  intensely.  Its  past  and  present  and 
future  are  all  full  of  suggestion.  I  long  to  see  Christianity  come 
here,  not  merely  for  what  it  will  do  for  India,  but  for  what  India 
will  do  for  it.  Here  it  must  find  again  the  lost  oriental  side  of 
its  brain  and  heart,  and  be  no  longer  the  occidental  European 
religion  which  it  has  so  strangely  become.  It  must  be  again  the 
religion  of  Man,  and  so  the  religion  for  all  men.  At  present  the 
missionary  efEorts  are  burdened  with  Englishism  and  American- 
ism, and  the  country  does  not  feel  them  much;  but  they  are  get- 
ting broader,  and  the  larger  religious  life  which  I  am  sure  has 
begun  to  come  at  home,  must  be  felt  here. 

Thank  you  truly  for  your  kind  letter  to  Mr.  Grant  Duff,  whom 
I  shall  be  very  glad  to  see  if  he  is  in  Madras  when  I  am  there. 
From  what  I  see  in  the  papers  I  fear  that  he  will  be  away,  for 
which  I  shall  be  very  sorry. 

And  very  many  thanks  for  your  kindness  in  sending  me  your 
paper  on  the  Liberal  Party  in  Germany.  I  have  read  it  with 
the  greatest  interest,  and  it  has  taught  me  much.  I  wish  I 
could  ask  you  some  of  the  questions  it  suggests. 

May  God  bless  you  and  yours  always. 

Most  faithfully  yours, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

January  30,  1883. 
Dear  Lizzie,  —  Since  I  wrote  to  you  last  we  have  come  over 
from  Benares,  and  to-day  have  been  making  a  delightful  excur- 
sion to  Buddh-Gaya,  where,  as  Edwin  Arnold  tells  us  so  prettily, 
Gautama  sat  six  years  under  the  Bo  tree  and  thought  and  thought 
and  thought  until,  at  last,  "was  the  Dukha-satya  opened  him," 
and  Buddhism  began.  In  these  days,  when  a  large  part  of  Boston 
prefers  to  consider  itself  Buddhist  rather  than  Christian,  I  con- 
sidered this  pilgrimage  to  be  the  duty  of  a  minister  who  preaches 
to  Bostonians,  and  so  this  morning,  before  sunrise,  we  started 
for  Gay  a  and  the  red  Barabar  hills.  We  had  slept  in  the  rail- 
way station,  which  is  not  an  uncommon  proceeding  in  the  out-of- 
the-way  parts  of  India,  where  there  is  no  pretence  of  a  hotel, 
and  where  you  don't  know  anybody  to  whose  bungalow  you  can 
drive  up  as  you  can  to  that  of  almost  any  man  you  ever  bowed 
to  in  the  street.  They  are  a  most  hospitable  folk.  Only  when 
you  go  to  stay  with  them  you  are  expected  to  bring  your  own 
bedding  and  your  own  servant,  which  saves  them  lots  of  trouble. 


394  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883-84 

Think  of  my  appearing  at  your  door  some  afternoon  with  a  mat- 
tress and  Katie.  We  had'  to  drive  ten  miles,  and  as  we  went 
the  sun  rose  just  as  it  did  on  Buddha  in  the  same  landscape  in 
the  fifth  hook  of  the  "  Light  of  Asia, "  which,  as  you  see,  I  have 
been  reading  with  the  greatest  interest.  We  had  to  walk  the 
last  two  miles,  because  the  ponies,  who  must  have  been  Moham- 
medans, wouldn't  go  any  farther.  But  it  was  a  glorious  morn- 
ing, and  by  and  by  we  suddenly  turned  into  an  indescribable 
ravine.  One  tumbled  mass  of  shrines  and  topes  and  monuments 
hundreds  on  hundreds  of  them  set  up  by  pilgrims  for  the  last  two 
thousand  years,  and  in  the  midst,  two  hundred  feet  high,  a  queer 
fantastic  temple  which  has  been  rebuilt  again  and  again,  but 
which  has  in  it  the  original  Buddha  figure  of  Asoka's  time,  a 
superb  great  altar  statue,  calm  as  eternity,  and  on  the  outside, 
covered  with  gold  leaf,  the  seat  on  which  the  Master  sat  those  six 
long  years. 

The  Bo  tree  has  departed  long  ago,  and  the  temples  were  not 
there  when  he  was  squatting  and  meditating,  but  the  landscape 
was  the  same ;  and  though  this  is  one  of  the  places  where  thou- 
sands of  pilgrims  come  from  both  the  Buddhist  and  the  Brahmin 
worlds,  the  monuments  which  they  had  set  up  were  not  as  inter- 
esting as  the  red  hills  on  one  side,  and  the  open  plain  on  the 
other,  which  Sakya  must  have  seen  when  he  forgot  for  a  moment 
to  gaze  at  the  soles  of  his  own  feet,  and  looked  upon  the  outer 
world.  It  is  a  delightful  country,  this  India,  and  now  the  cli- 
mate is  delightful.  The  Indian  winter  is  like  the  best  of  our 
Indian  summer,  and  such  mornings  and  midnights  you  never 
saw. 

At  Calcutta  he  remained  for  nearly  two  weeks.  Here  as 
at  every  other  point  his  highest  interest  culminated  in  the 
missionary  work.  He  was  studying  the  situation  with  an 
open  mind,  ready  to  see  things  as  they  actually  were,  un- 
biassed by  the  conventionalities  of  missionary  enthusiasm. 
He  was  deeply  interested  in  Chunder  Sen,  and  immediately 
on  his  arrival  at  Calcutta  made  the  long  anticipated  call  on 
the  Hindu  reformer.  In  a  very  important  letter  to  Rev. 
Arthur  Brooks  he  gives  the  impressions  he  has  formed :  — 

February  2,  1883. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  Calcutta  itself  has  not  many  sights,  and  so 
it  is  the  people  whom  one  wants  most  to  see.      This  morning  I 
spent  two  hours  with  Keshub  Baboo  Chunder  Sen.     And  I  '11  tell 


^T.  46-47]  INDIA  395 

you  about  him.  I  told  old  Mr.  Dall,  the  venerable  Unitarian 
missionary  here,  that  I  wanted  to  see  the  head  of  the  New  Dis- 
pensation, and  the  minister  of  the  Brahma  Somaj  (which  is  an- 
other name  for  the  same  thing)  sent  back  word  that  he  would  be 
at  home  at  nine  o'clock  to-day.  On  the  Circular  Road,  one  of 
the  chief  streets  of  the  city,  there  is  a  big  house  all  surrounded 
on  three  stories  with  verandas,  standing  inside  a  garden,  around 
which  is  a  high  pink-washed  wall.  On  the  gate-post  is  inscribed 
the  name  of  Lily  Cottage,  which,  I  believe,  was  the  title  which 
a  previous  occupant  gave  to  the  place.  Driving  in  under  a  great 
jporte  cochere,  we  were  shown  up  to  a  very  large,  high  parlor  in  the 
second  story,  where  we  waited  for  the  prophet.  It  was  furnished 
comfortably  but  not  tastefully  in  European  style,  with  rather 
cheap  pictures  on  the  walls.  I  noticed  especially  an  engraving 
of  the  Queen,  which  had  been  presented  to  Keshub  by  her  Ma- 
jesty; also  a  very  poor  little  painting  of  the  man  himself,  sitting 
on  the  Himalayas  with  a  woman  by  his  side,  he  holding  a  long 
guitar-like  instrument  in  his  hand,  and  clad  in  the  skin  of  a 
tiger.  At  one  end  of  the  room  hung  a  familiar  chromo-litho- 
graph  of  Christ,  after  Carlo  Dolci,  holding  the  sacramental  cup, 
and  with  the  right  hand  raised  in  blessing,  —  a  large,  cheap 
Christian  picture.  While  we  were  looking  about,  Chunder  Sen 
came  in,  a  rather  tall  and  sturdy  man  of  forty-five,  with  a  bright, 
kindly,  open  face,  a  round  head,  and  black  mustache  and  some- 
what short-cut  black  hair.  He  wore  the  Eastern  white  mantle 
thrown  over  his  shoulders,  and  apparently  covering  a  more  or 
less  European  dress.  He  gave  me  a  most  kindly  greeting,  and 
at  once  began  to  talk.  I  asked  him  questions,  and  he  answered 
freely  and  at  length.  It  made  me  feel  very  like  an  interviewer, 
but  it  was  the  best  way  to  get  at  what  I  wanted.  He  said  that 
the  central  position  of  Brahma  Somaj  was  pure  theism.  It  stood 
fairly  between  Indian  Pantheism  on  one  side  and  Indian  idola- 
try on  the  other,  insisting  fully  on  the  Unity  and  Personality 
of  God,  and  freely  calling  Him  "Father,"  believing  in  this 
God's  perpetual  and  universal  presence.  It  found  his  prophets 
everywhere,  and  aimed  to  hold  all  the  good  and  true  of  all  sys- 
tems and  all  teachers  "in  Christ."  He  mentioned,  especially, 
Socrates,  Mohammed,  and  Buddha.  When  you  tried  to  find 
just  what  he  meant  by  holding  the  truth  of  them  "  in  Christ, " 
he  eluded  you.  He  constantly  asserted  that  he  held  Christ  to 
be  in  unique  sense  the  "  Son  of  God, "  but  said  he  could  not  any 
further  explain  his  meaning  of  that  phrase.  He  rejected  all 
idea  of  Incarnation.  Nor  would  he  own  that  Christ,  in  his  his- 
toric teaching,  was  in  any  way  the  test  by  which  other  teachers 


396  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

should  be  judged.  He  talked  much  of  "Communion  with 
Christ,"  but  defined  it  as  such  profound  contemplation  of  his 
character  as  produced  entire  sjonpathy  with  him,  not  allowing 
anything  like  personal  intercourse  with  a  Christ  now  living  and 
communicating  with  us.  Still  he  clung  strongly  to  that  phrase 
"in  Christ."  He  described  very  interestingly  the  "Pilgrim- 
ages "  of  the  Brahma  Somaj  to  Socrates  or  Buddha  or  Moham- 
med or  Carlyle,  which  consist  of  gathering  in  front  of  the  church 
and  singing  hymns  and  reading  some  of  the  great  teacher's  say- 
ings, and  then  going  inside  and  sitting  still  and  entering  into 
communion  with  his  character.  Besides  these,  and  as  something 
more  sacred,  they  have  occasionally  the  Lord's  Supper,  which  is 
celebrated  with  Indian  sweetmeats  and  water,  and  centres  in 
mystic  contemplation  of  the  character  of  Jesus.  They  have  also 
a  baptism,  which  is  quite  optional,  and  strangely  keeps  associa- 
tion with  the  Hindu  ablutions  on  the  one  hand  and  with  Chris- 
tian baptism  on  the  other.  He  was  very  interesting  in  his  ac- 
count of  how  he  freely  uses  the  terms  of  the  old  Hindu  mythology, 
talking  of  Siva  and  Vishnu  and  Parvati  as  different  sides  of 
Deity,  and  hoping  so  to  win  the  people  to  spiritual  views  of  what 
they  have  long  held  materially,  and  to  construct  in  their  minds 
a  unity  out  of  the  fragments  of  Divine  Ideal,  of  which  their 
books  are  full.  Thus  he  hopes  some  day  to  appeal  to  the  com- 
mon superstitious  Hindu  mind,  though  thus  far  the  movement  has 
been  mostly  confined  to  the  higher  classes,  who  have  been  reached 
by  English  education.  He  said  some  fine  things  about  the  orien- 
talism of  Christ  and  Christianity,  and  about  the  impossibility  of 
India  ever  becoming  Christian  after  the  European  sort.  At  the 
same  time  he  said  unreservedly  that  the  future  religion  of  India 
would  be  a  Christ  religion.  The  asceticism  to  which  he  clings 
is  of  a  very  healthy  human  sort,  rejecting  entirely  the  old  ideas 
of  the  Fakirs.  He  pointed  to  the  picture  on  the  wall  and  said 
that  there  he  had  had  himself  painted  as  a  Vedic  Rishi,  but  had 
especially  taken  care  to  have  his  wife  painted  by  his  side  to  show 
that  the  true  asceticism  kept  still  the  family  life.  As  to  the 
peculiar  worship  of  their  society,  he  told  of  the  new  "  Dance  " 
which  has  been  lately  introduced,  and  which  has  been  much 
abused.  It  is,  according  to  him,  neither  more  or  less  than  the 
Methodist  camp-meeting  principle  of  the  physical  expression  of 
spiritual  emotion  putting  itself  into  oriental  shape.  For  himself 
he  eats  no  meat  and  drinks  no  wine,  but  these  restrictions  are  not 
enforced  nor  universal,  though  they  are  very  commonly  observed 
as  a  protest  against  the  self-indulgence  into  which  modern  India 
is  largely  running  as  it  departs  from  its  old  faiths. 


^T.  46-47]  INDIA  397 

All  this  and  much  more  was  told  with  a  quiet  glow  and  eai- 
nestness  which  was  very  impressive.  The  basis  and  inspiration 
of  it  all  was  intuition.  There  was  no  reference  to  any  authority. 
Indeed  he  almost  boasts  that  he  never  reads.  Even  his  Christ 
seemed  to  be  One  of  whom  he  knew  not  so  much  by  the  New 
Testament  as  by  personal  contemplation.  He  shrinks  from  dogma 
and  definition,  and  eludes  you  at  every  turn.  He  is  the  mystic 
altogether.  As  we  got  up  and  went  out  we  passed  a  room  where 
his  household  and  some  other  disciples  were  at  morning  worship. 
Eight  or  ten  men  sat  cross-legged  on  the  floor  with  closed  eyes, 
while  one  fine-looking  fellow  in  the  midst  murmured  a  half-audi- 
ble prayer.  In  one  corner  of  the  room  was  a  rustic  booth  devoted 
to  supreme  contemplation,  in  which  sat  one  worshipper,  who 
seemed  more  absorbed  even  than  the  others.  At  the  feet  of  the 
men  lay  drums  and  other  musical  instruments,  to  which  they 
would  by  and  by  sing  a  hymn.  We  had  heard  them  singing  as 
we  sat  talking  with  Keshub  Baboo.  Behind  a  thin  curtain  you 
could  just  see  the  women's  fans.  Chunder  Sen  stood  and  looked 
in  with  us  at  the  door  and  told  us  all  about  it,  and  then  bade  us 
a  cordial  farewell  and  promised  some  of  his  books  and  a  photo- 
graph of  himself  which  he  has  since  sent. 

This  is  enough,  perhaps,  of  Chunder  Sen !  but  I  thought  you 
might  care  to  hear  of  what  has  interested  me  immensely.  It  is 
Indian  mysticism  fastening  on  Christ  and  trying  to  become  the 
practical  saviour  of  the  country  by  him.  They  hold  in  full  the 
idea  of  special  national  religions  all  embraced  and  included  within 
the  great  religion  of  the  Divine  life  made  known  in  Jesus. 
Surely  nothing  could  be  more  interesting  than  this.  It  is  not 
Christianity,  but  it  is  the  effort  of  India  to  realize  Christ  in  her 
own  way,  —  so  far  as  I  know,  the  only  such  attempt  now  being 
made  in  any  heathen  land.  Already  the  natural  divergences  have 
shown  themselves.  There  is  the  Adi  Somaj,  or  old  society, 
which  desires  to  return  purely  to  Vedic  religion  and  will  not  hear 
of  Christ  because  he  is  not  in  the  Vedas;  and  there  is  the  Sad- 
harar  Somaj,  or  advanced  school  of  Free  Religionists.  There  is 
also  the  Arya  Somaj,  which  still  calls  itself  Brahminic,  and 
hopes  to  reform  Hinduism  from  within.  The  first  three  together 
have  some  one  hundred  and  sixty  congregations  in  India,  of  which 
some  forty  are  of  the  Brahma  Somaj.  I  have  been  much  inter- 
ested in  what  the  people  here  who  care  about  religion  say  about 
Keshub  and  his  new  dispensation.  Some  of  the  missionaries  and 
other  Christian  people  call  him  impostor  out  and  out,  and  do  not 
believe  in  his  sincerity.  I  have  been  unable  to  get  from  them 
any  grounds  of  their  disbelief  in  him  except  that  they  think  him 


398  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

conceited,  and  that  he  went  back  on  some  of  his  precepts  abont 
infant  marriages  in  order  to  marry  his  daughter  of  thirteen  to 
the  Rajah  of  Kushpahar.  An  intelligent  Brahmin,  with  whom 
I  talked,  spoke  of  him  with  contempt  and  said  his  movement  was 
fast  dying  out,  and  told  of  a  strange  new  life  in  Hinduism,  very 
much  as  the  Orthodox  churchman  talks  of  Unitarians.  Strangely 
enough,  it  is  from  high  English  churchmen  that  I  have  heard  the 
most  thoughtful  and  interested  comments  on  the  work.  The 
Bishop  of  Bombay,  a  ritualist  of  very  narrow  sort,  declared  it  to 
be  most  interesting,  and  the  Bishop  of  Calcutta  told  me  to-day 
that  while  he  had  no  sympathy  with  mysticism  and  thought  that 
Brahma  Somaj  would  come  to  nothing  because  it  had  no  doctrinal 
basis,  yet  he  counted  Chunder  Sen  his  friend,  and  praised  his 
spirituality  and  earnestness.  Our  friends  of  the  Cambridge  Mis- 
sion at  Delhi  were  full  of  watchful  interest  in  the  new  movement. 
Joseph  Cook,  when  he  was  here,  almost  offended  some  of  the 
missionaries  by  his  interest  in  and  praise  of  Chunder  Sen.  And 
some  of  the  missionaries  of  the  German  mission  believe  in  his 
personal  character,  and  watch  his  movement  with  much  hope. 
Old  Mr.  Dall  has  never  given  in  adherence  to  anything  but  the 
pure  theism  of  the  New  Dispensation,  but  is  constantly  with 
them,  and  naturally  enough  is  claimed  by  them  as  more  theirs 
than  he  will  himself  allow. 

I  am  almost  ashamed  of  having  written  so  much  about  him, 
but  it  does  seem  to  me  to  be  the  very  kind  of  thing  for  which  we 
are  all  looking.  Brahma  Somaj  is  not  the  end.  It  is  only  the 
first  sign  of  the  real  working  of  the  native  soul  and  mind  on 
Christ  and  his  truth,  which  must  sometime  find  far  fuller  light 
than  it  has  found  yet.  I  send  you  a  copy  of  its  paper  of  January 
14,  which  has  (beginning  on  the  first  page)  an  article  on  Chris- 
tian Mission  Work  in  India,  which  I  think  must  stir  the  heart  of 
every  missionary.  The  whole  movement  and  its  leader  believe 
intensely  in  the  Holy  Spirit.  And  I  believe  that  such  embodi- 
ments of  Christianity  as  India  will  sometime  furnish,  and  such 
as  this  New  Dispensation  faintly  and  blunderingly  suggests,  will 
not  merely  be  different  from  European  Christianity,  but  will  add 
something  to  it,  and  make  the  world  of  Christianity  a  completer 
thing,  with  its  eastern  and  western  halves  both  there,  than  it  has 
ever  been  before.  These  are  my  views.  Sometime  soon  I  will 
write  to  you  about  something  else.  Now  good-night.  On  Sun- 
day I  shall  go  to  the  cathedral  in  the  morning  and  to  Brahma 
Somaj  in  the  afternoon. 

"While  he  was  at  Calcutta  he  took  a  long  journey  for  the 


^T.  46-47]  INDIA  399 

purpose  of  seeing  the  Himalayas.     He  writes  to  Mr.  "Wil- 
liam G.  Brooks  describing  his  impressions :  — 

Calcutta,  February  11,  1883. 

Dear  William,  —  This  week  I  have  seen  the  Himalayas. 
Last  Monday  we  left  Calcutta  at  three  o'clock  by  rail;  at  seven 
we  crossed  the  Ganges  on  a  steamboat,  just  as  if  it  had  been  the 
Susquehanna.  All  night  we  slept  in  the  train,  and  the  next  day 
were  climbing  up  and  up  on  a  sort  of  steam  tramway,  which  runs 
to  Darjeeling,  a  summer  station  at  the  foot  of  the  highest  hills, 
but  itself  a  thousand  feet  higher  than  the  top  of  Mt.  Washington. 
There  the  swells  go  in  the  hot  months,  but  now  it  is  almost 
deserted.  We  reached  there  on  Tuesday  evening  in  the  midst 
of  rain,  found  that  the  great  mountains  had  not  been  seen  for 
eight  days,  and  everybody  laughed  at  our  hope  of  seeing  them. 
We  slept,  and  early  the  next  morning  looked  out  on  nothing  but 
clouds.  But  about  eight  o'clock  the  curtain  began  to  fall,  and 
before  nine  there  was  a  most  splendid  view  of  the  whole  range. 
In  the  midst  was  the  lordly  Kinchin jinga,  the  second  highest 
mountain  in  the  world,  over  28,000  feet  high.  Think  of  that! 
Certainly,  they  made  the  impression  of  height,  such  as  no  moun- 
tains ever  gave  me  before. 

By  and  by  we  rode  about  six  miles  to  another  hill  called 
Senchul,  where  the  tip  of  Mt.  Everest,  the  highest  mountain  in 
the  world,  29,002  feet,  is  visible.  That  was  interesting,  but 
the  real  glory  of  the  day  was  Kinchinjinga.  We  gazed  at  him 
till  the  jealous  clouds  came  again  in  tbe  afternoon  and  covered 
him ;  then  we  roamed  over  the  little  town  and  went  to  a  Bud- 
dhist village  a  couple  of  miles  away.  The  people  here  are  Thi- 
betans by  origin,  and  they  keep  associations  with  the  tribes  upon 
the  other  side  of  the  great  hills.  A  company  of  Thibetans, 
priests  and  Lamas,  had  come  over  to  celebrate  the  New  Year, 
which  with  them  begins  on  the  9th  of  February.  They  had  the 
strangest  music  and  dances,  and  queer  outdoor  plays,  and  we 
were  welcomed  as  distinguished  strangers,  and  set  in  the  place  of 
honor,  feasted  with  oranges,  and  begged  for  backsheesh. 

The  next  morning  there  were  the  giant  hills  again,  and  we 
looked  at  Kinchinjinga  (I  want  you  to  learn  his  name)  till  eleven 
o'clock,  when  we  took  the  train  again  for  Calcutta,  and  arrived 
there  on  Friday  afternoon  about  five.  It  was  a  splendid  journey, 
and  one  to  be  always  remembered.  On  my  return  to  Calcutta  I 
found  two  invitations  waiting:  one  was  to  dine  at  the  Govern- 
ment House  with  the  Viceroy  on  Thursday  evening.  Of  course, 
I  was  too  late  for  that,  and  was  very  sorry,  for  now  I  shall  not 


400  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1882-83 

see  the  great  man  and  the  viceregal  court  at  all.  The  other  was 
to  an  evening  party  on  Friday,  given  by  the  Rajah  Rajendra 
Narayan  del  Bahadur,  "in  honor  of  the  late  British  victory  in 
Egypt."  Of  course  I  went  to  this,  and  it  was  the  biggest  tiling 
seen  in  India  for  years.  It  is  said  to  have  cost  the  old  Rajah  a 
lac  of  rupees,  or  $100,000.  At  any  rate,  it  was  very  splendid 
and  very  queer,  —  acres  of  palace  and  palace  grounds  blazing 
with  lights,  a  thousand  guests,  the  natives  in  the  most  beautiful 
costumes  of  silk  and  gold ;  a  Nautch  dance  going  on  all  the  time 
in  one  hall,  a  full  circus,  —  horses,  acrobats,  clowns,  and  all, 
only  after  native  fashion,  — in  a  great  covered  courtyard,  supper 
perpetual,  and  the  great  drawing-room  blazing  with  family  jew- 
els. I  stayed  till  one  o'clock,  and  then  came  home  as  if  from 
the  Arabian  Nights,  and  went  to  bed.^ 

Leaving  Calcutta,  he  came  to  Madras.  While  there  he 
made  a  trip  to  the  Seven  Pagodas,  which  only  needed  the 
company  of  his  friends  to  have  been  complete  to  his  imagina- 
tion. Of  this  trip  he  wrote  several  weeks  later  to  Rev.  W. 
N.  McVickar  :  — 

Dear  William,  —  How  often  I  wished  that  you  and  Charles 
Cooper  were  with  me  off  in  India.  There  was  one  time  espe- 
cially when  I  imagined  what  it  would  be  if  you  two  fellows  were 
burning  tobacco  on  the  same  scow's  deck.  It  was  on  the  trip  to 
the  Seven  Pagodas,  as  they  call  themselves.  We  drove  five  miles 
from  Madras  and  came  to  a  canal  where  there  were  three  boats 
lying,  queerest  boats  that  ever  were  made.  One  was  for  us,  me 
and  my  small  companion,  one  for  our  servants  and  their  cooking, 
and  one  for  a  Brahmin  gentleman  who  had  offered  to  go  with  us 
and  was  very  wise  in  Indian  Archaeology.  He  might  not  go  in 
our  boat  because  we  had  no  caste,  and  he  must  cook  his  own  vict- 
uals and  eat  by  himself.  But  save  at  eating  time  he  came  and 
sat  with  us.  And  all  night  long  we  crept  along,  drawn  not  by 
horses  nor  by  mules  after  your  Pennsylvania  fashion,  but  by  a 
score  of  naked  savages,  who  shone  in  the  moonlight  and  every 
now  and  then  broke  out  into  wild  songs  as  they  trotted  along  the 
shore.  The  nights  were  glorious,  with  such  an  atmosphere  as 
we  never  see  even  in  Boston,  and  the  Brahmin  (whose  name  was 
Pundit  Natesasastri)  talked  eloquently  and  looked  picturesque 
and  told  all  about  his  strange  life  and  wonderful  belief.  And  I 
smoked  and  wished  you  fellows  were  there.  And  the  next  day 
we  saw  the  most  wonderful  rock  temples  and  hid  ourselves  from 
1  Published  in  Letters  of  Travel,  p.  260. 


JET.  46-47]  INDIA  401 

the  midday  sun  at  the  feet  of  Siva  and  Parvati,  and  then  came 
back  to  Madras  by  a  second  night  journey  like  the  first.  And 
all  the  while  Cooper  and  you  were  writing  sermons  when  you 
might  just  as  well  have  been  with  me  as  not. 

This  letter  to  the  Rev.   Charles  D.   Cooper,  gives  us  a 
specimen  of  his  humor :  — 

Chedambabam,  February  22,  1883. 
Dear  Coopek,  —  In  case  you  do  not  know  where  Chedam- 
baram  is,  I  will  tell  you  that  it  is  just  ten  miles  from  Vaithis- 
varankoil,  and  it  is  hotter  than  Philadelphia  in  fly  time.  I 
have  been  celebrating  the  birthday  of  Mr.  Washington  by  firing 
off  bottles  of  soda  water  all  the  morning  ever  since  we  came  in 
from  our  early  visit  to  the  wonderful  pagoda  which  is  the  marvel 
of  this  beautiful  but  benighted  heathen  town.  The  only  way  to 
see  things  here  in  Southern  India  is  to  start  at  daybreak,  when 
the  country  is  cool  and  lovelier  than  anything  you  can  imagine. 
The  palm-trees  are  waving  in  the  early  breeze.  The  elephants 
go  crushing  along  with  painted  trunks  and  gilded  tusks.  The 
pretty  Hindu  girls  are  drawing  water  at  the  wells  under  the 
banana  groves.  The  naked  children  are  frolicking  in  the  dust  of 
the  bazaars.  The  old  men  and  women  are  drinking  their  early 
cocoanut,  and  you  jolt  along  on  the  straw,  in  your  creaking  bul- 
lock cart,  as  jolly  as  a  rajah.  So  we  went  this  morning  to  do 
homage  to  the  false  gods.  Vishnu  had  gone  off  on  a  pilgrimage, 
and  his  shrine  was  empty,  but  Siva  was  at  home,  and  the  howl- 
ing devotees  were  in  the  middle  of  the  morning  service.  They 
must  have  been  about  at  the  second  lesson  when  we  arrived,  but, 
owing  to  the  peculiar  character  of  their  language,  it  was  not  easy 
to  make  out  just  what  stage  of  the  morning  exercises  they  had 
reached.  But  it  didn't  much  matter,  for  immediately  on  our 
arrival  the  worship  stopped  where  it  was  and  the  officiating 
clergyman  came  forward  and  ridiculously  presented  us  with  a  lime 
each,  and  then  tried  to  put  a  garland  of  flowers  about  our  Chris- 
tian necks.  This  last  attention  I  refused  with  indignation,  at 
his  making  a  heathen  so  summarily  out  of  a  respectable  presbyter 
of  the  P.  E.  Church  from  Bishop  Paddock's  diocese.  He  grace- 
fully intimated  that  he  didn't  mind  my  being  mad  but  would 
pocket  the  insult  (or  do  whatever  a  fellow  does  who  has  no 
pocket,  or  indeed  anything  else  except  a  dirty  rag  about  his  loins), 
provided  I  gave  him  the  rupee  which  he  expected  all  the  same. 
While  I  was  doing  this  there  was  a  noise  like  seven  pandemo- 
niums outside,  and  soon  in  through  the  gate  came  a  wild  crowd 

VOL.  u 


402  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

of  savages  yelling  like  fiends  and  carrying  on  their  shoulders  a 
great  platform  on  which  was  a  big  brass  idol  all  daubed  with 
grease  and  hung  with  flowers.  This  was  Vishnu,  just  returned 
from  his  sea  bath,  and  in  front  of  him  came  the  craziest  band  of 
music  made  up  of  lunatics  banging  on  tom-toms  and  screeching 
away  on  brazen  trumpets  three  feet  long.  We  saw  the  ugly 
Divinity  safe  in  his  shrine,  and  left  the  pagans  yelling  in  their 
joy  at  getting  their  ugly  image  safely  home. 

By  this  time  the  sun  was  blazing,  as  I  said,  and  we  came  home 
to  the  bungalow,  which  does  duty  for  a  tavern,  and  set  a  small 
Hindu  to  pulling  away  at  a  punkah  rope  at  the  cost  of  three  cents 
a  day.  Then  we  cut  up  our  sacred  limes  and  poured  soda  water 
on  the  juice  of  them  and  made  a  drink  which  I  advise  you  to  try 
if  ever  you  have  to  spend  a  hot  day  in  Chedambaram.  Then  we 
breakfasted  on  rice  and  curry  and  fried  bananas,  and  then  I 
thought  I  would  write  to  you  and  send  you  my  blessing  out  of  the 
depths  of  this  Hindu  darkness. 

I  can't  tell  you  what  a  delightful  thing  this  Indian  trip  has 
been.  From  the  snows  of  the  Himalayas  down  to  these  burning 
and  luxuriant  tropics,  from  the  wonderful  beauty  of  the  exquisite 
Taj  of  the  Mohammedan  Emperor  at  Agra  down  to  the  grotesque 
splendor  of  this  great  Brahmin  sanctuary  which  we  have  seen 
to-day,  everything  has  been  fascinating.  Oh,  if  you  and  Mc- 
Vickar  and  George  Strong  had  been  with  me  all  the  way!  I 
have  had  a  pleasant  young  companion,  who  has  behaved  beauti- 
fully except  when  he  got  the  smallpox  in  Delhi,  and  kept  us  there 
two  weeks.  But  Delhi  is,  after  all,  the  most  interesting  place 
in  India,  and  if  he  was  going  to  do  it  he  could  not  have  chosen 
a  better  place.  We  were  guests  there  of  some  fine  young  Eng- 
lish missionaries,  who  behaved  splendidly  under  the  affliction 
which  we  brought  down  upon  them,  and  I  went  about  with  them 
and  saw  the  ins  and  outs  of  missionary  life  which,  when  the 
right  men  are  at  it,  is  a  splendid  thing. 

The  hot  season  has  set  in  within  the  last  few  days  and  we 
must  be  away,  but  I  shall  leave  these  gentle  Hindus  and  their 
lovely  land  with  great  regret.  Now  we  are  on  our  way  to  Cey- 
lon, and  two  weeks  from  to-day  we  sail  from  Colombo  back  to 
Suez,  and  then  comes  Spain.  Are  you  right  well,  old  fellow, 
and  does  the  dear  old  study  look  just  the  way  it  used  to  do,  and 
are  you  counting  as  much  as  I  am  the  time  when  we  shall  meet 
again  there  at  General  Convention,  and  talk  it  all  over  and  abuse 

the 8  in  the  dear  old  way? 

Ever  and  ever  yours, 

P.  B. 


^T.  46-47]  INDIA  403 

To  the  Rev.  Percy  Browne :  — 

P.  &  0.  Steamship  Rohilla,  On  the  Ganges,  February  13, 1883. 

My  dear  Percy,  —  For  almost  five  months  I  've  carried  in 
my  visiting  case  the  letter  which  you  wrote  to  me  away  back  last 
September,  and  I  have  greeted  you  in  heart  a  hundred  times  as  I 
have  looked  at  it.  Now,  how  are  things  going  with  you,  really? 
One  or  two  glimpses  I  have  had  of  you  in  other  letters,  —  once 
preaching  at  the  reading  desk  of  Trinity  (for  which  I  thank  you 
heartily !  ),  once  getting  sat  down  on  by  a  Brooklyn  bishop  for 
some  first-rate  sentiments  on  missions,  once  or  twice  at  the  Club, 
and  all  the  rest  my  imagination  has  supplied.  But  now  it  is  time 
that  I  should  tell  you  how  heartily  I  wished  you  all  Christmas 
and  New  Year's  good  things.  The  New  Year  came  in  on  me  in 
the  midst  of  an  all-night  ride  on  the  way  back  from  the  wonderful 
Buddhist  Caves  at  Elbera,  —  a  night  ride  undertaken  to  escape 
the  blazing  January  sun.  It  was  all  very  different  from  the  last 
old  year's  night,  with  its  watch-meeting  and  the  walk  home  in 
the  snow,  and  Allen  coming  in  just  after  with  John  the  Baptist 
in  his  arms,  and  the  long,  peaceful  smoke  together  with  which  we 
welcomed  1882.  I  could  only  address  the  heathen  Hindu  who 
was  driving  me,  and  wish  him,  in  a  tongue  he  could  not  under- 
stand, a  Happy  New  Year,  to  which  he  responded  with  a  friendly 
grin  and  grunt ;  but  for  the  moment  his  grotesque  figure,  in  his 
dirty  turban,  represented  the  human  creatures  whom  I  cared  for 
most,  and  you  may  be  sure  that  I  did  not  forget  you  and  all  that 
I  hope  to  enjoy  with  you  before  the  year  is  out,  as  we  rattled  on 
in  the  moonlight.  The  year  is  more  than  half  over.  Germany 
was  very  delightful,  but  it  has  sunk  back  now  into  the  distance 
behind  this  wonderful  India,  whose  pictures  of  strange  life  and 
suggestions  of  strange  thoughts  have  been  before  me  for  the  last 
six  weeks,  —  a  perpetual  surprise !  Every  morning  to  come  out 
and  find  the  Brahmins  and  the  idols  and  the  palm-trees  and  the 
temples  and  the  color  and  the  sunshine  still  there,  and  that  it  was 
not  a  mere  spectacle  of  last  evening's  theatre  or  a  dream  of  last 
night's  sleep.  And  all  the  while  Boston  is  there,  and  you  and 
the  other  fellows  are  getting  thick  in  Lent.  What  are  you  lectur- 
ing on  this  year?  Last  year,  I  think  it  was  the  great  Christian 
heroes,  wasn't  it?  When  Lent  is  over  you  will  go  to  work  on 
your  convention  sermon,  and  I  know  that  those  who  sit  and  listen 
every  year  will  hear  this  year  some  healthy,  human,  and  divine 
truth,  by  which  I  pray  thus  early  that  they  all  may  get  the  edifi- 
cation and  blessing  which  they  ought.  And  then,  as  if  after  the 
diocesan  convention  all  the  world  must  rest,  summer  will   come. 


404  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

and  the  pretty  Marion  house  will  take  you  all  in  again.  Before 
another  winter  comes  my  wanderjahr  will  be  over,  and  I  shall  be 
there  again  to  see  how  much  you  all  have  outgrown  me  while  I 
have  been  playing  by  the  Spree  and  the  Ganges.  I  wonder  what 
changes  I  shall  find.  One  thing  I  know  I  shall  find,  —  and  it 
makes  me  almost  homesick  when  I  think  of  it,  —  that  you  have 
not  forgotten  your  old  friendship,  but  will  come  in  to  my  fireside 
and  let  me  come  out  to  yours,  and  we  will  console  one  another's 
old  age  and  trot  down  the  further  side  of  the  hill  of  clerical  life 
together  hand  in  hand.  God  bless  and  keep  you  always,  — you 
and  the  wife  and  bairns,  to  all  of  whom  I  send  love,  and  am 
more  and  more  affectionately  yours,  P.  B. 

To  the  Kev.  George  A.  Strong :  — 

Tanjoee,  February  23,  1883. 

Dear  George,  —  It  is  the  loveliest  Indian  night,  and  I  am 
sitting  on  the  veranda  of  a  travellers'  bungalow,  and  it  is  cool, 
which  is  more  than  could  have  been  said  of  any  house  to-day  since 
breakfast  time.  What  can  I  do  better  over  my  after-dinner 
cigar  than  have  a  little  talk  with  you  ?  Oh,  that  you  were  here, 
and  that  it  could  be  real  talk  and  not  this  miserable  pen-and-ink 
business.  But  that  must  wait  for  six  months  yet.  Then  we 
will  do  it  to  our  hearts'  content. 

A  travellers'  bungalow  is  a  sort  of  government  institution 
which  exists  in  every  considerable  town  in  India  which  has  no 
hotel,  and  in  some  that  have.  It  takes  you  in,  — gives  you  a 
bedstead.  You  must  bring  your  own  bedding,  your  own  servant, 
your  own  victuals,  and  here  you  live  as  independent  as  a  prince, 
or  pack  up  and  are  off  when  you  have  seen  the  sights  or  done 
your  business.  The  sight  of  Tanjore  is  a  glorious  pagoda,  —  a 
vast  pyramidal  Hindu  temple,  two  hundred  feet  high,  rich  with 
all  sorts  of  grotesque  sculpture  from  top  to  bottom,  and  glowing 
with  all  sorts  of  colors,  — red  and  brown  and  yellow  and  green 
and  black,  —  all  mellowed  and  harmonized  with  ages.  Inside 
there  is  a  hideous  shrine  with  a  hideous  idol,  but  the  outside  is 
a  marvel,  and  it  stands  in  a  great  area  dotted  with  palms  and 
guavas,  and  with  a  lot  of  little  temples  sprouting  as  if  from  the 
roots  of  the  big  thing.  This  is  our  latest  wonder ;  but  every  day 
for  the  last  two  months  has  had  its  spectacle,  and  such  a  sky  has 
been  over  all  all  the  time  as  even  New  Bedford  never  sees.  .  .  . 
It  has  been  a  great  success.  Everybody  has  been  very  hospit- 
able, and  the  only  wonder  has  been  to  find  each  morning  that 
it  was  not  all  a  dream  and  has  not  vanished  in  the  night.  But 
it  is  almost  over  now.     Next  week  we  shall  be  in  Ceylon,  and 


^T.  46-47]  INDIA  405 

on  the  7th  of  March  we  sail  from  Colombo  to  Suez,  and  shall  be 
in  commonplace  Europe  again  before  we  know  it.  And  how  has 
the  winter  gone  with  you?  While  we  are  dodging  the  sun  and 
lying  low  all  the  midday,  you  are  burning  your  cheerful  fire  and 
trudging  through  the  snow  to  comfort  sick  New  Bedforders. 
And  just  now  it  is  Lent,  I  think;  I  am  not  sure.  A  day  which 
I  believe  was  Ash  Wednesday  I  spent  up  at  Darjheeling  gazing 
at  the  Himalayas.  I  have  no  daily  service  and  no  Confirmation 
Class.  All  of  these  things  seem  like  dim  memories,  but  I  am 
glad  that  some  of  you  are  more  faithful  than  I  am,  and  are  doing 
the  Gospel  work  while  I  am  loafing  here  among  these  naked 
heathen.  It  is  wonderful  how  little  clothes  an  utter  absence  oi 
the  Christian  faith  can  get  along  with !  I  have  almost  wished  I 
was  a  heathen  for  this  one  privilege  of  heathenism  at  any  rate. 
I  wonder  how  the  new  Church  goes,  and  whether  Mr.  Hathaway 
a"nd  Colonel  Fessenden  still  drop  in  of  evenings  (remember  me 
kindly  to  them  if  they  do) ;  and  whether  you  still  write  sermons 
on  old  scraps  of  paper  and  then  copy  them  (I  wish  that  I  could 
hear  one  of  them  day  after  to-morrow).     I  do  not  wonder  whether, 

for    I   know   that   you   and   M sometimes   find   time   for   a 

thought  of  your  old  friend.  P.   B. 

TtTTicoviN,  India,  March  1, 1883. 

Dear  Mrs.  Paine,  — This  place  with  the  strange  name  is 
the  last  place  in  India.  We  came  here  yesterday  fully  expecting 
to  sail  away  this  morning,  but  the  steamer  which  is  to  take  us 
to  Colombo  has  not  yet  arrived,  and  so  we  shall  have  to  spend  the 
whole  day  waiting.  It  is  terribly  hot,  but  the  picture  that  one 
sees  from  the  veranda  of  the  little  Inn  is  pretty  enough.  The 
shore  is  lined  with  native  boats,  which  are  loading  and  unloading, 
and  perpetual  lines  of  black  figures  are  wading  back  and  forth 
with  bales  on  their  heads,  bringing  cocoanuts  on  shore  and  carry- 
ing Chilis  and  other  Tuticovin  produce  out  to  the  vessels.  They 
seem  to  be  enjoying  both  the  water  and  the  sun,  and  the  chatter 
which  they  keep  up  is  deafening.  The  children  play  in  the  sand 
in  the  foreground,  and  the  women  take  the  bales  at  the  margin  of 
the  water  and  tug  them  up  the  beach.  In  the  distance  through 
the  trees  I  can  just  see  a  bit  of  a  native  temple  and  of  a  Roman 
Catholic  church. 

And  this  is  the  last  of  India.  I  look  back  on  two  months  of 
as  delightful  travel  as  I  have  ever  enjoyed.  To  be  sure,  there  is 
about  a  week  of  Ceylon  yet  to  come,  but  that  is  not  really  India 
and  will  be  an  experience  by  itself,  a  sort  of  hymn  after  the  ser- 
mon before  we  turn  our  faces  homewards.      India  itself  is  over, 


4o6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

and  the  whole  already  begins  to  blend  into  the  sort  of  dream 
which  one  has  of  a  country  where  he  has  hurriedly  travelled  for 
a  little  while.  But  its  interest  has  been  very  great  indeed.  To 
speak  of  only  one  thing,  the  constant  suggestions  about  our  own 
Christian  faith  which  have  come  from  the  daily  sight  of  heathen 
worship  and  missionary  effort  have  given  me  much  which  I  shall 
never  lose.  Christianity  grows  very  simple  when  one  sees  the 
need  of  it  here.  God  forbid  that  it  should  come  to  these  poor 
people,  burdened  with  the  elaborations  and  distinctions  which  it 
has  accumulated  among  us.  I  hope  that  I  shall  be  able  to  preach 
with  a  clearer  sense  of  what  the  heart  and  soul  of  the  whole  mat- 
ter really  is,  because  of  what  I  have  seen  in  India. 

I  have  met  with  the  kindest  hospitality  everywhere,  and  have 
made  some  friends  whom  I  shall  always  value ;  but,  dear  me !  the 
new  friends  cannot  be  like  the  old  ones,  and  many  a  time  I  have 
dreamed  of  the  day  when  I  should  come  back  to  you  all  at  home, 
or,  what  I  hope  will  take  place  first,  meet  you  all  somewhere  in 
Europe  in  the  summer.  I  hope  there  are  letters  over  there  in 
Colombo  to  tell  me  of  your  plans.  What  you  are  doing  now  I 
can  pretty  accurately  picture.  You  are  happily  settled  in  the 
new  house,  I  am  sure,  and  every  now  and  then  I  think  I  hear  a 
bit  of  a  speech  on  charity  organization  wafted  on  these  soft  spicy 
breezes.  My  best  love  always  to  all  from  the  oldest  to  the 
youngest.      God  keep  you  all  safe  and  well. 

Always  your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

From  Madras  he  went  to  Ceylon,  where  he  spent  a  week, 
visiting  the  Buddhist  shrines,  talking  with  Buddhist  priests, 
and  especially  interested  in  the  Buddhist  schools  and  in  the 
contrast  between  Buddhism  and  Hindu  religion.  As  he 
could  quickly  extract  from  a  book  its  essence,  so  from  con- 
versation and  observation  he  was  quick  to  see  the  significance 
of  the  actual  situation.  The  whole  man  was  alive  to  the 
greatness  of  the  opportunity  presented  to  him.  In  his  spare 
moments  he  was  reading  important  books  on  India,  —  the 
writings  of  Hunter  and  Wilkins.  On  the  religion  of  India 
he  supplemented  what  he  saw  by  the  works  of  students  such 
as  Max  Miiller,  Barth,  and  Rhys  Davids.  Trevelyan's 
"Cawnpore,"  the  writings  of  Meadows  Taylor,  Macaulay's 
essays  on  "  Clive"  and  "  Warren  Hastings,"  furnished  him 
with  information  which  he  coordinated  with  his  own  experi- 
ence.    He  mentions  "  Mr.  Isaacs,"  a  novel  by  Marion  Craw- 


^T.  46-47]  INDIA  407 

ford,  which  has  caught  the  real  life  of  the  people  as  he  him- 
self had  seen  it,  "The  atmospheric  contrast  between  the 
Englishman's  sharp,  clear  concreteness  and  the  Indian's  sub- 
tlety and  mystery  very  well  brought  out."  He  found  a  new 
interest  in  reading  again  Arnold's  "Light  of  Asia."  Over 
Bishop  Heber's  "Journey  "  he  brooded,  admiring  its  spirit, 
and  gaining  great  reverence  for  the  man. 

Into  his  note-book  there  went  some  of  his  deeper  reflections. 
First  impressions  of  a  country  have  their  value  as  compared 
with  those  which  a  long  sojourn  induces.  In  this  case  the 
personality  of  the  observer,  his  comprehensive  outlook,  his 
psychological  penetration,  his  knowledge  of  man,  and  his 
genius  for  religion,  all  combine  to  give  interest  and  worth  to 
the  thoughts  that  follow :  — 

IMPRESSIONS    OF    INDIAN    RELIGION. 

Hinduism,  the  great  stock  faith.  Its  wonderful  pliability, 
philosophical  and  idolatrous  both;  subtle  and  gross  at  once.  In 
neither  aspect  morally  elevating. 

From  time  to  time  moral  reforms,  which  afterwards  degenerate 
into  either,  first,  theological  differences,  like  Buddhism,  and  Jain- 
ism,  its  successor ;  or  second,  political  and  military  movements, 
like  Sikhism. 

These  reform  movements  always  taking  place,  but  always  being 
reabsorbed  by  the  superior  strength  of  the  great  Hindu  system. 

The  new  theism  is  a  stronger  movement,  because  it  has  affilia- 
tions with  the  two  great  forces  which  are  moving  in  the  outer 
world. 

The  strongest  point  of  present  Hinduism  is  probably  transmi- 
gration. Its  effect  on  habits,  no  meat  eating.  Caste  is  its  great 
social  light  and  safeguard,  keeping  its  central  core  solid  and  com- 
pact. The  true  Brahman  cannot  travel,  must  prepare  his  own 
food,  etc. 

Then  comes  Mohammedanism,  sharp,  precise,  simple,  and  in- 
tolerant, —  without  philosophy,  cutting  right  through  the  whole 
life  of  the  nation,  like  a  wedge.  Existing  principally  in  the 
north. 

Sikhism  was  originally  a  sort  of  attempt  to  reconcile  Hinduism 
and  Mohammedanism,  but  this  character  has  long  since  gone  out 
of  it. 

The  Brahmanical  doctrine  of  Identity,  the  assurance  that  sin 
and  misery  alike  consisted  and  resulted  in  the  separation  of  the 


4o8  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1882-83 

personal  soul  from  the  Atman,  the  universal  self,  the  absolute 
existence,  and  that  the  struggle  of  man  must  be  towards,  as  the 
reward  of  man  will  be  in,  his  reentrance  into  the  Eternal  Identity 
by  the  death  of  his  own  individual  will  or  desire.  The  idea  also 
that  all  the  finite  world  is  a  delusive  dream,  a  Maya,  with 
which  the  Eternal  Being  amuses  itself,  as  it  were,  and  which 
must  disappear  as  the  mist  disappears  above  the  river  which  runs 
on  still.  All  this  which  we  reject  entirely  as  a  philosophy,  or 
answer  to  the  problems  of  existence,  has  yet  in  it  a  wonderful 
power  of  appeal  to  some  moods  of  almost  all  our  natures,  which 
is  quite  sufficient  to  make  us  understand  how  it  could  have  been, 
and  is  still,  held  by  multitudes  of  souls. 

First  the  worship  of  Nature  and  her  great  objects  and  forces ; 
then  the  sense  of  a  creative  and  governing  power  behind  all; 
the  analysis  of  this  power  into  a  mythology,  —  this  seems  to 
have  been  the  course  of  Hinduism.  The  simplicity  of  the  Vedic 
deities,  Indra,  Agni,  and  Surya;  the  Puranic  deities  opening 
from  the  three,  —  Brahma,  Vishnu,  and  Siva  (probably  some- 
thing to  do  with  aboriginal  gods  which  the  Aryans  found), 
through  the  incarnations  of  the  second  and  the  progeny  and  the 
harem  of  the  third  into  a  countless  pantheon.  Along  with  this 
ran  the  deification  process,  always  manufacturing  new  deities, 
and  the  priestly  impulse  making  more;  for  superstition,  being 
childish,  is  always  desiring  more,  and  discontented  with  what  it 
has;  and  priesthood  hardly  ever  restrains  but  always  stimulates 
and  tries  to  satisfy  this  longing.  These  three  together  are  the 
causes  which  produce  a  mythology :  — 

(1)  The  naturalistic,  analyzing  the  natural  process.  (2)  The 
historic,  enlarging  real  personalities.  (3)  The  priestly,  making 
gods  at  popular  demand. 

The  three  kinds  of  deities  represented  in  Brahma,  Vishnu,  and 
Siva:  the  mysterious,  the  familiar,  and  the  awful,  found  in  all 
religious  systems  as  the  conception  of  God  formed  by  different 
nations. 

With  all  the  tremendous  exaggerations  of  space,  time,  and 
size,  in  these  Hindu  stories,  you  can  get  nothing  more  than  the 
universal  and  perpetual  human  passions.  Heroes  and  gods  thirty 
feet  high,  living  ten  thousand  years,  can,  after  all,  only  love  and 
hate  and  wish  and  dread. 

Buddha  called  a  Vishnu  incarnation  by  the  Hindus,  and  his 
unorthodox  teaching  considered  to  be  for  the  sake  of  deluding 
God's  enemies,  —  a  most  ingenious  and  theological  device. 

The  Krishnu  stories,  showing  how  men  will  play  with  their 
religion. 


JET.  46-47]  INDIA  409 

Siva  is  pure  spirit,  although  to  render  himself  perceptible 
and  conceivable,  he  deigns  to  assume  a  body  composed  "not  of 
matter,  but  of  force."     The  modern  sound  of  this  last  notion. 

The  subordinate  value  of  the  Trinity  idea  (Brahma,  Vishnu, 
and  Siva),  in  Hinduism  portrayed  in  Barth,  p.  186  and  preced- 
ing pages. 

The  Vedic  religion  develops  but  feebly  and  hesitatingly  the 
notion  of  divine  personality.  Kdma  (desire)  stirring  in  the  self- 
existent  mass  is  vaguely  but  profoundly  declared  to  be  its  origin. 
Then  the  personal  god  Ka  (who?)  is  evolved  into  the  absolute 
Tat  (that).  (See  Earth's  "Religions  of  India,"  p.  30.)  This  is 
very  sublime,  surely,  but  the  definiteness  with  which  it  seems  to 
point  out  a  central  will  soon  disappears  in  the  multitude  of 
powers,  each  of  whom  has  a  name  which,  while  it  seems  personal, 
really  characterizes  only  an  abstract  force. 

The  old  Brahman  said,  "God  is  everything,  and  the  earth  and 
all  things  sensible  are  illusion  (Maya)."  The  modern  scientist 
says,  "The  sensible  things  alone  are  real,  and  God  is  all  a  dream." 
Somewhere  these  two,  getting  entirely  around  the  circle,  must 
meet. 

Hunter,  p.  212,  describes  the  present  relation  of  the  people  to 
the  Hindu  triad.  Brahma,  only  a  handful  of  worshippers; 
Vishnu  supplies  a  worship  for  the  middle  classes ;  Siva,  a  philo- 
sophy for  the  learned,  and  a  superstition,  cruel  and  pale,  for  the 
lowest  classes.  Is  there  not  something  like  this  in  the  Chris- 
tian's relation  to  different  conceptions  of  God  and  Christ? 

Strange  lack  of  creative  power  in  modern  Hinduism,  their  ar- 
chitecture is  all  old. 

The  endless  hope  of  Brahmanism,  which  is  transmigration,  be- 
comes by  and  by  the  dread  and  despair  of  Buddhism,  which  only 
comes  to  escape  from  it  in  Nirvana.  The  relapse  again  into  the 
hopelessness  in  later  Hinduism. 

Talk  with  Brahman  gentleman  on  road  from  Amber  back  to 
Jeypore.  His  disbelief  in  Chunder  Sen;  unwillingness  to  be 
himself  a  priest  and  make  profit  out  of  his  religion.  Declaration 
that  he  would  be  cast  out  by  his  family  if  he  did  so.  Assertions 
that  Brahmanism  was  better  than  Christianity  because  it  taught 
mercy  not  only  to  human  creatures  but  to  beasts.  Dislike  of 
Christian  missionaries  because,  as  he  said,  they  do  not  live  good 
lives,  which  seemed  to  be  a  judgment  not  from  moral  standards, 
but  from  a  purely  sectarian  one,  with  regard  to  religious  observ- 
ances, etc.  Comparison  with  Roman  Catholic  missionaries  to  the 
advantage  of  the  latter.     The  way  the  Roman  Catholics  adapt 


4IO  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

themselves  to  the  people,  take  their  dress  and  ways  of  life.  He 
alleged  a  want  of  sympathy  of  Protestant  missionaries  with  the 
people;  says  that  baptism  is  a  great  hindrance,  expects  vaguely 
a  day  when  all  the  religions  —  Mussulman,  Hindu,  and  Chris- 
tian —  will  coalesce.  Believes  in  a  j^resent  awakening  among 
Brahmans,  makes  much  of  Fakirs  and  the  theurgic  power  of  a 
pure  life,  which  point,  however,  is  largely  technical.  Believes 
in  cure  of  diseases  and  inspired  sight  of  truth.  Fully  adopts 
the  esoteric  view  of  the  gods.  Idolatry  only  for  lower  classes. 
Talks  much  of  Mohammedan  oppression,  but  believes  that  when 
the  Mussulman  conquered  the  Hindu  that  Hinduism  was  degen- 
erate, and  needed  the  discipline.  Thinks  the  same  of  British 
dominion,  which  he  does  not  regret. 

The  way  in  which  the  great  temples  at  Madura  and  elsewhere, 
with  their  courts  of  public  resort,  and  their  places  for  the  sale  of 
goods  more  or  less  connected  with  the  worship,  remind  one  of  and 
throw  light  upon  what  one  reads  of  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem. 

In  the  temple  at  Madura,  above  a  miserable  tank,  is  the  carved 
image  of  a  Brahman  murdering  his  father;  said  to  signify  that 
even  that  crime  this  tank  can  wash  away. 

The  great  pagoda  at  Chedambaram  is  the  most  terrible  speci- 
men of  pure  idolatry.  All  refinements  and  subtleties  and  spir- 
itualizations  fade  away  in  the  presence  of  such  brutality  and  dark- 
ness. All  comparisons  with  the  darker  sides  of  Christian  history 
become  mere  fallacies. 

The  awful  state  of  morals  at  Delhi;  unnatural  crimes  of  the 
most  awful  sort.  Traceable,  perhaps,  to  the  practices  of  early 
marriages  and  early  exhaustion,  and  of  the  isolation  of  women 
and  consequent  constitution  of  society  solely  by  men.  The  coun- 
try regions  better  than  the  city.  The  absolute  failure  of  Hindu 
religion  to  restrain  passion.  Certainly  occidental  morals  must 
come  in ;  and  if  in  the  West  those  morals  rest  on  Christian  faith, 
it  must  be  that  the  Christian  faith  shall  be  brought  here  as  their 


As  Mr.  Brooks  passed  from  India  to  Ceylon,  he  had  re- 
ceived more  favorable  impressions  of  Buddhism  than  of 
Indian  religion.  A  few  of  his  remarks  on  Buddhism  will 
serve  to  show  that  he  did  not  fail  to  do  justice  to  its  truth, 
while  discerning  its  weakness.  But  for  Buddha  himself  he 
had  a  feeling  of  reverence. 

As  one  sees  the  Buddhists  in  Ceylon,  there  is  certainly  a  look 
of  intelligence  such  as  one  does  not  easily  find  in  the  ordinary 


MT.  46-47]  INDIA  41 1 

Hindu.  There  was  nothing  which  we  saw  (at  least  in  India)  like 
the  Buddhist  temple  at  Colombo,  or  like  the  instruction  scene  at 
Kandy. 

The  three  Buddhist  notions  of  (1)  Skandha,  or  the  composi- 
tion of  each  man  out  of  elemental  conditions,  which  disunite  at 
his  death,  and  even  if  they  unite  again  to  make  another  being, 
who  is  his  true  successor,  they  do  not  make  him.  (2)  Karma 
(act),  or  the  perpetuation  of  the  results  of  a  life  in  the  succeed- 
ing being,  something  quite  distinct  from  transmigration.  (3) 
Nirvana,  the  final  falling  back  of  this  special  phenomena  of  life 
into  the  mass  of  universal  existence;  an  anticipation  of  this  in 
present  life,  indifference  and  rest.  In  all  of  these  a  constant 
extinction  of  personality  both  human  and  divine. 

It  is  clear  enough  that  the  Buddhist  did  and  does  draw  a  dis- 
tinction, perhaps  too  subtle  for  our  minds  to  follow,  but  still  real 
to  him,  between  Nirvana  and  personal  annihilation. 

Buddha's  Bo  tree,  occupying  almost  the  same  place  in  Bud- 
dhism that  the  cross  does  in  Christianity.  It  marks  the  differ- 
ence. The  first  religion  saves  by  contemplation,  the  other  by 
active  sacrifice.      No  such  power  given  to  Christ's  temptation. 

The  pathetic  connection  of  Buddha's  doctrine  of  the  misery  of 
life  and  the  hope  of  ceasing  to  be,  with  the  miserable  circum- 
stances of  the  special  life  which  he  saw  about  him;  with  the 
German  pessimist  it  is  all  different ;   a  fancy  theory. 

The  great  remonstrance  against  caste  is  the  noblest  part  of 
Buddha's  teaching. 

The  lapse  into  the  worship  of  Buddha  (a  false  personal  religion) 
shows  where  the  weakness  of  his  system  lay.  Original  Buddhism 
a  religion  of  character. 

The  analogy  of  the  Vedic  religions,  of  Brahmanism,  of  Hindu- 
ism, and  of  Buddhism,  on  the  one  hand,  with  primitive  Chris- 
tianity and  the  early  dogmatism  and  medirevalism  and  the  Refor- 
mation on  another,  and  with  the  patriarchal  system  and  Mosaism 
and  Pharisaism  and  Christianity  on  yet  another,  is  illustrative  of 
the  whole  constantly  repeated  movement  of  human  nature.  The 
step  from  Vedism  to  Brahmanism  being  associated  with  the  rising 
authority  of  the  priesthood,  and  with  the  loss  of  the  free  know- 
ledge of  the  language  of  the  Vedic  hymns,  corresponds  exactly  to 
the  change  which  took  place  as  the  simple  substance  of  the  apos- 
tolic Christianity  passed  over  into  the  highly  organized  ecclesias- 
tical and  dogmatic  systems  of  the  Latin  Church. 

There  is  much  both  in  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism  that  throws 
light  upon  the  varying  understandings  of  the  "New"  or  "Second 
birth, "  which  have  played  so  large  a  part  in  the  contentions  and 


412  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

speculations  of  Christendom.  Each  of  these  systems,  according 
to  its  intrinsic  nature,  has  its  own  understanding  of  the  idea  and 
phrase  which  both  contain.  Brahmanism  (see  Barth,  Religions 
of  India,  p.  51)  applies  it  to  the  boy's  formal  entrance  on  a  cer- 
tain period  of  life,  his  established  manhood.  Buddhism,  on  the 
other  hand,  makes  it  mean  the  perception  of  profounder  truth 
which  comes  with  the  awakening  of  the  spiritual  nature  by  con- 
templation. Both  of  these  unite  in  Christianity  with  the  idea 
of  moral  determination  (transformation  where  the  nature  has  been 
going  wrong)  to  make  that  complete  notion  of  fulfilled  life  which 
is  what  the  phrase  is  always  struggling  for,  what  it  means  in  the 
supreme  use  of  it  by  Jesus. 

Mr.  Brooks  could  not  fail  to  observe  the  society  into  which 
he  was  thrown  in  India;  and  upon  this,  as  upon  Hindu  and 
Buddhist  types  of  religion,  he  comments  in  his  note-book. 
The  Anglo-Indian,  the  English  officials,  and  the  Civil  Ser- 
vice, the  missionaries  whose  acquaintance  he  cultivated,  are 
alluded  to  in  these  extracts :  — 

England  came  into  India  with  a  conquest  of  violence  and  fraud ; 
and,  having  established  herself,  she  proceeds  to  govern  the  coun- 
try without  sympathy  but  with  careful  justice,  establishing  the 
most  perfect  Civil  Service  in  the  world.  That  service  is  some- 
thing at  which  we  never  cease  to  wonder.  Highly  paid,  well 
selected,  free  from  political  subservience,  so  that  a  very  large 
part  of  them  to-day  are  enemies  of  the  present  government,  they 
are  the  most  conscientious,  faithful,  incorruptible  body  of  ser- 
vants, I  believe,  that  are  administering  the  government  of  any 
country  anywhere  in  the  world. 

The  thoroughly  high  character  of  the  English  lieutenant-gov- 
ernors. Sir  Charles  Atchison,  at  Lahore,  Sir  Alfred  Lyall,  at 
Allahabad,  Sir  Rivers  Thompson,  at  Calcutta,  Mr.  Grant  Duff, 
at  Madras,  Sir  James  Fergusson,  at  Bombay,  and  Lord  Ripon, 
as  viceroy:  all  (especially  the  first  four)  men  long  and  intimately 
acquainted  with  India. 

English  colonel's  statement  (at  Jeypore),  that  the  more  an 
Englishman  sees  of  other  people  the  more  he  dislikes  them.  If 
this  were  true,  what  a  great  incapacity  it  would  show  for  the 
work  on  inferior  races,  which  in  these  days  seems  to  be  more  and 
more  intrusted  to  the  Englishman.  There  is  no  love  lost  between 
the  two  races  in  India. 

The  naturalness  of  the  great  Mutiny  here;  in  some  views  it  is 
just  what  Englishmen  would  most  praise  if  it  were  not  against 


MT.  46-47]  INDIA  413 

themselves.  Of  course,  it  was  savage;  but  they  were  savages, 
and  the  English  had  done  very  little  to  make  them  anything  else. 

The  Anglo-Indian  has  a  sort  of  mental  and  moral  thin  blooded- 
ness  which  somehow  or  other  the  English  seem  able  to  bear  less 
than  most  races.  The  first-rate  Englishman  is  the  best  thing  in 
the  world. 

The  very  great  assumption  of  the  old  Anglo-Indian  that  he 
knew  more  about  the  worth  of  missions  than  the  missionary ;  the 
liking  which  he  often  has  for  R.  C.  missions,  and  even  for  native 
idolatries. 

The  society  of  India  is  either  gross  heathenism,  with  its  almost 
total  absence  of  higher  things,  or  English  civil  life,  full  of  the 
littleness  of  officialism,  disliking  the  country,  anxious  to  be  away, 
and  with  more  or  less  of  spite  or  mutual  jealousy.  Among  these, 
apart  from  its  direct  religious  power,  how  valuably  comes  in  the 
sweet,  unselfish  life  of  such  works  as  the  Cambridge  Mission. 

His  final  impressions  give  the  missionaries  in  India  and 
the  English  Civil  Service  an  equal  place  with  the  great 
Hindu  Temple  Taj  and  the  great  mountain  Kinchinjinga. 
He  had  felt  some  doubts  and  misgivings  about  the  actual 
results,  as  about  the  methods  of  missions  when  he  went  to 
India.  These  had  disappeared,  and  in  their  place  rose  en- 
thusiasm and  gratitude  and  hopefulness.  Thus,  in  most  of 
his  letters  he  speaks  of  missions,  and  repeats  his  statement 
so  often,  that  some  repetition  here  will  be  excusable.  To 
Eev.  C.  A.  L.  Richards  he  writes :  — 

These  missionaries  are  really  splendid  fellows,  many,  most  of 
them.  One  hears  from  them  far  more  intelligent  talk  about  reli- 
gion and  the  relation  of  Christianity  to  other  faiths  than  he 
would  hear  from  the  same  number  of  parsons  at  home  (outside 
the  Club).  They  and  the  civil  servants  of  the  English  govern- 
ment are  doing  much  for  India.  Oh,  for  a  Civil  Service  such  as 
this  at  home!  I  think,  next  to  the  Taj  and  Kinchinjinga,  that 
is  the  most  impressive  sight  that  I  have  seen  in  this  strange 
land. 

The  missionaries  are  as  noble  a  set  of  men  and  women  as  the 
world  has  to  show.  Tell  your  friends  who  "  do  not  believe  in 
Foreign  Missions  "  (and  I  am  sure  there  are  a  good  many  such) 
that  they  do  not  know  what  they  are  talking  about,  and  that 
three  weeks'  sight  of  mission  work  in  India  would  convert  them 
wholly. 


414  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

He  stood  in  Henry  Martyn's  pulpit,  and  the  words  in- 
scribed upon  it,  "He  was  a  burning  and  a  shining  light," 
became  luminous  with  a  new  meaning.  Some  of  his  reflec- 
tions on  missions,  which  ever  afterwards  remained  prominent 
in  his  mind,  should  here  be  given :  — 

Bishop  Heber's  clear  belief  in  the  possibilities  of  Indian  char- 
acter, along  with  his  clear  conception  of  their  present  degrada- 
tion. See  his  "Journey."  The  way  his  character  stands  out 
ideally  in  the  history  of  Indian  missions. 

The  Bishop  of  Calcutta,  (February  3)  talking  about  the  fool- 
ishness and  uselessness  of  trying  to  take  the  Hindu's  view,  — 
"Give  them  the  Englishman's  and  let  them  find  out  their  own." 
Poor  talk. 

Curious  article  in  "Home  and  Foreign  Church  Work,"  assert- 
ing the  need  of  asceticism  in  India.      I  do  not  believe  it. 

Missions  in  India ;  their  naturalness  when  one  is  on  the  ground. 
Impossible  to  think  of  English  people  not  having  them,  and  so  of 
all  Christian  people  with  reference  to  the  whole  heathen  world. 
Some  300,000  to  400,000  Protestant  Christians  now  in  India. 

The  question  how  missions  look  to  one  in  a  heathen  land ;  — 
intensely  practical  and  absolutely  necessary.  And,  also,  as  it 
must  be  in  the  case  of  the  missionary  himself,  it  brings  itself  to 
a  personal  question,  Can  this  man  be  lightened  with  the  Light? 
The  great  250,000,000  are  a  paralysis.  This  man  is  an  inspira- 
tion, and  his  conversion  or  the  struggle  for  it  keeps  hope  alive. 

The  really  unanimous  testimony  to  the  Indian's  untruthfulness. 
The  awful  business  of  haggling  in  the  bazaars.  The  Indian's 
own  account  of  it,  —  that  it  is  the  result  of  endless  conquests  and 
successions  of  tyrannical  dynasties. 

The  first  sense  of  tameness  in  the  converts,  —  loss  of  their  first 
rude  and  fierce  picturesqueness.  This  to  be  watched  over,  but 
still  it  must  come  to  some  extent.  The  maniac  among  the  tombs 
turned  into  the  well-dressed  man  going  home  to  his  friends. 

How  much  there  possibly  may  be  in  the  Anglo-Indian's  state- 
ment that  the  Christian  convert  is  less  trustworthy  than  the 
Hindu.  Possibly  something.  His  associations  are  broken,  and 
he  lacks  whatever  good  influence  there  possibly  may  be  in  loyalty 
to  caste.  He  has  a  strong  restraint  in  fellow-men's  judgment. 
His  neighbors  despise  him.  Fear  for  such,  —  the  case  in  all 
transition  times.  Think  of  old  Corinth,  and  what  its  magistrate 
must  have  said  of  Paul's  converts,  "Have  any  of  the  Pharisees 
believed  in  Him  ?  " 

I  do  not  know  of  any  country  where  religious  statistics  would 


^T.  46-47]  INDIA  41^ 

mean  so  little,  or,  at  least,  would  have  to  be  taken  with  so  much 
careful  reserve  as  in  India.  Whole  districts  have  been  nominally 
converted  for  the  sake  of  food  in  famine  times;  and  there  is 
something  disheartening  in  the  way  in  which  Europeans  of  all 
kinds  distrust  the  converted  Hindu  more  than  his  heathen  brother. 
Still  I  believe  beyond  all  doubt  that  the  missionaries  are  doing 
a  great  work,  and  that  the  time  is  not  far  off  when  it  will  show ; 
but  it  must  be  by  some  more  intimate  reading  of  the  thought  and 
genius  of  the  people  than  has  yet  been  made ;  not  merely  pluck- 
ing brands  from  the  burning,  but  by  putting  out  the  fire. 

The  Indians  have  the  primary  affections  very  strong,  —  pa- 
rental and  filial  affections,  love  of  kindred,  kindness  for  crea- 
tures, craving  for  immortality,  sense  of  wonder.  These  are  what 
Christianity  starts  with,  and  what  it  is  to  build  into  completeness. 

After  all,  the  Hindu  mind,  haunted  by  the  conception  of  escape 
and  holiness,  has  something  pathetic  and  sublime  about  it.  No 
comfortable  settling  down  to  life.  Somehow  the  touch  needed, 
which  shall  move  all  this  power  into  the  region  of  moral  life ;  — 
there  is  where  it  seems  powerless  now.  The  old  paradox  of  much 
religion  and  no  morality,  which  we  settle  far  too  easily  and  off- 
handedly when  we  decide  that  the  religion  is  hypocrisy. 

The  only  advantage  in  the  multitudinousness  of  denominations 
in  India  is  the  chance  that  it  may  leave  the  question  open  for  the 
promotion  of  the  national  Christianity.  Perhaps  there  was  no 
other  possible  way  for  this  to  come  about  but  by  the  variety  of 
approach,  making  the  establishment  of  any  one  type  impossible, 
—  the  way  this  possibly  might  impress  a  Hindu. 

Certainly  the  change  to  the  newer  forms  of  appeals  for  missions 
involves  the  confidence  in  a  higher  condition,  in  the  working  of 
better  and  nobler  motives  in  those  to  whom  we  appeal.  It  may 
be  a  question  whether  men  are  ready  for  it,  but  here,  as  always, 
I  believe  very  much  in  the  possibility  of  making  them  to  be  by 
assuming-  that  they  are.  Certainly  we  see  the  reverse  of  this 
constantly.  Men  are  made  unfit  for  high  appeals  by  the  assump- 
tion that  they  can  only  respond  to  the  lower. 

One  high  appeal  for  missions  ought  to  be  the  need  of  Chris- 
tianity for  a  broader  and  completer  life,  —  what  these  other  peo- 
ple will  do  for  our  Christianity  if  they  become  Christians.  I 
think  we  often  understand  missions  best  if  we  think  of  the  con- 
verting power,  and  that  which  it  tries  to  convert,  as  individuals 
rather  than  vague  masses.  Surely  one  man  may  say  to  another, 
"I  want  you  to  believe  my  truth,  partly  in  order  that  by  the  way 
in  which  it  influences  you  and  by  the  form  in  which  your  mind 
apprehends  it  I  may  be  able  to  see  new  sides  of  it  and  understand 


41 6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1882-83 

its  richness  more."  The  moon  would  know  more  of  what  light 
is,  if  it  could  study  the  earth  on  which  the  sun's  reflected  light 
shines  from  itself. 

The  reconstruction  and  simplification  of  Christian  theology  is 
imperatively  demanded  by  missions.  Indeed  the  missionaries 
are  quietly  doing  it,  almost  unconsciously  doing  it,  themselves. 
Christianity  as  a  book  religion,  resting  on  the  infallible  accuracy 
of  a  written  word,  or  as  a  propitiatory  religion,  providing  a  mere 
escape  for  hopeless  culprits,  or  as  a  doctrinal  religion,  depending 
on  the  originality  of  some  statements  of  truth,  all  of  these  aspects 
of  it  fade;  and  Christianity  as  a  personal  faith  revealing  in 
Christ,  not  simply  by  Him,  the  present  living  fatherhood  of  God, 
becomes  the  powerful  and  precious  substance  of  our  faith. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

MAY-JULY,  1883 

THE  JOURNEY  FROM  INDIA.  THE  VISIT  TO  SPAIN.  RECEP- 
TION EST  ENGLAND.  VISIT  TO  TENNYSON.  LETTERS.  EX- 
TRACTS  FROM   JOURNAL 

The  return  from  India  began  on  the  7th  of  March,  when 
he  went  on  board  the  P.  &  O.  steamer  Verona,  bound  for 
Gibraltar.  During  the  three  weeks  on  shipboard  his  mind 
was  occupied  in  musing  over  what  he  had  seen.  As  a  cor- 
rective for  the  wild  extravagances  of  Indian  religion,  he  was 
reading  William  Robertson  Smith  on  the  "Place  of  the  Old 
Testament  in  Jewish  History,"  and  his  "Hebrew  Prophets." 
In  his  note-book  he  entered  his  reflections  on  leaving  India, 
summing  up  the  total  impression  of  his  visit :  — 

The  voyage  from  India  to  Spain  carries  one  from  the  extreme 
east  to  the  extreme  west  of  the  triumphs  of  Islam.  The  Mo- 
guls of  Delhi  and  the  Caliphs  of  Cordova!  what  a  range  of  en- 
ergy, what  a  history  of  struggle  and  suffering,  of  pride  and  ruin, 
is  included! 

As  one  withdraws  from  India  it  is  very  much  indeed  as  it  used 
to  be  when  one  walked  farther  and  farther  away  from  the  old 
Sivite  temples,  in  the  southern  districts,  Madura  or  Tanjore. 
Gradually  the  grotesque  details  were  lost.  The  dancing  and  dis- 
torted gods  became  obscure.  The  crude,  hard  colors  mingled  into 
harmony,  the  harsh  sounds  melted  into  a  confused  and  pleasing 
murmur,  and  a  quiet  mystery,  not  unmixed  with  religious  serious- 
ness, enfolded  and  dignified  the  whole. 

So  it  is  with  that  mass  of  legend,  allegory,  and  corrupt  tradi- 
tion, which,  taken  all  together,  makes  the  religion  and  philosophy 
of  India.  It  has  large  masses  of  color  and  not  ignoble  outlines, 
as  one  looks  back  on  it  fading  and  mingling  into  memory. 

VOL.  n 


41 8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

Steamship  Verona,  between  Colombo  and  Aden, 
March  13,  1883. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  I  am  on  the  way  back  from  India,  and  you 
have  no  idea  what  soft  and  brilliant  days  these  are  upon  the  south- 
ern seas.  And  it  is  a  good  time  to  think  the  whole  thing  over, 
and  to  get  ready  for  the  next  scene  in  the  play.  The  last  thing 
before  we  sailed  was  Ceylon,  with  its  Buddhism.  Ceylon  was 
beautiful  beyond  all  description.  Such  tropical  luxuriance  as  one 
had  dreamed  of  all  his  life  was  in  its  splendor,  and  made  pictures 
which  one  never  can  forget.  And  Ceylon  Buddhism  had  a  look 
of  intelligence  and  decency  after  the  horrible  squalor  and  coarse- 
ness of  Hinduism,  which  was  very  pleasing.  A  very  different 
thing  it  is  from  the  fetish  worship  of  Thibetan  Buddhism,  of 
which  we  got  a  sight  among  the  Himalayas.  But  as  for  making 
of  it  a  great  spiritual  religion,  with  any  chance  in  it  for  the 
salvation  of  the  world,  it  is  too  hopelessly  absurd.  Primitive 
Buddhism  was  a  philosophy  with  controlling  ethical  purpose. 
Modern  Buddhism  has  changed  it  into  elaborate  ceremonialism, 
and  invented  for  it  a  mythology.  But  there  is  no  theism  in  either, 
and  in  spite  of  the  charm  of  "  Natural  Religion, "  ^  there  is  no 
powerful  faith  without  theistic  basis.  What  a  delightful  book 
that  is !  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  there  is  a  good  deal  of  word- 
juggling  in  it,  and  that  what  it  needs  is  a  clearer  definition. 
But  to  bring  out  as  it  does  the  noble  and  consecrated  side  of 
"modern  thought,"  and  to  show  how  it  gravitates  at  its  best  to- 
wards spirituality  is  a  great  boon.  One  grows  very  impatient  at 
the  way  the  selfish  trader  with  a  wooden  faith  is  counted  a  more 
spiritual  being  than  the  self-forgetful  student  of  truth  or  wor- 
shipper of  humanity.  It  is  good  to  have  such  a  strong  statement 
of  the  other  side. 

As  the  Verona  was  slowly  crawling  through  the  Suez 
Canal,  subject  to  long  vexatious  detentions,  Mr.  Brooks  spent 
much  of  his  time  in  answering  letters  received  from  home 
before  leaving  India.  He  had  been  kept  informed  of  the 
incidents  at  Trinity  Church,  the  names  of  the  preachers  sent 
to  him  in  advance  enabled  him  to  reproduce  every  Sunday 
"the  scene  in  the  blessed  old  church;  "  he  read  with  special 
interest  the  list  of  those  confirmed  in  his  absence.  About 
one  item  of  news  he  was  worried,  the  sale  of  the  little  piece 
of  land  in  front  of  the  church,  and  the  current  rumor  that  a 
great  building  was  to  go  up  there.     He  continued  to  follow 

1  Natural  Religion,  by  the  Author  of  Ecce  Homo,  1882. 


^T.  47 J  ENGLAND  419 

in  imagination  every  meeting  of  the  Clericus  Club,  the  place 
where  it  met,  the  essayist,  the  subject  of  the  essay.  While  he 
had  been  away  new  members  had  been  elected.^ 

You  seem  to  be  enlarging  the  Club  with  youngsters,  so  that 
one  will  hardly  know  it  after  a  year's  absence.  Every  now  and 
then  I  feel  a  touch  of  intimation  that  I  am  growing  old,  in  a  bit 
of  wonder  whether  these  young  fellows  are  good  for  much;  but 
generally  I  am  ready  to  acknowledge  their  value,  and  I  am  glad 
that  the  Church  and  the  Club  should  get  them  in.  Only  in  the 
Club  we  never  have  got  much  out  of  the  youngest  men.  They 
have  generally  seemed  to  be  there  more  for  their  own  sake  than 
for  the  Club's.     But  perhaps  your  new  acquisitions  will  do  better. 

Among  the  items  of  religious  interest  was  the  publication 
of  a  volume  of  sermons  by  Rev.  R.  Heber  Newton  of  New 
York,  entitled  "Right  and  Wrong  Uses  of  the  Bible."  The 
book  had  been  sent  to  him,  and  after  reading  the  sermons  he 
speaks  of  them  as  "calm,  serious,  and  conscientious,"  as  say- 
ing, "  what,  in  the  great  mass  of  it,  I  have  no  doubt  is  true, 
and  once  accepted  by  the  Christian  world  must  make  the  basis 
of  a  better  Christianity.  They  are  positive  as  well  as  nega- 
tive ;  and  no  criticism  of  small  points  of  style,  or  discussion 
of  the  accuracy  of  a  few  details  of  criticism,  can  obscure  the 
broad  view  of  inspiration  and  the  relation  of  the  Book  both 
to  God  and  man,  which  the  sermons  declare." 

I  have  heard  of  both  the  January  and  the  February  Clubs,  both 
of  which  seem  to  have  revolved  about  the  Bible  question.  I  sup- 
pose that  Heber  Newton  and  his  agitation  is,  after  all,  only  a 
symptom.  The  whole  theological  world  seems  to  be  wakening  to 
the  need  of  a  new  discussion  and  settlement  about  its  sacred  Book. 

^  The  members  of  the  Club  at  this  time,  in  addition  to  those  already  men- 
tioned (cf.  ante,  p.  58)  were  :  David  H.  Greer,  Frank  L.  Norton,  Francis  Whar- 
ton, James  Haughton,  Theodosius  S.  Tyng,  Reginald  H.  Howe,  Charles  H. 
Ward,  Charles  H.  Babcock,  William  Lawrence,  Darius  H.  Brewer,  George  Z. 
Gray,  Samuel  R.  FuUer,  George  J.  Prescott,  Alexander  Mackay-Smith,  John  C. 
Brooks,  Leighton  Parks,  Leverett  Bradley,  George  A.  Strong,  F.  B.  Allen,  T. 
A.  Snively,  L.  C.  Stewardson,  Frederick  Burgess,  Augustine  H.  Amory,  George 
S.  Converse,  Elisha  Mulford,  Reuben  Kidner,  Frederick  Courtney,  Samuel 
SneUing,  Charles  P.  Parker,  H.  S.  Nash,  C.  M.  Addison.  To  these  are  to  be 
added  after  1883,  A.  H.  Vinton,  Endicott  Peabody,  H.  Evan  Cotton,  Roland  C. 
Smith,  John  S.  Lindsay,  Frederic  Palmer,  Arthur  C.  A.  Hall,  W.  M.  Grosvenor, 
E.  Winchester  Donald. 


420  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

I  cannot  feel  anything  but  confident  hope  regarding  the  result, 
and  as  to  Heber,  however  it  may  seem  as  if  his  way  of  going  to 
work  were  perhaps  not  the  best,  that  is  a  very  small  matter. 
His  face  is  toward  the  light.  And  certainly  no  mischief  he  can 
do  can  begin  to  equal  the  mischief  which  must  come  from  the 
obstinate  dishonesty  of  men  who  refuse  to  recognize  any  of  the 
new  light  which  has  been  thrown  upon  the  Bible,  and  go  on  re- 
peating assertions  about  it  which,  if  there  is  such  a  thing  as  proof, 
have  been  thoroughly  and  repeatedly  disproved.  These  are  the 
men  on  whom  the  church  in  future  must  look  back  upon  with 
reproach,  and  almost  with  contempt.  So  the  thing  looks  to  me 
from  the  Suez  Canal. 

"When  he  learned  that  the  work  was  creating  a  stir  in 
ecclesiastical  circles  and  a  heresy  trial  invoked  by  those  who 
resented  its  teachings,  he  wrote :  — 

If  the  man  who  thinks  as  soberly  and  earnestly  as  he  thinks 
has  no  place  in  our  church,  then  alas  for  the  church!      I  see  my 

old  friend  is  first  and   keenest   on  the   scent.      So  I  was 

wrong  about  him,  and  Mrs.  and  your  sister  were  right  about 

him  when  they  used  to,  insist  that  he  was  narrow  and  sentimental 
and  despotic.  I  send  them  my  apologies  and  own  my  mistake. 
But  what  an  infinite  pity  it  all  is.  This  wrath  of  men  who  ought 
to  be  largest  and  wisest  is  the  kind  of  which  it  seems  hardest  to 
see  how  the  Lord  will  make  it  to  praise  Him,  but  no  doubt  He 
will. 

As  he  neared  Gibraltar  he  took  up  the  books  he  found  on 
the  ship  which  would  prepare  him,  to  some  extent,  for  enter- 
ing Spain, — Irving's  "Alhambra"  and  "Conquest  of  Gra- 
nada," Prescott's  "Ferdinand  and  Isabella,"  and  Lamar- 
tine's  "Christophe  Colomb."  While  he  was  on  the  Verona 
he  had  formed  a  friendship  with  Major  Wing,  who  was  re- 
turning from  India  on  sick  leave,  through  whose  kindness 
in  giving  him  a  letter  to  the  colonel  in  command  of  the  forti- 
fications was  of  great  service.  "The  colonel  was  immensely 
civil,  took  me  all  over  the  fortifications,  introduced  me  at 
the  Club,  and  made  me  almost  live  at  his  house,  where  were 
a  very  pleasant  wife  and  children ;  so  I  saw  Gibraltar  at  its 
best,  and  have  the  brightest  recollections  of  it." 

When  he  reached  Madrid,  on  his  journey  through  Spain, 
he  learned  of  the  death  of  two  of  his  aunts,  his  mother's 


^T.  47]  ENGLAND  421 

sisters,  who  resided  in  the  old  house  at  North  Andover. 
For  his  aunt,  Miss  Susan  Phillips,  he  felt  the  affection  of  a 
son.  She  had  been  a  member  of  the  family  during  all  his 
earlier  years;  and  after  his  mother's  death  his  heart  had  gone 
out  to  her  as  if  she  stood  in  his  mother's  place.  He  wrote  to 
her  frequently,  doing  all  in  his  power  to  make  her  life  in  the 
old  homestead  a  happy  one. 

Madkid,  April  15,  1883. 

Dear  William,  —  Ever  since  I  received  your  letter  yesterday 
I  have  been  trying  to  realize  that  it  is  true  that  aunt  Susan  and 
aunt  Caroline  are  really  gone.  It  seems  almost  impossible  to 
picture  the  old  house  as  it  must  be  to-day.  ...  I  wish  so  much 
that  I  had  been  at  home,  and  I  hope  I  shall  hear  from  you  some 
time  about  the  last  of  those  two  long,  faithful  lives.    .   .    . 

It  seems  as  if  this  great  change  swept  away  from  the  world 
the  last  remnants  of  the  background  of  our  earliest  life.  Even 
after  father  and  mother  went,  as  long  as  avmt  Susan  lived,  there 
was  somebody  who  had  to  do  with  us  when  we  were  babies.  Now 
that  generation  has  all  passed  away.  How  many  old  scenes  it 
brings  up.  This  is  Sunday  morning,  right  after  breakfast,  and 
it  seems  as  if  I  could  see  a  Simday  morning  of  the  old  times  in 
Rowe  Street,  with  the  general  bustle  of  mother  and  aunt  Susan 
getting  off  to  Sunday  School,  and  father  settling  down  to  read  to 
the  bigger  boys  in  the  front  parlor;  and  there  are  faint  memories 
of  much  earlier  days  when  the  aunts  must  have  been  blooming 
young  ladies,  though  they  seemed  to  us  then  almost  as  old  as  they 
ever  did  in  later  times.  I  hope  the  last  years  of  their  lives  have 
been  happy,  in  spite  of  the  suffering.  They  have  been  spared 
what  was  most  to  be  dreaded,  long,  hopeless  illness  and  helpless- 
ness. But  I  am  so  sorry  to  hear  that  aunt  Susan  had  to  suffer. 
...  If  there  were  ever  lives  totally  unselfish,  and  finding  all 
their  pleasure  in  making  other  people  happy,  these  were  they. 
We  know  aunt  Susan  best,  of  course,  but  dear  little  aunt  Caro- 
line, with  her  quiet  ways,  had  something  very  touching  and  beau- 
tiful about  her.  She  seems  to  have  slipped  out  of  life  as  unob- 
trusively and  with  as  little  trouble  as  she  lived. 

When  I  left  them,  of  course  I  knew  it  was  very  likely  that  I 
should  not  see  them  again.  But  all  I  had  heard  since  made  me 
feel  as  if  they  would  be  there  when  I  came  home.  I  had  a  nice  let- 
ter from  aunt  Susan  in  the  autumn,  which  must  have  been  a  good 
deal  of  an  effort  for  her  to  write,  and  I  wrote  to  her,  from  India, 
a  letter  which  must  have  reached  Andover  after  it  was  all  over. 


422  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1883 

It  cannot  be  long  —  one  cannot  ask  that  it  should  be  long  — 

before  aunt  S follows  her  sisters.      Give  her  my  love  and 

sympathy.  As  it  may  be  that  she  will  go  before  I  come  home, 
the  old  house  be  left  empty,  and  something  have  to  be  done  about 
the  property,  I  want  to  say  that  I  should  like  to  buy  it,  and  I 
authorize  you  to  buy  it  for  me,  if  the  chance  offers.  Or,  if  you 
and  Arthur  and  John  would  not  like  that,  I  will  join  with  any 
or  all  of  you  to  buy  and  hold  it.  I  do  not  know  whether  you 
liked  it  well  enough  last  summer  to  think  of  making  it  a  summer 
home,  but  I  should  like  to  hold  it  as  a  place  where,  for  the  whole 
or  part  of  any  summer,  we  could  gather  and  have  a  delightful, 
easy  time,  among  the  most  sacred  associations  which  remain  for 
us  on  earth.  A  few  very  simple  improvements  would  make  it 
a  most  charming  place,  so  do  not  by  any  chance  let  it  slip,  and 
hold,  by  purchase  or  otherwise,  to  as  much  of  the  furniture  as 
you  can.  One  of  these  days,  when  I  am  a  little  older  and  fee- 
bler, I  should  like  to  retire  to  it  and  succeed  [Rev.]  Augustine 
Amory  at  the  little  church.      Is  not  our  window  done  there  yet? 

Salamanca,  April  27, 1883. 

Dear  William,  —  And  so  aunt  S too  is  gone,  and  the 

old  house  is  empty!  I  only  received  your  letter  last  evening, 
and  all  the  night,  as  I  rode  here  in  the  train,  I  was  thinking  how 
strange  it  was.  These  three  who  began  their  lives  so  near  to- 
gether, long  ago,  and  who  have  kept  so  close  to  one  another  all 
the  while,  now  going  almost  hand  in  hand  into  the  other  world. 

.   .    .   How  pathetic  it  used  to  be  to  see  aunt  S sitting  there, 

full  of  pain,  trying  to  do  some  little  bit  of  good  in  her  curious 
ways,  with  her  queer  little  tracts,  and  her  vague  desire  to  exhort 
everybody  to  be  good.  I  always  thought  she  must  have  been 
one  of  the  handsomest  of  the  sisters  when  they  were  young. 
Surely,  no  end  that  we  could  have  dreamed  of  for  them  could 
have  been  more  perfect.     But  how  we  shall  miss  them! 

To  the  Kev.  James  P.  Franks:  — 

Madrid,  April  28,  1883. 

If  you  were  only  here  we  would  begin  at  once  with  the  Velas- 
quez pictures,  which  I  shall  see  to-day  for  the  last  time  and 
which  are  famous.  They  stand  away  up  alongside  of  Tinto- 
retto's in  Venice  for  every  great  quality  except  that  high  reli- 
gious exaltation  which  is  in  the  Crucifixion  at  St.  Rocco  and  one 
or  two  other  things  which  we  saw  last  summer  in  those  golden 
days.  As  to  the  rest  of  Spain  it  is  delightful,  but  one  would 
rather  go  to  all  the  other  great  countries  of  Europe  first.     The 


^T.  47]  ENGLAND  423 

Moorish  work,  the  Alhambra  and  all  that,  is  wonderful ;  but  as 
for  Gothic  and  the  great  cathedrals,  you  who  have  seen  Chartres 
and  Strassburg  and  Cologne,  need  not  worry  yourself  at  all  about 
Seville  and  Granada  and  Saragossa  and  Toledo.  .  .  .  We  were 
right  last  summer,  and  the  dear  streets  of  Pisa  and  Ravenna  and 
Bologna  were  better  than  anything  we  should  have  seen  in  sultry 
Spain.    .    .    . 

In  the  midst  of  all  the  brightness  of  it  there  has  come  the  sad 

news  from  home.      I  am  sure  S will  know  that  I  sympathize 

with  her.  The  breaking  up  of  families  is  dreadful.  If  we  could 
only  all  go  together.  If  only  brothers  and  sisters  who  have  been 
together  in  this  life  could  start  together  for  the  next.  But  this 
seeing  one  another  off,  even  although  we  know  that  we  shall  fol- 
low in  a  day  or  two  and  find  them  there,  is  very  sad.  That  is 
what  makes  us  feel  that  there  is  some  sort  of  beauty  in  the  way 
aunt  Susan  and  aunt  Caroline  went  together.  After  all  these 
years  in  the  old  house  at  Andover  they  have  started  on  the  new 
experience  in  the  same  week.  But  we  shall  miss  them  bitterly. 
I  want  very  much  to  get  the  old  house  and  make  it  a  summer 
bungalow,  where  all  of  us,  whatever  else  we  may  be  doing  with 
our  summer,  may  come  and  go  at  will. 

A  few  more  words  must  suffice  for  Spain.  He  was  there 
for  nearly  a  month,  travelling  for  part  of  the  time  with  the 
Brimmers,  from  Boston,  and  the  Wistars,  from  Philadelphia. 
Architecture,  Moorish  and  Christian,  and  the  pictures  of 
Velasquez,  which  he  saw  in  their  fulness  for  the  first  time, 
were  the  principal  objects  of  interest.  In  Burgos  he  found 
in  one  of  the  towers  of  the  Cathedral  what  he  thought  must 
have  furnished  the  suggestion  to  Richardson  for  the  tower  of 
Trinity  Church,  Boston.  He  speaks  of  Burgos  as  a  wilder- 
ness of  architectural  delight.  And  altogether  he  counted 
himself  fortunate  in  having  returned  by  way  of  Spain,  —  the 
transition  from  what  he  had  seen  of  Mohammedanism  in 
India  to  the  works  of  the  Moors,  and  thence  to  Christian 
civilization. 

On  June  8  Mr.  Brooks  arrived  in  England  to  receive  what 
proved  to  be  a  long  ovation.  He  had  already  many  personal 
friends  in  England;  his  books  had  been  widely  read  there, 
and  through  his  books  he  had  the  power  of  speaking  directly 


424  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

to  the  heart,  and  of  making  himself  known,  honored,  and 
loved.  Whenever  he  had  preached  in  England  on  the  occa- 
sion of  previous  visits  he  had  produced  the  same  impression 
as  at  home,  creating  the  widespread  desire  to  see  and  know 
him  personally.  What  it  had  been  in  Boston  it  was  now  to 
be  in  London,  His  coming  had  been  awaited  with  eager 
expectation.  Many  were  the  invitations  which  he  had  re- 
ceived in  advance,  asking  him  to  preach  in  London,  and 
especially  in  the  Cathedral  churches.  They  were  desirous 
that  he  should  have  the  fullest  opportunity  to  be  heard  by 
the  English  people,  and  they  placed  the  great  sanctuaries  of 
England  at  his  service.  The  Bishop  of  London  sent  him  a 
courteous  permission  to  preach  in  his  diocese,  expressing,  at 
the  same  time,  the  desire  that  he  would  accept  as  many  invi- 
tations as  possible.  He  was  also  personally  invited  by  the 
Bishop  of  London  to  preach  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  on  Hos- 
pital Sunday.  His  appointments  were  widely  advertised  in 
the  London  papers.  Among  the  other  churches  at  which  he 
preached  in  London  were  St.  Mark's,  St.  John'swood,  Christ 
Church,  Lancaster  Gate,  St.  Mark's,  Kennington;  St.  Mi- 
chael's, Chester  Square;  and  the  Temple  Church;  outside  of 
London,  Lincoln  Cathedral,  Wells  Cathedral,  and  St.  Pe- 
ter's at  Arches  in  Lincoln.  Interesting  incidents  occurred 
in  connection  with  his  preaching.  This  is  an  extract  from 
a  letter  written  by  a  person  unknown  to  him,  but  it  has  a  very 
familiar  sound :  — 

May  20, 1883. 
Deab  Sir,  —  Having  had  the  great  privilege  of  hearing  you 
preach  at  Westminster  Abbey  three  years  ago,  and  having,  since 
then,  much  enjoyed  reading  a  volume  of  your  sermons,  I  deter- 
mined to  seize  the  opportunity  of  once  more  hearing  you.  Ac- 
cordingly a  friend  and  I  went  twelve  miles  yesterday  to  the  Savoy 
Chapel,  where  you  were  advertised  to  preach,  but  were  bitterly 
disappointed  at  being  unable  to  get  even  standing  room,  although 
we  were  at  the  church  door  half  an  hour  before  the  service  began. 
I  hope  you  will  pardon  my  boldness  if  I  ask  whether  you  would 
be  so  kind  as  to  let  me  know  by  post-card  if  you  are  going  to 
preach  anywhere  during  this  week ;  for,  if  so,  we  should  so  much 
like  to  make  another  attempt  to  hear  you. 


^T.  47]  ENGLAND  425 

An  English  barrister  writes  to  him  a  request  that  he 
would  speak  with  more  deliberation,  when  he  preaches  in 
Temple  Church :  — 

Having  had  the  pleasure  of  hearing  you  at  St.  Paul's,  I  ven- 
ture to  ask  you  to  be  so  good  as  to  adopt  for  the  Temple  Church 
a  rather  slower  delivery,  in  order  that  all  may  hear.  Knowing, 
as  I  do,  that  our  church  is  a  very  difl&cult  one  in  which  to  hear, 
I  have  ventured  to  make  this  request.  I  should  not  have  done 
so  had  it  not  been  that  no  one  would  willingly  lose  any  portion 
of  a  sentence  of  your  sermon. 

Dr.  Farrar,  Archdeacon  of  Westminster,  also  made  the 
suggestion  that  he  should  be  more  deliberate  in  speaking, 
but  was  told  that  it  was  not  possible.  To  the  English  people 
his  rapidity  was  more  trying  than  to  his  compatriots.  Yet 
Dean  Stanley  saw  in  it  one  source  of  his  power,  comparing 
him  to  "an  express  train  going  to  its  appointed  terminus 
with  majestic  speed,  and  sweeping  every  obstacle,  one  after 
another,  out  of  his  course."  In  England,  as  in  America, 
he  was  the  despair  of  reporters,  owing  not  only  to  the  ra- 
pidity of  his  utterance,  but  to  the  bewildering  rush  of  the 
thought  as  well. 

There  came  to  him  a  request  from  the  Select  Preachers' 
Syndicate  of  the  University  of  Cambridge  to  preach  in  Great 
St.  Mary's  Church  upon  Ascension  Day,  and  the  Sundays 
immediately  before  and  after,  in  the  next  year,  1884.  He 
was  obliged  to  decline  it,  as  it  was  not  probable  he  should 
then  be  in  England.  But  it  was  a  source  of  regret  to  him 
that  he  could  not  see  something  of  the  English  universities 
during  his  stay,  and  he  was  assured  that  the  invitation  would 
be  renewed  on  some  subsequent  occasion,  when  he  would  be 
able  to  accept  it. 

Apart  from  the  public  honors  shown  to  him,  Mr.  Brooks 
was  the  recipient  of  the  most  generous  hospitality,  combined 
with  a  thoughtful  kindness  and  constant  acts  of  courtesy, 
which  were  wholly  unanticipated,  and  made  every  day  of  his 
two  months  in  England  a  refreshment  and  delight.  How 
wide  this  hospitality  was,  enabling  him  to  meet  people  whom 
he  had  long  desired  to  know,  will  best  be  shown  by  a  list 


426  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1883 

which  he  made  of  his  engagements,  and  including  the  names 
of  persons  whom  he  met. 

Saturday,  May  12,  Canon  Duckworth's, — Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Messer;  Friday,  May  18,  J.  R.  Lowell's, — Mr.  Huxley  and 
Mr.  Smalley;  Tuesday,  May  22,  Baroness  Burdett-Coutts's, — 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  Mrs.  Benson,  Dean  of  Westminster 
and  Mrs.  Bradley,  Lord  Shaftesbury,  Sir  F.  Leighton,  Sir 
Thomas  Brassey  and  Lady  Brassey,  Marquis  of  Salisbury,  etc. ; 
Thursday,  May  24,  at  the  Law  Courts  in  London  with  Sir  Farrar 
Herschell;  Saturday,  May  26,  Archdeacon  Farrar 's, — Bishop 
Lightfoot,  Canon  Barry,  Canon  Henning,  Mr.  Pulester,  etc. ; 
Monday,  May  28,  Lady  Frances  Baillie's,  —  Sir  George  Grove, 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  Mr.  Randall  Davidson  and  wife,  etc. ; 
Thursday,  May  31,  Mr.  Forbes's,  Ashley  Place ;  Saturday,  June 
2,  Mr.  Christian's, — Mr.  Kittridge,  Dr.  Garden,  etc.;  Tues- 
day, June  5,  Mr.  Humphrey's  (St.  Martin's  in  the  Field),  — 
Mr.  Galton,  etc. ;  Thursday,  June  7,  Dr.  Vaughan's,  —  Dean 
and  Mrs.  Bradley,  Sir  Fowell  Buxton,  etc. ;  Friday,  June  8, 
Mr.  De  Bunsen's,  — Augustus  Hare,  Mrs.  Buxton  (Lord  Law- 
rence's daughter),  Dr.  Brandis,  etc. ;  Saturday,  June  9,  Sir  G. 
Grove's,  —  Miss  Stevenson  (from  Edinburgh),  Rev.  Mr.  Yeaton 
and  Lady  Barbara,  his  wife;  Monday,  June  11,  breakfast  with 
Rev.  S.  Bickersteth,  —  his  father  (author  of  Yesterday,  To-day, 
and  Forever),  and  his  brother;  Tuesday,  June  12,  at  Bishop  of 
Rochester's,  —  Mr.  Grundy,  etc. ;  Wednesday,  June  13,  at  Lord 
Mayor's, — Mr.  Holland,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  etc.;  Thurs- 
day, June  14,  Lady  F.  Baillie's, — Bishop  of  Carlisle,  Miss 
Grant,  Mr.  Mills.  Luncheon  at  the  Duke  of  Argyll's;  Friday, 
June  15,  luncheon  at  Mrs.  Charles's  (author  of  Schonberg  Cotta 
Family), — Mr.  and  Mrs.  Holiday,  Mrs.  Thackeray  Ritchie, 
Mr.  Maurice ;  Sunday,  June  17,  at  Wells,  —  Professor  Free- 
man, Colonel  Maurice,  Canon  Church;  Tuesday,  June  19,  Mr. 
S.  Morley's, — Mr.  and  Mrs.  H.  Childers,  Dean  and  Mrs. 
Bradley,  etc. ;  Wednesday,  June  20,  p.  M.  Baroness  Burdett- 
Coutts's,  at  Holly  Lodge, — Lord  Mayor  and  Lady  Mayoress, 
Sir  James  Fergusson,  Rev.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Browne;  Wednesday, 
June  20,  Sir  Lyon  Playfair's,  —  Sir  Thomas  and  Lady  Brassey, 
Mrs.  Shaw  Lefevre,  etc. ;  Evening,  Mr.  Hugh  Childers's,  — 
Duchess  of  Teck,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Foster,  Lady  Holland,  Dean  and 
Mrs.  Bradley,  etc. ;  Thursday,  June  21,  Alfred  Tennyson's, 
Isle  of  Wight, — Miss  Boyle,  Mrs.  Lushington,  etc.;  Saturday, 
June  23,  Lincoln,  Precentor  Venables's  —  Bishop  Wordsworth, 
Mr.,    Mrs.,    and  Miss  Melville,   etc.;    Monday,    June  25,    Mr. 


^T.  47]  ENGLAND  427 

Paget's,  —  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Trevellyan,  etc. ;  "Wednesday,  June 
27,  Mr.  Shaw  Lefevre's  party  to  the  Tower,  — Playfairs,  Glad- 
stone, Bright,  Foster,  Morley,  Lowell,  Hare,  Lady  Harcourt, 
Haywood,  etc.;  Thursday,  June  28,  at  Dulwich, — Bishop  of 
Rochester,  Boyd,  Browning,  Jean  Ingelow,  etc.  Dinner  with 
Bishop  of  Carlisle,  Bonamy  Price,  Sir  James  Paget,  Macmillan, 
Murray,  etc. ;  Friday,  June  29,  lunch  with  Colonel  Maurice, 
Llewelyn  Davies.  Evening  at  Lady  Stanley's,  of  Alderley,  — 
Stopford  Brooke,  Browning,  Lady  Harcourt,  etc.  ;  Saturday, 
June  30,  p.  m.,  at  Newman  Hall's,  — Dr.  Allon,  Dr.  Farrar, 
etc.;  Sunday,  July  1,  lunch  at  Dr.  Vaughan's;  p.  M.,  at  Mr. 
Holiday's;  Monday,  July  2,  at  Mrs.  Leaf's,  — Dr.  Farrar,  Mr. 
Arnold,  and  Miss  Arnold;  Tuesday,  July  3,  at  Mr.  Mills's, — 
Sir  Bartle  Frere,  etc.  Evening  at  Mrs.  Gladstone's,  —  Dr. 
Acland,  Mr.  Bryce,  Mrs.  Childers,  the  Endicotts,  Miss  Glad- 
stone; Wednesday,  July  4,  p.  M.,  Mr.  Lowell's  reception,  — 
Smalley,  Collier,  Mrs.  Putnam,  Miss  Holley,  etc. ;  Thursday,  July 
5,  A.  M.  at  Harrow,  Dr.  Butler's  luncheon,  —  Earl  of  Dufferin, 
Bishop  of  Manchester,  Bishop  of  Derry,  Sir  F.  Buxton,  Dr.  Boyd 
Carpenter,  Canon  Flemming,  Sir  Lyon  Playfair,  Beresford  Hope, 
etc. ;  Thursday,  July  5,  Lady  Frances  Baillie's  dinner,  —  Lord 
and  Lady  Selbourne  (Lord  Chancellor),  Sir  G.  Grove,  Browning, 
Bishop  of  Litchfield,  Mrs.  Ritchie  (Miss  Thackeray) ;  Friday, 
July  6,  Mr.  Flood  Jones,  Precentor,  Westminster  Abbey.  Lady 
Russell,  at  Richmond;  Saturday,  July  7,  Mrs.  John  Henry 
Green.  Bishop  of  London,  garden  party,  — Canon  Duckworth, 
Dr.  Boyd  Carpenter,  the  Messers,  etc. ;  Mr.  Macmillan' s,  — 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Shorthouse,  Llewelyn  Davies,  etc.  ;  Tuesday,  July 

10,  dined  with  Major  Wing,  —  Mrs.  and  Miss  Everest.  Even- 
ing at  Mr.  Gladstone's,  —  Gladstone,  Lowe,  Lord  Dufferin,  Lord 
Spencer,  Sir  C.   Dilke,  Duke  of  Argyll,  etc. ;  Wednesday,    July 

11,  lunch  with  Llewelyn  Davies,  — Mrs.  Russell  Garvey.  Din- 
ner with  Judge  Endicott,  —  Mr.  Saltonstall ;  Thursday,  July  12, 
breakfast  at  Mr.  Shaw  Lefevre's,  — Mr.  Smalley,  Mr.  Broderick 
(warden  of  Merton  College),  Mr.  Wallace  (from  Constantinople), 
etc.  Thursday,  July  12,  lunch  with  Dr.  Allon,  of  North  Brit- 
ish Review,  —  Rev.  Mr.  Rogers.  Dinner  at  Miss  Martin's,  — 
Mr.  Wallace,  Professor  Bayard;  Friday,  July  13,  lunch  at  Lady 
Frances  Baillie's, — Miss  Selbourne;  Friday,  July  13,  dinner 
with  Sunday  Evening  Choir  in  Jerusalem  Chamber,  —  Dean, 
Archdeacon,  Canon,  Precentors,  etc. ;  Saturday,  July  14,  lunch 
with  Major  and  Mrs.  Wing;  p.  M.  at  Miss  Grant's,  — Bust  of 
Stanley,  Lady  Frances  Baillie,  Miss  Selbourne,  etc.  ;  Sunday, 
July  15,  lunch  at  the  Rev.  Llewelyn  Davies's,  —  Bishop  of  Man- 


428  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

Chester,  Rev.  Dr.  E.  A.  Abbott;  Monday,  July  16,  breakfast 
with  Ernest  de  Bunsen,  —  George  de  Bunsen,  of  Berlin.  Din- 
ner at  Mr.  Francis  Buxton's,  M.  P.,  No.  42  Grosvenor  Gar- 
dens, —  Lady  Lawrence  (Mrs.  Buxton's  mother).  Rev.  Henry 
White,  etc. ;  Tuesday,  July  17,  dined  with  Colonel  Maurice  at 
the  Army  and  Navy  Club,  and  with  hina  to  F.  D.  M.  Club,  — 
Ludlow,  Llewelyn  Davies,  Blount,  etc. 

Into  many  charming  English  homes  he  entered  as  a  privi- 
leged guest.  American  friends,  who  were  living  in  England, 
came  closer  to  him.  The  English  people  were  anxious  he 
should  see  and  know  all  that  they  cherished,  as  the  peculiar 
pride,  the  beauty  and  glory  of  England.  He  had  an  invita- 
tion to  visit  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  English  rectories, 
in  Surrey,  where  he  might  see  English  clerical  life  from  its 
highest  ideal  side,  which  would  illustrate  the  best  aspect  of 
the  union  of  Church  and  State,  wherein  also  lay  the  secret 
of  strength  in  the  development  of  the  Church  of  England. 
From  Lord  Aberdeen  there  came  an  invitation,  giving  him  a 
special  opportunity  to  meet  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  had  been 
reading  his  sermons  with  great  interest.  He  went  down  to 
the  Tower  with  a  party  of  government  people,  —  Gladstone 
and  Foster  and  Bright.  Once  at  luncheon  he  was  seated 
between  Browning  and  Jean  Ingelow.  It  was  an  event  to 
meet  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  whose  poetry  he  had  first  read 
many  years  before,  and  with  whose  singular  and  unique 
insight  into  the  conditions  of  modern  religious  sentiment  he 
had  been  greatly  impressed.  Browning  he  had  met  before, 
and  it  need  not  be  said  that  for  one  to  whom  Browning's 
poetry  had  meant  so  much,  any  opportunity  to  see  him  was 
eagerly  welcomed. 

But  the  one  man  of  all  others  whom  Phillips  Brooks  was 
most  anxious  to  see  was  Tennyson.  He  had  met  his  son, 
Mr.  Hallam  Tennyson  (now  Lord  Tennyson),  in  London, 
who  gave  him  the  invitation  to  visit  his  father  at  Farring- 
ford.  Freshwater,  in  the  .Isle  of  Wight.  He  was  able  to 
give  only  one  day  to  the  visit,  but  in  that  time  he  had  the 
poet  much  to  himself;  and  when  the  daylight  was  over,  "hav- 
ing come  to  know  me  pretty  well,  he  wanted  to  know  if  I 


^T.  47]  ENGLAND  429 

smoked,  and  we  went  up  to  the  study,  —  a  big,  bright, 
crowded  room,  where  he  writes  his  Idyls,  and  there  we  stayed 
till  dinner  time.  Of  Mrs.  Tennyson  he  says,  "as  sweet  and 
pathetic  as  a  picture."     Then  once  more,  — 

After  dinner  Tennyson  and  I  went  up  to  the  study,  and  I  had 
him  to  myself  for  two  or  three  hours.  We  smoked,  and  he 
talked  of  metaphysics  and  poetry  and  religion,  his  own  life,  and 
Hallam,  and  all  the  poems.  It  was  very  delightful  and  reverent 
and  tender  and  hopeful.  Then  we  went  down  to  the  drawing- 
room,  where  the  rest  were,  and  he  read  his  poetry  to  us  till  the 
clock  said  twelve,  —  "Locksley  Hall,"  "Sir  Galahad,"  pieces  of 
"Maud,"  and  some  of  his  dialect  poems. 

Tennyson,  as  is  well  known,  was  sensitive  to  being  talked 
about  in  the  papers,  and  the  next  morning,  after  breakfast, 
as  he  and  Mr.  Brooks  were  taking  a  walk  together,  he  sol- 
emnly charged  his  companion  with  secrecy  as  to  their  conver- 
sation the  previous  evening.  He  had  talked  very  freely  of 
people,  Mr.  Brooks  writes  to  a  friend,  and  expressed  himseK 
with  absolute  freedom,  we  may  infer,  on  every  topic  which 
had  been  broached.  But  if  he  had  known  Phillips  Brooks  as 
his  friends  at  home  knew  him,  he  need  have  had  no  anxious 
fears  that  he  would  talk  too  freely.  Mr.  Brooks  thought  that 
Tennyson  had  reason  for  his  almost  nervous  sensitiveness  on 
the  subject:  —  "Think  of  sitting  talking  to  your  wife  upon 
the  lawn,  and  suddenly  discovering  that  there  was  a  man  up 
in  the  tree  listening  to  what  was  being  said.  At  another 
time  a  woman  was  found  hidden  in  the  shrubbery." 

Phillips  Brooks  religiously  kept  his  promise  to  repeat 
nothing  of  the  conversation.  But  this  first  interview  with 
Tennyson  cannot  be  dismissed  without  a  moment's  reflection 
on  all  it  meant.  As  they  sat  together  in  the  study  after  din- 
ner for  two  or  three  hours,  we  may  imagine  Phillips  Brooks 
face  to  face  with  the  one  man  to  whom  he  owed  and  must  have 
acknowledged  a  great  obligation.  It  had  been  Tennyson, 
more  than  any  other,  who  had  been  the  means  of  first 
opening  to  him  the  meaning  of  poetry,  and  more  than  that, 
of  leading  him  out  from  the  confusion  of  his  early  years. 
All  that  Tennyson  had  been  to  the  nineteenth  century,  he 


430  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

had  been  in  a  more  special  and  emphatic  way  to  Phillips 
Brooks.  If  ever  there  was  an  occasion  in  his  life  when  he 
could  sit  at  the  feet  of  a  man,  as  a  pupil  revering  the  master, 
it  was  when  he  was  talking  with  Tennyson,  who  filled  his 
ideal  of  what  a  great  man  should  be.  If  ever  he  could  have 
unburdened  himself  to  a  mortal  man,  saying  what  he  could 
say  to  no  other,  it  was  to  the  man  before  him.  We  may 
think  that  there  was  then  some  unveiling  of  souls,  and  the 
impartation  of  sacred  confidences,  for  two  great  souls  were 
holding  communion  with  each  other.  To  the  world  at  large 
Mr.  Brooks  dismissed  the  incident  in  words  which  tell  us 
little,  as  though  it  had  been  only  one  among  the  many  in- 
teresting occasions  of  his  life.  Tennyson  had  asked  Mr. 
Brooks  to  pay  him  another  visit  at  his  home,  Aldworth,  Has- 
tlemere,  Surrey.  When  he  returned  there  from  a  voyage  to 
Copenhagen,  it  was  to  learn  that  Mr.  Brooks  had  gone  back 
to  America.  He  then  wrote  to  him,  saying  that  he  was 
grieved  to  know  that  he  had  recrossed  the  Atlantic,  and  that 
he  should  not  see  him  again,  closing  his  letter  with  a  sentence 
which  shows  that  he  liked  Phillips  Brooks :  —  "  The  few 
hours  that  I  spent  at  Freshwater  in  your  company  will  always 
be  present  with  me." 

Bishop  Brooks  seldom  spoke  [writes  the  Rev.  Percy  Browne] 
of  the  distinguished  people  whom  he  met  abroad,  but  I  have 
heard  him,  more  than  once,  describe  his  impressions  of  Tennyson 
and  Browning.  He  was  impressed  with  the  way  in  which  Brown- 
ing, whom  he  met  at  a  dinner  in  London,  threw  himself,  with 
gayety  and  cheerfulness,  into  the  light  conversation  of  the  mo- 
ment, interested  in  amusing  anecdotes  current  in  London  society, 
sharing  heartily  the  pleasure  of  the  hour,  but  never  alluding  to 
any  intellectual  problems :  "  One  would  think  from  his  conversa- 
tion,"  Brooks  used  to  say,  "that  they  did  not  exist  for  him." 
On  the  other  hand,  he  found  Tennyson  always  opening  up  a  large 
philosophic  view  of  life  and  its  problems,  sometimes  in  tones  of 
sadness,  occasionally  in  a  cheerful  optimistic  spirit,  but  always 
philosophizing.  Brooks  seemed  to  have  been  impressed  by  this 
contrast  of  the  two  great  poets  in  the  social  hour.  Browning, 
who,  in  his  poetry,  dramatized  the  profoundest  problems  of  life, 
ignored  them  completely  in  conversation,  apparently  interested  in 
only  the  superficial  topics  of  the  moment;  while  Tennyson,  whose 


^T.  47]  ENGLAND  431 

lucid  poetry  never  taxed  the  reader's  intellect,  showed  himself  in 
conversation  as  a  philosophic  thinker.  In  this  respect  he  re- 
garded Browning  as  a  more  characteristic  Englishman  than  Ten- 
nyson. 

In  speaking  of  one  of  his  visits  to  Tennyson,  he  told  how  the 
poet,  when  reading  aloud  his  own  poems,  would  sometimes  praise 
or  criticise  them  as  though  they  were  the  work  of  another.  On 
one  occasion  he  asked:  "What  shall  I  read?  "  "Read  '  Locks- 
ley  Hall, '  "  Brooks  replied,  —  "The  poem  that  stirred  ns  all  when 
we  were  young. "      When  Tennyson  reached  the  lines :  — 

"  Love  took  up  the  glass  of  Time,  and  turned  it  in  his  glowing  hands ; 
Every  moment,  lightly  shaken,  ran  itself  in  golden  sands," 

he  called  attention  to  it  as  being  the  most  perfect  poetic  image 
in  his  poems.  But  when  Brooks  claimed  that  the  imagery  was 
equally  good  in  the  lines :  — 

"  Love  took  up  the  harp  of  Life,  and  smote  on  all  the  chords  with  might ; 
Smote  the  chord  of  Self,  that,  trembling,  pass'd  in  music  out  of  sight," 

Tennyson  insisted  that  it  was  inferior  to  the  other,  —  lacking,  as 
he  said,  "its  Greek  simplicity  and  pictured  clearness."  "The 
figure  of  the  Harp  of  Life,"  he  said,  "is  too  subjective  and  com- 
plicated in  its  implications;  —  no,  the  other  is  the  best." 

It  was  characteristic  of  Brooks  that  he  should  have  felt  more 
sympathy  with  the  spiritually  suggestive  figure  of  the  Harp  of 
Life,  than  with  the  "Greek  simplicity  "  of  the  Glass  of  Time. 

Tennyson  owned,  adds  the  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks,  recalling 
a  conversation  with  his  brother,  to  a  natural  dislike  of  the 
unmusicalness  of  Browning's  poetry,  while  acknowledging 
his  rich  intellect. 

The  experiences,  he  said,  described  in  the  "In  Memoriam, " 
as,  for  instance,  in  the  stanzas  beginning,  "I  had  a  dream,"  were 
fictitious,  but  the  "Two  Voices,"  as  is  said  in  the  notes,  were 
"all  true."  Phillips  Brooks  often  mentioned  his  surprise  at 
Tennyson's  confusion  and  perplexity  in  speaking  of  the  mystery 
of  the  Trinity  as  compared  with  the  clearness  of  his  "religious 
theism,"  and  his  faith  in  immortality.  He  quoted  Tennyson  as 
saying  that  "matter  is  more  mysterious  than  mind.  His  mind 
one  knows  well  enough,  but  cannot  get  hold  of  the  thought  of 
body."  Tennyson  also  remarked  to  him  that  it  was  in  his  mind 
to  write  a  sequel  to  "Locksley  Hall." 


432  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

The  London  season  was  over  by  the  middle  of  July.  The 
year  of  wandering  was  drawing  to  its  close,  but  a  month 
still  remained  to  be  disposed  of  before  he  sailed  for  America. 
He  had  been  joined  in  London  by  his  friend,  Mr.  Robert 
Treat  Paine,  and  together  they  departed  for  the  Continent. 
They  stopped  at  Chartres  and  Bordeaux,  and  at  Pau,  near 
the  Pyrenees.  He  writes,  "The  curtain  has  fallen  and  risen 
again;  the  whole  scene  has  changed."  After  a  "splendid 
Pyrenean  week,"  including  a  trip  to  Lourdes,  which  re- 
minded him  of  the  Ganges  at  Benares,  he  came  to  Geneva, 
where  he  seems  to  have  been  chiefly  interested  in  getting  the 
impression  of  Voltaire.  One  night  was  spent  at  the  Grand 
Chartreuse :  — 

There  are  about  forty  fathers  there,  Carthusians,  in  their  pic- 
turesque white  cloaks  and  cowls.  Solitude  and  silence  is  their 
rule.  They  spend  the  bulk  of  the  time  in  their  cells,  where  they 
are  supposed  to  be  meditating.  I  suspect  that  the  old  gentlemen 
go  to  sleep.  There  was  a  strange,  ghostly  service,  which  began 
at  a  quarter  before  eleven  o'clock  at  night  and  lasted  until  two 
in  the  morning.  The  chapel  was  dim  and  misty,  the  white  fig- 
ures came  gliding  in  and  sat  in  a  long  row,  and  held  dark  lan- 
terns up  before  their  psalters  and  chanted  away  at  their  psalms 
like  a  long  row  of  singing  mummies.  It  made  you  want  to  run 
out  in  the  yard  and  have  a  game  of  ball  to  break  the  spell.  In- 
stead of  that,  after  watching  it  for  half  an  hour,  we  crept  back 
along  a  vast  corridor  to  the  cells  which  had  been  allotted  us,  each 
with  its  priedieu  and  its  crucifix,  and  went  to  bed  in  the  hardest, 
shortest,  and  lumpiest  of  beds.  In  the  morning  a  good  deal  of 
the  romance  and  awfulness  was  gone,  but  it  was  very  fine  and 
interesting,  and  the  drive  down  into  the  valley  on  the  other  side 
at  Chambdry  was  as  pretty  as  a  whole  gallery  of  pictures. 

In  his  "Letters  of  Travel"  will  be  found  an  account  of 
how  the  journey  proceeded;  from  Geneva  to  Miirren,  thence 
to  Interlaken  and  Lucerne,  and  through  the  St.  Gotthard 
tunnel  to  Italy.  From  Italy  he  came  back  through  the  Tyrol, 
in  which  his  soul  delighted,  calling  up  his  old  associations 
with  the  Dolomites.  He  stopped  at  Trent  and  meditated 
on  the  famous  council.  At  Brixlegg,  a  little  village  near 
Innsbriick,  he  was  present  at  the  performance  of  the  Passion 


^T.  47]  ENGLAND  433 

Play,  which  he  had  once  failed  to  see  in  its  more  elaborate 
form  at  Ober-Ammergau.  Then  he  felt  that  he  was  setting 
his  face  homeward,  as  he  travelled  rapidly  from  Munich  to 
Paris,  and  from  Paris  to  London,  whence  he  sailed  for 
America,  on  September  12. 

Out  of  the  many  letters  written  while  in  London  and  on 
the  Continent,  a  few  are  given  that  call  for  no  comment. 
To  the  Rev.  F.  B.  Allen  he  writes :  — 

London,  May  23, 1883. 

I  saw  the  new  archbishop  the  other  day;  his  whole  way  is 
excessively  ecclesiastical.  The  new  Dean  of  Westminster  is  a 
dear  little  fellow,  as  gentle  and  modest  and  refined  as  possible, 
just  such  a  successor  as  Stanley  would  have  loved.  Farrar  keeps 
on  preaching,  drawing  tremendous  crowds,  working  tremendously 
at  his  books  and  in  his  parish;  and  Stopford  Brooke  is  declar- 
ing in  a  hearty  way  that  Broad  Church  is  dead  and  that  free 
thought  in  the  establishment  is  an  impossibility,  is  talking  of 
giving  up  preaching  and  taking  to  writing  a  history  of  English 
literature,  which  he  would  do  finely.  Meanwhile  all  the  choir 
boys  in  England  have  chanted  the  Athanasian  creed  for  the  last 
two  Sundays,  and  hundreds  of  clerical  consciences  have  been  torn 
to  pieces.  I  have  engaged  passage  for  home  in  the  Cephalonia, 
which  leaves  Liverpool  on  the  12th  of  September.  Will  you 
be  ready  for  the  23d;  but  give  it  to  me  if  I  get  in  in  time? 
Thanks  for  the  story  of  the  Club,  at  Gray's.  It  must  have  been 
good. 

June  8,  1883. 

And  Harvard  has  refused  its  LL.  D.  to  Butler!  That,  too, 
is  very  good.  I  understand  all  the  reasons  which  made  some  of 
the  best  men  on  the  Board  of  Overseers  vote  the  other  way,  but 
I  am  quite  convinced  that  this  action  is,  on  the  whole,  best  for 
the  dignity  of  the  University  and  for  the  moral  standard  of  the 
community. 

London  is  very  pleasant.  I  have  been  trying  my  hand  at 
preaching  again  a  little,  and  rather  like  it.  Last  Sunday,  which 
was  Hospital  Sunday,  I  preached  at  St.  Paul's,  which  is  a  hor- 
rible great  place  to  preach  in.  To-morrow  I  am  going  down  to 
Wells,  the  loveliest  of  cathedral  towns,  to  spend  the  Sunday  with 
Plumptre,  and  to  preach  for  him  in  the  cathedral  there.  The 
next  Sunday,  the  24th,  I  preach  in  the  Lincoln  Cathedral,  and 
the  first  Sunday  of  July,  at  the  Temple  Church  in  London. 

VOL.  n 


434  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

The  Clericus  Club  had  proposed  to  give  him  a  dinner  to 
welcome  him  when  he  returned,  and  the  Eev.  F.  B.  Allen 
had  conveyed  to  him  their  wish  to  honor  him.  To  this  pro- 
posal he  replied :  — 

London,  July  3,  1883. 

My  dear  Allen,  —  I  am  touched  and  delighted  by  the  wish 
of  the  Club  to  greet  me  on  my  return.  There  could  be  no  wel- 
come that  I  should  value  more.  The  evening  of  September  24 
shall  be  sacred  to  them.  I  would  quite  as  lief  meet  the  fellows 
in  your  study  for  a  talk  and  smoke  as  to  sit  with  them  at  the 
gorgeous  banquetting  board  at  Young's.  If  they  will  let  me  do 
the  former,  I  should  like  it  quite  as  well  as  the  latter;  but,  how- 
ever I  meet  them,  it  will  be  one  of  the  gladdest  and  proudest 
moments  of  my  life.  If  they  are  willing,  do  let  it  be  after  the 
simpler  fashion.  Paine  is  with  me  now,  and  you  may  be  sure 
we  have  no  end  of  talk  about  home.  It  was  a  great  delight  to 
see  him.  He  is  over  head  and  ears  in  charities,  and  I  look  on 
and  listen.  On  Saturday  I  went  with  him  to  a  two  hours'  com- 
mittee meeting  of  the  Marylebone  Branch,  and  it  was  curious  to 
see  how  like  the  "cases  "  were  to  those  which  we  know  so  well  at 
home.  He  is  off  now  to  some  disreputable  place,  and  will  have 
a  cheerful  tale  of  misery  and  vice  to  tell  when  he  gets  back.  We 
shall  stay  here  until  about  the  20th,  and  then  be  off  for  some- 
where on  the  Continent.  I  have  been  spending  an  hour  in  Con- 
vocation, where  that  very  troublesome  creature,  the  Deceased 
Wife's  Sister,  was  vexing  the  souls  of  deans  and  archdeacons. 
The  debates  in  the  House  of  Lords  about  her  have  been  very 
curious.  For  the  present  she  is  rejected,  and  we  must  not  marry 
her.  But,  in  the  end,  she  will  get  her  rights.  I  thank  you  for 
your  full  accounts  about  the  Club.  Here  I  have  been  chosen  an 
honorary  member  of  the  "F.  D.  M.  Club,"  which  is  made  up  of 
the  old  friends  and  new  disciples  of  Maurice,  and  on  the  17  th 
I  shall  attend  their  meeting.  It  will  seem  a  little  like  a  first 
Monday  evening  of  the  month.    .    .    . 

London,  June  13,  1883. 

Dear  Cooper,  —  Think  of  my  having  two  letters  from  you  to 
answer!  Something  is  going  to  happen.  As  to  the  first  letter 
about  Heber  and  his  heresies,  I  do  not  think  we  need  to  worry. 
It  will  come  out  all  right.  If  he  is  wrong,  no  doubt  the  world 
will  find  it  out ;  and  if  he  is  right,  as  in  large  part  I  think  he  is, 
there  cannot  be  any  harm  in  his  saying  it  out  loud.  Now  don't 
be  mad  with  your  old  friend,  and  say  that  I  am  just  as  bad  as 
Heber  is,  and  swear  that  the  lips  that  say  such  things  shall  not 


^T.  47]  ENGLAND  435 

smoke  your  evangelical  pipes  next  October.  That  would  make 
me  very  wretched,  for,  in  the  midst  of  all  the  pleasant  things 
which  I  am  doing  here,  I  am  always  counting  on  those  days  in 
Philadelphia,  and  it  is  your  study  more  than  the  halls  of  the 
convention  that  my  anxious  soul  is  dwelling  on.  So,  if  I  cannot 
come  without  cursing  Heber,  I  will  put  my  convictions  in  my 
pocket  and  curse  him  at  a  venture. 

He  speaks  of  the  difference  between  the  English  and  the 
American  clergy  in  a  letter  to  Rev.  James  P.  Franks :  — 

London,  July  15,  1883. 

Dear  James,  —  It  has  been  interesting  to  compare  the  Eng- 
lish clergymen  with  the  same  class  of  humanity  at  home.  On 
the  whole,  I  think  that  they  have  finer  specimens  at  the  top  of 
their  profession  than  we  generally  have  to  show;  but  the  rank 
and  file  are  better  with  us. 

.  .  .  This  morning  I  preached  for  Llewelyn  Davies  in  the 
ugliest  great  barn  of  a  church  in  London,  and  after  church  I 
went  home  to  his  house  to  luncheon,  and  met  the  Bishop  of  Man- 
chester and  the  Philochristus  man,  Dr.  E.  A.  Abbott,  and  it  was 
very  bright  and  interesting. 

Next  Tuesday  I  am  going  to  a  meeting  of  the  F.  D.  M.  Club, 
of  which  I  am  an  honorary  member.  It  is  a  Maurice  Club,  as 
you  see  by  the  initials,  and  has  all  his  old  disciples  in  it,  along 
with  a  lot  of  young  men  who  have  got  his  spirit.  It  is  more  like 
the  Club  (Clericus)  than  anything  else  which  I  have  seen  in  Lon- 
don. But,  on  the  whole,  one  does  not  hear  very  good  things 
about  the  present  prospects  of  liberal  theology  in  England.  It 
has  not  strong  young  men ;  no  Parks  or  Percy  or  A.  V.  G.  Allen, 
—  a  sort  of  timid,  hard  ecclesiasticism,  making  much  of  services. 

To  the  Eev.  Arthur  Brooks  he  writes  this  letter,  giving  •: 

his  impressions  of  the  Church  of  England :  —  / 

Bagneees  de  Luchon,  July  29,  1883.  I 

Dear  Arthur,  — What  a  delightful,  good  fellow  you  have 
been  to  write  me  three  such  capital  letters,  full  of  the  very  things 
I  wanted  most  to  hear.  The  last  one  was  about  Commencements. 
I  am  much  interested  in  what  you  say  about  the  Philadelphia 
School.  Now  is  certainly  the  time  to  regenerate  it.  If  one 
could  only  think  of  the  right  men  for  professors,  and  had  the 
power  to  put  them  there.  Certainly,  such  a  man  as  Peters  ought 
not  to  be  left  out  on  any  account,  and  with  all  his  scholarliness 


436  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

he  seemed  to  me  to  be  almost  oversound.  Surely  there  need  be 
no  misgiving  about  his  orthodoxy.  I  cannot  think  o£  the  right 
man  for  Dr.  Butler's  successor.  But  you  must  find  him  some- 
where among  the  younger  men.  There  must  be  no  old  man  put 
into  the  place.  I  should  like  it,  of  course,  as  you  suggest,  but 
I  am  too  old.  He  must  not  be  over  forty.  I  am  glad  you  are 
a  Trustee.  I  wonder  if  I  am,  too.  I  used  to  be.  If  I  am, 
we  will  put  our  heads  together  and  get  up  a  conspiracy,  —  why 
not  ?  Cambridge  is  pretty  well  off.  At  least  it  is  on  the  right 
tack.      And  it  has  Allen.      I  am  so  glad  that  he  is  to  be  the  next 

Bohlen  Lecturer.      I  wonder  how ever  made  up  his  mind 

to  that.  In  London  the  other  day,  at  Llewelyn  Davies's,  he 
showed  me  Allen's  essay  on  The  Renaissance  of  Theology,  and 
said  how  fine  he  thought  it,  and  asked  me  all  about  the  man  who 
wrote  it.  I  was  surprised  to  hear  how  dolefully  he  and  other 
men  talked  about  the  prospects  of  liberal  theology  in  the  Church 
of  England.  Davies  and  Abbott  (E.  A.)  and  the  Bishop  of 
Manchester,  who  were  there  that  day,  declared  the  whole  Mauri- 
tian and  broad  church  movement  a  failure ;    Farrar  said  the  same 

thing    in    his    cheery,    doleful  way;   Plumptre,    also,    and   , 

of  whom,  perhaps,  it  might  have  been  expected,  and  who  is  the 
same  absurd,  inconsequential  creature  that  he  was.  The  older 
men  of  it  seemed  to  be  clinging  to  a  remote  history  back  in  the 
days  of  Frederick  Maurice,  and  the  younger  men  to  belong  to 
that  school  of  secularized  clergy,  which  I  know  you  dread  as 
much  as  I  do,  and  to  be  clutching  at  anything,  —  art,  music, 
ecclesiasticism,  sociology,  anything  to  get  a  power  over  people 
which  they  earnestly  wanted,  but  seemed  to  see  no  power  in  reli- 
gion to  attain.  I  went  to  a  meeting  of  the  F.  D.  M.  Club,  of 
which  I  was  made  an  honorary  member.  It  was  presided  over 
by  Mr.  Ludlow,  and  we  had  Hughes  and  Davies  and  Maurice's 
son  for  fellow  members,  but  the  whole  effect  was  not  inspiring. 
The  debate  was  about  how  Maurice  would  have  regarded  the 
modern  socialism  of  Henry  George  and  others,  and  how  they,  as 
Mauritians,  ought  to  stand  towards  it.  Maurice  seemed  to  be  a 
name  to  conjure  with  more  than  an  influence  upon  their  thought. 
Of  course,  there  were  many  good  things  said,  especially  by 
Davies,  whom  I  thought  one  of  the  best  and  most  interesting 
men  that  I  saw  in  England. 

There  are  three  things,  I  think,  that  hamper  the  mental  activ- 
ity and  free  thought  of  the  working  English  clergy.  One  is  the 
Establishment.  No  doubt,  with  the  best  men,  as  in  Stanley's 
case,  the  Establishment  seems  to  be  the  safeguard  of  liberality 
and  an  inspiration  for  tolerance,  but  with  ordinary  men,  I  am 


^T.  47]  ENGLAND  437 

convinced  that  it  is  simply  a  weight  of  responsibility,  and  makes 
them  fear  anything  except  most  loyal  adhesion  to  what  they  call 
Church  of  England  views.  The  second  thing  is  the  immense 
overwork  of  the  clergy  in  externalities,  especially  in  the  care  of 
schools,  which  is  an  enormous  tax  on  time  and  absorption  of 
thought.  And  the  third  thing  is  the  Athanasian  Creed.  That 
Creed,  explain  it  as  they  will,  has  in  it  the  very  spirit  of  a  set- 
tled, unprogressive,  and  exclusive  theology.  It  was  made  in  the 
interest  of  that  spirit,  and  the  need  of  considering  it  a  "'bulwark 
of  orthodoxy "  crowds  hard  on  men  all  the  while.  Of  course 
there  are  men,  such  as  those  in  university  or  cathedral  positions, 
who  are  more  or  less  free  from  the  influence  of  one  or  more  of 
these  causes,  and  so  will  always  think  or  write  freely;  but  the 
character  of  a  church  will  always  be  determined  by  that  of  its 
working  clergy,  and  so  it  is  not  very  strange  that  a  settled  trust 
in  ecclesiastical  machinery,  and  sacraments,  and  sacred  duties 
on  the  one  hand,  and  a  splendidly  devoted  but  unthinking  and 
superficial  spirit  of  "work"  upon  the  other,  are  becoming  more 
and  more  the  temper  of  the  English  Church.  At  least,  this  is 
what  the  broadest  men  say  is  the  case,  and  what  one's  own  little 
personal  observation  seems  to  confirm.  You  will  get  more  live 
talk  about  first  principles  in  either  our  Boston  or  your  New  York 
club  in  an  hour  than  from  any  gathering  of  London  clergy  in  a 
year.  You  could  hardly  get  them  to  talk  about  anything  but  the 
Deceased  Wife's  Sister,  who  was  convulsing  England  during  most 
of  my  visit.  Just  think  of  its  being  the  boast  of  the  Church  that 
all  the  bishops  in  the  House  voted  together  about  her,  and  that, 
in  Convocation,  only  two  men  (Vaughan  and  Farrar)  took  any 
other  ground,  about  their  artificial  arguments.  Could  anything 
show  more  clearly  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  an  Episcopal  and 
clerical  conscience  and  judgment,  professional  and  special  ?  and 
could  anything  be  worse  for  a  nation  and  a  church  than  that? 
Of  course,  you  will  see  that  I  think  our  "P.  E.  Church  "  has  all 
the  good  things  and  none  of  the  bad  ones  which  belong  to  the 
Church  of  England,  and  so  I  hope  the  best  and  brightest  things 
for  the  future  of  liberal  theology  in  Her! 

But  instead  of  writing  you  a  letter,  I  have  written  you  an 
essay,  and  I  have  n't  told  you  anything  about  the  pleasant  places 
that  I  went  to  and  the  pleasant  people  that  I  saw  in  England, 
nor  about  how  Bob  Paine  joined  me,  and  we  came  over  into  the 
Pyrenees,  nor  about  how  beautiful  these  valleys  are,  and  how 
curious  and  suggestive  our  visit  to  Lourdes  and  its  grotto  was. 
Nor  about  how  I  slipped  in  getting  out  of  a  car  and  hit  my  shin, 
and  it 's  all  swelled  up,  and  I  am  lying  on  a  sofa  with  a  cataplasm 


438  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

on,  which  will  account  for  the  awkward  chirography.  But  I  '11 
tell  you  about  all  these  things  when  I  come  home,  as  I  think  I 
shall  do  this  autumn,  now  that  Ben  Butler  is  not  a  Harvard 
Doctor  of  Laws,  and  Heber  Newton  is  not  to  be  tried.  Give 
Dr.  Tiffany  my  cordialest  congratulations.  P. 

While  he  was  at  Geneva  he  was  invited  to  preach  at  the 
American  Church.  "I  should  have  done  so,"  he  writes,  "if 
it  had  not  been  that  the  surplice  was  so  short  that  the  par- 
son and  I  both  feared  that  the  amusement  of  the  congrega- 
tion would  interfere  with  their  edification."  From  Trent  he 
writes  to  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell  one  of  the  letters  of  friendship, 
which  delighted  the  hearts  of  those  who  received  them :  — 

September  19,  1883. 

Dear  Weir,  —  What  a  good  fellow  you  are !  and,  dear  me, 
how  many  years  ago  it  is  since  you  began  to  be  a  good  fellow,  or 
rather  since  I  began  to  know  what  a  good  fellow  you  were,  when 
you  were  a  young  doctor,  and  I  a  young  parson,  and  the  world  so 
much  less  aged  than  it  is  to-day !  Something  well  over  twenty 
years  ago,  certainly  it  is,  since  you  did  me  your  first  kindness ; 
but  you  never  did  a  kinder  thing  than  when  you  offered  me  your 
house  and  home,  bed,  board,  and  cook,  for  a  three  weeks'  con- 
vention time.  Not  that  I  can  accept  it.  I  am  bound  already 
to  Cooper  and  McVickar,  each  of  whom  has  claimed  me  for  half 
of  the  time  that  I  am  to  be  in  Philadelphia.  But  I  thank  you 
just  as  truly  as  if  I  had  been  able  to  come  and  break  all  your 
choicest  furniture,  and  drink  all  your  rarest  wines.  You  do  not 
know  what  you  escape  by  my  being  unable  to  do  the  tempting 
thing  which  you  propose.  Think  of  what  your  house  would  have 
had  to  undergo  after  we  left  it!  You  would  have  found  frag- 
ments of  broken  dogmas  under  the  chair  cushions,  and  skeletons 
of  sermons  in  all  your  best- worn  closets.  No,  my  dear  Weir,  I 
must  not  put  your  friendship  to  this  test,  and,  besides.  Cooper 
and  McVickar  are  expecting  me.  But  I  do  thank  you  and  your 
wife  with  all  my  heart. 

And  I  am  so  sorry  that  I  shall  not  see  you  on  my  visit.  I 
want  to  get  you  by  the  hand,  and  it  must  not  be  long  after  my 
return  before  you  give  me  the  chance. 

Ever  affectionately  yours,  P.  B. 

A  few  extracts  from  Mr.  Brooks's  note-book  will  close  the 
story  of  his  eventful  stay  in  England.  They  were  written  on 
shipboard  as  he  was  returning  to  America. 


TRINITY    CHURCH,    EAST 


^T.  47]  ENGLAND  439 

The  change  to  the  later  side  of  life  marked,  like  the  change 
from  the  northern  to  the  southern  hemisphere  by  the  sight  of  new 
constellations,  motives,  hopes,  dreams,  and  fears. 

Sermon  on  some  such  text  as  "I  will  praise  my  God  while  I 
have  my  being. "  The  subject  of  the  true  temper  of  the  religious 
life.  Nature  of  temper  in  general,  —  distinct  from  principle, 
belief,  or  actions.  The  clear  recognizableness  of  it  in  people's 
thoughts.  The  atmosphere  or  aroma  of  a  life;  the  frequent 
idea  of  irresponsibility  for  temper;  value  of  heredity.  People 
talk  as  if  it  were  just  discovered.  Moses,  "from  fathers  to  chil- 
dren." The  beauty  of  such  connection  with  all  its  frequent 
tragicalness. 

The  religious  temperament  is  a  mingled  one,  yet  a  true  unity : 
anxiety,  yet  carelessness ;  self-care,  yet  self-f orgetfulness,  —  all 
resulting  in  a  sort  of  serious  joyousness  which  is  unmistakable. 
Seen  in  Jesus,  Paul,  Luther.  This  filling  and  not  destroying 
natural  dispositions. 

It  is  strange  to  think  how  prominent  the  national  thought  of 
religion  has  been  in  other  times,  and  how  foreign  it  is  to  most  of 
us  now.  The  Jews,  and  all  the  tribes  around  them;  Greeks, 
Bomans,  and,  indeed,  all  the  peoples  of  the  Old  World ;  and,  in 
Christian  times,  almost  every  mediaeval  nation  identified  its  reli- 
gion with  its  patriotism.  The  same  appears  constantly  now,  and 
never  in  nobler  form  than  in  the  Church  of  Englandism  of  such 
men  as  Dr.  Arnold.  It  is  a  true  element  in  a  complete  faith, 
no  doubt,  but  I  doubt  not  also  that  Christianity,  as  it  is  now 
most  commonly  conceived,  as  a  primarily  personal  faith,  is  an 
advance  upon  it.  Not  the  nation,  but  the  race ;  not  England,  but 
humanity,  is  the  consecrated  circle  of  the  Christian's  sympathy. 
The  race,  the  humanity,  can  be  comprehended  only  from  the 
starting  point  of  the  individual. 

The  nation  is  antagonistic,  the  individual  is  sympathetic.  I 
think  it  possible  that  even  Rome,  in  her  arrogance  and  clumsy 
selfishness,  did  yet  some  good  in  saving  the  very  idea  of  catho- 
licity and  in  keeping  Christendom  from  lapsing  into  a  multitude 
of  churches  as  far  from  one  another  as  the  East  and  "West. 

Behind  the  clouds  of  dubious  strife 

One  truth  is  always  bright; 
The  glorious  mystery  of  life 

Which  floods  the  world  with  light. 


440  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

Killing  many  kinds  of  heresy  in  the  persecution  way  is  like 
cutting  worms  in  two.  Each  part  retains  vitality  and  you  have 
two  instead  of  one. 

Canon  Duckworth's  story  about  the  verger  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  who,  indignant  at  some  Catholics  praying  at  the  shrine 
of  Edward  the  Confessor,  bade  them  up  and  begone:  "If  this 
goes  on  we  shall  have  people  praying  all  over  the  Abbey." 

General  despondency  of  English  towns;  absorption  in  parish 
work  and  consequent  separation  of  clergy  from  theological 
thought,  — most  honorable  but  dangerous. 

At  Mr.  Bunsen's  breakfast  (July  16),  a  gentleman  who  re- 
marked that  some  lawyers  said  they  did  not  like  the  broad  church, 
—  it  was  a  compromise ;  if  they  were  anything  they  would  be 
thorough  high  church.  Yet  they  were  nothing,  never  went  to 
church  at  all.  Same  sort  of  talk  in  Berlin  by  Grimm  and  others 
about  being  Catholics.  The  consciousness  and  superficialness 
of  it! 

You  do  not  know  a  language  when  you  know  its  words,  or  even 
its  inflections  and  constructions.  Merely  to  take  the  French  or 
German  words,  and  substitute  them  for  your  English  words,  that 
is  not  to  talk  French  or  German,  however  you  may  make  Ger- 
mans or  Frenchmen  understand  you.  The  genius  of  the  people, 
and  that  whole  character  which  is  as  truly  in  the  speech  as  in  the 
thought,  that  is  the  thing  that  you  must  master  before  you  can 
be  truly  said  to  speak  the  people's  language. 

And  so  it  is  with  the  reflection  and  reproduction  of  some  great 
man's  life.  You  may  repeat  his  actions  perfectly,  and  yet  he  is 
not  here.  The  subtle  shades  and  changes  of  his  character,  the 
way  in  which  he  not  merely  thinks  and  acts  and  speaks,  but  is, 
this  you  must  have  before  you  can  indeed  make  him  anew  to  be 
a  reality  and  a  power.  All  this,  applied  to  men  renewing  the 
power  of  Christ  in  the  world,  confirming  His  testimony. 

Schleiermacher  tells  in  his  letters  how,  when  Eleanore  G 

had  cast  him  off,  he  stood  two  hours  that  night,  with  his  hands 
resting  on  the  table,  —  lost ;  and  also,  as  he  approached  the  end 
of  the  argument  of  his  Critical  Inquiry  in  Ethics,  he  absolutely 
forgot  the  conclusion. 


CHAPTER  XV 

SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER,  1883 

THE  RETURN  TO  BOSTON.  EXTRACTS  FROM  SERMONS. 
ADDRESS  ON  LUTHER.  CORRESPONDENCE.  EXTRACTS 
FROM   JOURNAL 

Mr.  Brooks  arrived  in  Boston  on  Saturday,  the  22d  of 
September ;  on  the  following  Sunday  he  stood  in  his  place  in 
Trinity  Church. 

A  large  number  of  men  and  women  [said  the  Boston  Adver- 
tiser] met  him  at  the  Cunard  Wharf  in  East  Boston  as  the  Cepha- 
lonia  arrived.  Some  of  them  had  chartered  a  tug  and  boarded 
the  steamer  o£E  Boston  Light.  She  reached  the  pier  about  half 
past  four  in  the  afternoon ;  Mr.  Brooks  held  an  impromptu  recep- 
tion on  board,  and  landed  about  five.  He  preached  yesterday 
forenoon  to  a  congregation  which  filled  Trinity  Church  to  over- 
flowing. He  stands  vigorous,  hale  and  portly  as  ever,  but  his 
head  has  become  plentifully  sprinkled  with  gray,  so  that  the 
change  strikes  one  the  instant  of  beholding  him.  The  text  of 
his  sermon  was  1  Cor.  i.  6:  "Even  as  t*he  testimony  of  Christ 
was  confirmed  in  you." 

The  text  had  been  in  his  mind  while  in  India.  On  the 
long  voyage  homeward,  as  he  passed  through  the  Indian  Ocean 
or  the  Mediterranean  Sea,  he  was  writing  notes  of  what  he 
would  say.  It  would  be  in  keeping  when  telling  the  story 
of  a  great  poet  to  insert  some  unpublished  poem,  if  it  were 
of  equal  merit  with  what  he  had  given  to  the  world.  In  the 
case  of  a  great  preacher,  at  an  epoch  in  his  life  when  a  new 
and  greater  phase  of  his  career  was  opening,  will  it  be  inap- 
propriate if  for  once  we  give  the  larger  part  of  his  sermon, 
spoken  out  of  the  fulness  of  his  heart,  as  he  stood  in  the 
pulpit  of  Trinity  Church,  after  more  than  a  year  of  silence? 


442  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1883 

My  dear  friends,  my  dear  people,  I  cannot  tell  you  with 
what  happy  thankfulness  to  God  for  all  His  mercies  I  stand 
again  in  this  familiar  place.  After  a  year  of  various  delightful 
experiences,  —  I  hope  not  without  much  that  in  the  coming  years 
may  be  in  some  way  for  your  benefit  as  well  as  mine,  —  I  see  again 
these  dear  and  well-known  walls ;  I  look  into  the  welcome  of  your 
dear  and  well-known  faces;  I  greet  you  in  our  Master's  name, 
I  greet  you  in  the  memory  of  all  the  past,  which  comes  rising  up 
like  a  great  flood  about  me,  the  memory  of  all  the  years  of  happy 
work  together,  of  difficulties  met  and  solved,  of  the  common 
study  of  God's  word,  of  the  common  experience  of  God's  love, 
of  sorrows  and  of  joys,  in  the  midst  of  which  the  affection  of 
minister  and  people  for  each  other  has  ripened  and  grown  strong. 
I  greet  you  also  in  the  name  of  the  future,  which  I  hope  looks  as 
bright  and  full  of  hope  to  you  this  morning  as  it  looks  to  me. 
To-day  let  all  misgivings  rest,  and  let  the  golden  prospect  of 
years  and  years  of  life  together,  and  of  ever  richening  work  for 
God  and  fellow  man,  stretch  out  before  us  and  lavish  its  tempta- 
tion on  our  eager  hearts.  Let  our  whole  worship  of  this  morning 
seem  but  an  utterance  of  one  common  thankfulness  and  common 
consecration;  and  solemnly,  gladly,  with  hand  once  more  joined 
in  hand,  let  us  go  forward  in  the  thoughts  of  God. 

And  now,  in  this  first  sermon  to  which  I  have  so  long  looked 
forward,  what  shall  I  say?  Where  shall  I  try  to  lead  your 
hearts  in  this  first  of  the  many  half  hours  which  we  are  to  spend 
together  as  preacher  and  hearers  ?  I  do  not  know  where  I  can 
better  turn  than  to  the  Epistle  for  this  eighteenth  Sunday  after 
Trinity,  which  will  always  hereafter  be  remarkable  to  us  as  the 
day  which  brought  us  together  again  after  our  long  separation. 
The  whole  passage  from  which  these  words  are  taken  rings  with 
St.  Paul's  delight  in  his  disciples,  and  thankfulness  for  all  that 
God  has  done  for  them.  "I  thank  my  God  always  on  your  be- 
half for  the  grace  of  God  which  is  given  you  by  Jesus  Christ :  that 
in  everything  ye  are  enriched  by  Him,  in  all  utterance  and  in  all 
knowledge."  How  like  a  psalm  the  great  minister  sings  his  ex- 
ultation over  his  beloved  church!  And  then  there  come  these 
other  words,  which  seem  to  gather  up  into  the  most  deliberate 
and  thoughtful  statements  the  real  ground  and  substance  of  his 
delightful  interest  in  them :  "  Even  as  the  testimony  of  Christ 
was  confirmed  in  you."  Just  think  what  those  words  mean!  Be- 
hind all  other  joy  in  his  Corinthians,  behind  his  personal  affec- 
tion for  their  special  lives  and  characters,  behind  his  satisfaction 
in  their  best  prosperity,  behind  his  grateful  recollection  of  their 
kindness  to  himself,    behind  his  honor  for  the  intelligence  and 


^T.47]  RETURN   TO  BOSTON  443 

faithfulness  and  sacrifice  with  which  they  had  accepted  the  truth 
which  he  had  taught  them,  and  had  tried  to  live  the  Christian 
life,  —  behind  all  this  there  lay  one  great  supreme  delight.  In 
them  he  saw  confirmed  and  illustrated  the  testimony  of  his  Master, 
Christ.  All  that  he  knew  his  Lord  to  be  became  at  once  more 
sure  and  more  clear  to  him  as  he  read  the  lives  of  these  disciples, 
as  they  lay  before  him  flooded  with  the  bright  light  of  their 
mutual  love.  .   .   . 

The  words  at  once  suggest  an  illustration  of  their  meaning,  which 
is  familiar  to  every  devout  and  thoughtful  man  who  has  travelled 
much  back  and  forth  upon  the  wonderful,  beautiful  earth  where 
God  has  set  our  lives.  I  praise  the  world  for  many  things :  king- 
dom beyond  kingdom,  city  beyond  city,  race  beyond  race,  there 
opens  everywhere  the  fascinating  mystery  of  human  life.  Man, 
with  his  endless  appeal  to  man,  piercing  through  foreign  dress 
and  language,  strange  traditions,  uncouth  social  habits,  uncon- 
genial forms  of  government,  unapprehended  forms  of  faith,  finds 
out  our  hearts  and  claims  them,  and  makes  our  paths  from  land 
to  land  a  constant  interest  and  joy.  And  the  great  physical 
earth  in  which  this  human  life  is  set  is  worthy  of  its  jewel.  The 
ocean  rolls  in  its  majesty ;  the  great  plains  open  their  richness 
from  horizon  to  horizon ;  the  snow  peaks  lift  their  silver  mystery 
of  light  against  the  sky;  the  great  woods  sing  with  the  songs  of 
streams.  How  beautiful  it  is!  And  yet,  without  losing  one 
element  of  all  this  beauty,  without  robbing  eye  or  ear  or  mind  of 
one  of  these  spontaneous  delights,  how  instantly  poorer  this  earth 
of  ours  would  be  to  the  devout  and  thoughtful  man  if  it  meant 
nothing  more,  if  everywhere  it  did  not  bring  him  even  additional 
testimony  and  revelation  of  that  supreme  intelligence  and  love 
which  had  first  made  itself  known  to  him  in  the  experiences  of 
his  own  soul !    .    .    . 

The  words  of  Paul  and  the  illustration  of  his  words,  which  I 
have  just  been  giving,  may  furnish  two  natural  divisions  of  what 
I  want  to  say  to  you  to-day.  He  was  talking  to  Christian  disci- 
ples, and  it  was  peculiarly  and  specially  over  the  exhibition  of 
the  power  of  Christ  in  those  who  were  declaredly  his  disciples 
that  the  apostle  was  grateful  and  exultant.  But,  besides  this 
Paul  shows  us  more  than  once  that  he  conceived  of  Christ  as  a 
universal  power,  so  present  everywhere  and  always  in  the  world, 
that  no  part  of  the  world,  not  even  that  which  was  most  ignorant 
or  most  contemptuous  about  Him,  could  help  feeling  His  influence 
and  becoming  a  witness  of  His  power.  To  Paul,  then,  any  sav- 
age barbarism  or  any  heathen  civilization,  as  well  as  his  Christian 
church  in  Corinth,  would  have  found  its  meaning,  its  explanation, 


444  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

its  key  and  clue  in  Christ.  He  would  have  stood  among  the 
palaces  of  Rome  or  among  the  wigwams  of  America  and  learned 
from  them  something  of  his  Master.  To  them  as  well  as  to  the 
streets  of  Corinth,  though  with  different  sense  and  tone,  but  with 
no  less  sincerity  and  interest,  he  would  have  said,  "The  testi- 
mony of  Christ  is  confirmed  for  me  in  you."  .    .    . 

The  "  testimony  of  Christ. "  Must  we  not  ask  ourselves,  first, 
however,  whether  we  understand  exactly  the  meaning  of  these 
words  ?  Do  they  refer  to  the  doctrine  which  Christ  taught,  the 
truths  which  He  left  burning  in  His  Gospels  for  the  world's  undy- 
ing light?  No  doubt  they  do!  But  we  should  little  understand 
the  richness  of  the  Divine  Revelation  in  the  Son  of  Man  if  we 
let  ourselves  think  for  a  moment  that  any  word  which  He  ever 
spoke,  or  could  have  spoken,  exhausted,  or  could  exhaust,  that 
revelation  of  Himself,  which  the  loving  Father  of  mankind  in- 
tended to  give  the  world  through  Him.  Christ  spoke  the  words 
of  God,  and  that  was  much.  Christ  was  the  word  of  God,  and 
that  was  vastly  more;  I  beg  you  always  to  remember  that.  It 
is  no  doctrine,  —  not  even  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation,  —  it 
is  the  Incarnate  One  Himself  that  is  the  real  light  of  the  world. 
Let  us  get  hold  of  that  idea  (as  there  does  indeed  seem  reason, 
thank  God,  to  believe  that  men  are  getting  hold  of  it).  Let  us 
get  hold  of  this  idea,  and  then  we  are  really  ready  for  the  great 
truth  of  St.  Paul,  that  the  world  and  the  church  get  their  true 
clearness  and  beauty  as  confirmation  of  the  testimony  of  Christ. 
The  testimony  of  Christ  is  Christ.  A  hundred  golden  words  of 
His  leap  to  our  memory,  but  not  one  of  them  can  unlock  all  our 
problems  and  scatter  all  our  darkness.  Not  one  of  them  — 
simply  because  it  is  only  a  word  —  can  marshal  and  harmonize 
at  once  around  itself  all  this  discordant  world.  But  He,  the  In- 
carnate God  and  the  perfect  Man,  setting  in  living  presence  the 
holiness  and  love  of  God  and  the  capacity  of  man  as  a  true,  visi- 
ble fact  here  in  the  world.  He,  if  He  be  really  this,  may  well 
become  the  centre  of  all  history  and  life,  and  all  the  world  and 
all  the  Church  may  find  their  highest  glory  and  beauty,  their  key 
and  clue,  in  being  confirmations  of  the  testimony  of  Him. 

With  all  this  clear  in  our  mind,  let  us  turn,  first  to  the  world, 
—  the  great  world  as  a  whole,  Christians  and  non-Christians  all 
together,  and  see  how  in  the  Incarnation  of  Christ  it  finds  its 
true  interpretation  and  illumination.  I  must  speak  hurriedly, 
but  I  will  try  to  speak  as  clearly  as  I  can. 

1.  It  is  hard  to  speak  of  the  world  at  large  and  not  speak  first 
of  all  of  that  which  is,  I  think,  upon  the  whole,  the  most  im- 
pressive thing  to  one  who  travels  much  from  land  to  land,  and 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  445 

takes  in  on  the  spot  the  record  of  humanity  in  every  age.  I 
mean  the  fact  that,  through  all  lands  and  in  all  ages,  there  have 
stood  forth  men  who  showed  the  spiritual  possibilities  of  men  in 
some  supreme  and  beautiful  exhibition.  Where  is  the  country 
whose  history  is  so  dead  that  it  has  not  some  such  men  to  show? 
Where  is  the  tyranny  of  a  false  creed  so  mighty  that  it  has  been 
able  to  hold  these  star  lives  in  its  chains  and  forbid  their  soaring 
up  into  the  dark  sky?  In  mediaeval  Christianity,  in  gross,  mate- 
rial, commercial,  modern  life,  in  brutal  Hindu  superstition,  in 
the  conceit  of  narrow  learning,  where  has  there  ever  been  such 
all-powerful,  earthward  gravitation  that  the  mountains  have  not 
risen  through  it  here  and  there  into  the  heavens?  The  saint, 
the  soul  unselfish  with  perception  of  the  higher  purposes  of  its 
own  life  and  aspiration  after  God,  is  everywhere.  Can  I  see 
this,  can  I  recognize  this  as  one  of  the  great  facts  of  the  world, 
and  yet  see  no  connection  between  it  and  the  great  apparition 
once  upon  the  earth  of  the  supremest  Son  of  God,  of  one  who 
by  His  ver\j  heing  made  it  absolutely  certain  that  God,  however 
far  away  He  seemed,  was  always  very  near  to  man ;  that  man,  how- 
ever gross  and  bad  he  seemed,  was  always  capable  of  receiving 
and  containing  God  ?  The  truth  we  learn  from  every  highest 
study  of  humanity  is  that  the  highest  and  divinest  men  are  the 
most  truly  men ;  not  the  mean  and  the  base,  but  the  noble  and 
the  pure ;  they  are  the  men  whom  we  have  a  right  to  take  as  the 
true  revelation  of  what  man,  in  his  essential  nature,  really  is. 
And  that  same  truth  applied  to  the  old  question  as  to  what  is 
the  relation  between  the  highest  human  lives  and  the  life  of  the 
incarnate  Christ  gives  us  the  right  to  think  that  they  are  to  be 
interpreted  by  Him;  that  in  them  we  have  simply  the  sunlight 
before  the  sunrise,  the  mountain  tops  of  humanity,  on  which  has 
struck  first  of  all  that  truth  which  is  the  essential  truth  of  human 
nature,  —  the  truth  that  man  belongs  to  God  and  is  divine.  By 
and  by  comes  the  Incarnation,  and  that  is  just  the  rising  of  the 
Sim,  whose  light  has  been  already  glorious  upon  the  hills,  even 
while  it,  itself,  was  yet  unseen.  When  from  the  hilltops  down- 
ward to  the  lower  regions  creeps  the  sunlight,  it  finds  out  ever 
deeper  zones  of  human  nature  and  enlightens  them.  It  brings 
out  the  godlike  in  the  nooks  and  corners  of  humanity.  All  this 
comes  afterwards ;  but  the  first  testimony  of  that  which  Christ 
afterwards  made  certain  was  in  the  fact  which  fascinated  men 
while  it  bewildered  them,  that  everywhere  and  always  there  have 
been  men  who  could  not  be  satisfied  except  in  finding  out  and 
claiming  God,  men  whose  souls  told  them  they  belonged  to  Him. 
Oh,   my  dear  friends,  it  is  not  for  us  Christians  to  ignore  the 


446  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1883 

spiritual  glories  which  humanity  has  reached  in  regions  where  our 
blessed  Christ  has  been  least  known ;  rather  to  rejoice  in  and  pro- 
claim them,  for  they  are  confirmations  of  the  testimony  of  Him, 
unquenchable,  indubitable  witnesses  of  that  without  which  He 
could  not  have  been,  the  oneness,  the  essential  oneness  of  man's 
life  with  God. 

2.  And  if  I  talk  thus  of  the  spiritual  glory  of  mankind,  how 
shall  I  speak  of  its  sin  and  misery  ?  Oh,  my  dear  friends,  one  does 
not  need  to  travel  in  order  to  find  it  out.  Our  own  streets,  our  own 
hearts  are  full  of  it;  and  yet  there  does  come  with  long-contin- 
ued travel  a  reiteration,  an  accumulation,  an  overwhelming  cer- 
tainty of  the  sinfulness  of  man  that  is  most  awfully  impressive. 
The  terrible  disgrace  and  wretchedness  of  human  life !  City 
beyond  city  has  its  tale  to  tell.  You  cross  new  seas  and  find  the 
darkness  waiting  for  you  on  the  other  side.  You  lift  some  veil 
of  old-world  beauty  and  there  it  lurks  behind,  the  hideous  spectre 
of  the  lust,  the  cruelty,  the  brutishness,  the  selfishness,  the  awful 
wickedness  of  man.  Sometimes  one  finds  himself  simply  stand- 
ing in  dismay  before  it.  All  faith  in  man  seems  for  a  moment 
to  be  perished ;  all  hope  for  man  withers  as  if  it  were  the  silliest 
and  wildest  dream.  And  what  then?  Is  there  any  sort  of  con- 
firmation of  the  testimony  of  Christ  here  ?  Oh,  is  there  not  ?  If 
the  splendid  possibilities  of  man  in  every  exhibition  of  them  showed 
the  chance  of  a  redeeming  incarnation,  does  not  the  pervading 
wickedness  of  man,  with  no  less  mighty  emphasis,  declare  its 
need  ?  We  are  so  built  (thanks  to  the  grace  of  Him  who  built  us) 
that  our  greatest  and  deepest  needs  take  voices  and  prophesy  their 
own  supplies.  Not  merely  the  partial  lightness  of  the  twilight, 
but  the  very  blackness  of  the  midnight  darkness  tells  beforehand 
of  the  coming  light.  The  cry  of  realized  want  is  always  under- 
sounded  and  made  pathetic  by  an  almost  unconscious  tone  of 
hope.  And  so,  in  the  very  dismay  of  which  I  spoke,  when  it 
comes  over  one  as  he  stands  in  the  presence  of  some  record  of 
how  bad  man  has  been,  or  some  sight  of  how  bad  man  is,  there 
opens  at  the  very  heart  of  it  all,  the  brighter  for  the  darkness  at 
whose  heart  it  burns,  a  strange,  divine  assurance  that  this  bad- 
ness is  not  man,  but  is  an  awful  slavery  which  has  fallen  upon 
man,  and  that  somewhere,  some  time,  somehow,  the  true  man  must 
come  and  bring  a  rescue,  and  that  when  He  comes  He  will  come 
with  a  supreme  witness,  that  He,  the  true  man,  belongs  to  God, 
that  it  is  not  merely  man,  but  God,  who  comes  and  brings  His 
strength.  It  is  to  a  blind  conviction  such  as  this  that  the  mis- 
sionary of  the  Incarnation  everywhere  appeals,  and  he  does  not 
appeal  in  vain.     Whatever  men  have  written,  it  is  not  hard  for 


^T.47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  447 

man,  conscious,  really  conscious  of  sin,  to  believe  in  the  promise 
of  redemption.  His  sin,  in  subtle  ways,  has  told  him  of  the  re- 
demption which  was  coming.  When  it  comes  he  says,  "It  must 
have  come.  God  could  not  have  left  me  to  perish."  So  it  is 
that  the  world's  sin  becomes  its  "Confirmation  of  the  testimony 
of  Christ." 

The  believer  in  the  Incarnation  goes  everywhere,  and  his  belief 
in  the  immediate  presence  of  God  and  the  vast  capacity  of  man 
(and  to  believe  in  the  Incarnation  is  to  believe  in  both  of  these) 
fills  everything  with  light.  The  glory  and  the  tragedy  of  human 
life  are  both  intelligible.  The  tumult  of  history  becomes  some- 
thing more  than  the  aimless  biting  and  clawing  of  captive  wild 
beasts  caged  together  in  a  net.  Behind  everything  is  the  God 
whose  children  we  are,  and  who  could  not  let  us  live  without 
telling  us  He  was  our  Father.  Over  all,  making  life  pathetic  and 
full  at  once  of  penitence  and  hope,  —  the  Christ, 

"  Whose  pale  face  on  the  cross  sees  only  this, 
After  the  watching  of  these  thousand  years." 

Before  all,  as  the  one  great  promise,  the  one  only  hope,  the  com- 
ing of  that  same  Christ  in  the  clouds  with  power  and  great  glory ; 
humanity  redeemed  and  fulfilled  by  the  occupation  of  Divinity, 
made  at  last  completely  Master  of  a  world  entirely  obedient  to 
its  best  life.  Pitiable  enough  the  man  who  travels  through  the 
world  and  sees  no  such  vision,  hears  no  such  voice  of  a  creation 
groaning  and  travailing  for  the  manifestation  of  the  Sons  of  God 
and  is  not  moved  continually  to  lift  up  his  prayer:  "Even  so, 
come,  Lord  Jesus !  " 

But  it  is  time  to  take  our  second  point,  to  turn  from  the  great 
world  and  think  of  the  Christian  disciple,  to  whom  St.  Paul's 
words  were  first  of  all  addressed.  His  is  the  life  which  is  trying 
to  be,  what,  in  the  great  view  of  it  which  we  have  just  been  tak- 
ing, the  whole  world  must  finally  become.  And  so  in  him,  in 
the  Christian  disciple,  we  ought  to  see  some  livelier  struggle 
toward  the  expression  of  the  Incarnation,  toward  the  confirmation 
of  the  Testimony  of  Christ.  As  I  say  this,  I  cannot  but  remem- 
ber how  the  whole  story  of  Jesus,  even  in  its  details,  has  often 
seemed  to  be  only  the  parable  of  the  life  of  every  struggling  ser- 
vant of  Jesus  who  has  walked  in  His  steps.  The  servant  like 
the  Master  has  seemed  to  pass  out  of  the  childhood  of  Bethlehem 
into  the  profession  of  the  Baptism,  the  wrestling  of  the  desert, 
and  the  glory  of  transfiguration,  and  the  harsh  Contacts  with  a 
misconceiving  world,  full  always  of  a  growing  peace  of  deeper 


448  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

understanding  of  the  Father,  until  at  last  through  the  agony  of 
some  Gethsemane  and  the  complete  sacrifice  of  its  appointed  Cal- 
vary, it  has  come  out  fully  into  the  brightness  and  the  peace  of 
the  Resurrection  life.  When,  a  few  weeks  ago,  I  sat  through 
a  long,  bright  summer's  day  and  saw  the  peasants  of  a  village  in 
the  Tyrol  represent  in  their  devout  and  simple  way  the  old,  ever 
new  story  of  the  sufferings  and  crucifixion  and  triumph  of  the 
Lord,  one  of  the  strongest  impressions  on  my  own  mind  all  the 
time  was  this :  that  not  alone  in  old  Jerusalem  had  those  scenes 
taken  place;  that  it  was  the  story  not  merely  of  the  Master,  but 
also  of  every  faithful  and  suffering  servant  of  the  Master,  which 
was  being  played ;  that  that  patient  figure,  passing  on  deeper  and 
deeper,  as  hour  followed  hour,  His  passion  unveiling  with  every 
act  some  greater  greatness  of  His  nature,  full  of  exhaustless  pity 
and  unfailing  courage,  now  shaming  His  contemptuous  judge  with 
His  calm  dignity,  now  falling  under  the  burden  of  His  cross,  now 
forgetting  Himself  as  He  turned  to  bless  His  fellow  sufferers, 
and  at  last  standing  triumphant,  with  His  foot  upon  the  con- 
quered tomb,  was  not  merely  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  but  was  at  the 
same  time  every  follower  of  the  Nazarene  who  anywhere  had 
caught  His  spirit  and  repeated  the  essential  words  of  His  life. 

But  it  is  not  only  when  we  thus  make  the  story  of  Christ's  life 
the  parable  of  our  own  life  that  we  discover  the  confirmation  of 
His  testimony  in  ourselves.  When  in  all  the  deeper  experiences 
of  our  souls  we  find  that  there  is  no  solution  of  our  problems  and 
no  escape  from  our  distress  except  in  what  the  Incarnation  meant 
and  means  forever,  then  it  is  that  our  poor  pathetic  histories  get 
their  great  dignity  as  confirmations  of  all  He  said  and  did. 
When  overcome  by  your  own  sin,  nothing  but  Christ  can  make 
you  know  that  you  are  so  thoroughly  God's,  and  God  is  so  com- 
pletely yours  that  no  sin  can  separate  you  from  Him  or  forbid 
you  the  privilege  of  coming  on  your  knees  to  Him,  to  repent  and 
confess,  and  ask  Him  to  forgive  and  be  forgiven;  when  full  of 
self-distress  and  self-contempt,  nothing  but  the  Incarnate  Christ 
can  keep  you  from  despairing  of  humanity  and  show  you  how 
grand  and  pure  it  is  in  its  essential  nature,  how  capable  of  being 
filled  with  God  and  shining  with  His  glory  ;  when  thus,  in  the 
strength  of  the  Incarnation,  you  gather  up  your  helplessness  and 
come  full  of  trust  and  hope  up  to  the  door  where  He  who  made  you 
stands  tirelessly  inviting  you  to  enter  in  and  become  what  He 
made  you  to  he,  then,  then  it  is  that  the  transcendent  wonder  of 
God  manifest  in  Christ  has  translated  itself  into  our  human 
speech,  and  men  may  read   in  you,  the  poor  saved  sinner,  what 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  449 

your  Saviour  is.  Is  there  a  glory  for  a  human  life  like  that  ? 
Can  you  conceive  a  humble  splendor  so  complete  as  the  great  light 
which  clothes  the  soul  that  has  thus  in  pure  submission  made 
itself  transparent,  so  that  through  it  Christ  has  shone?  Among 
the  new  experiences,  the  deepest  of  them  unknown  in  their  ful- 
ness save  to  you  and  God,  which  must  have  come  to  you,  my 
friends,  in  these  months  of  our  year  of  separation,  may  I  not 
hope,  may  I  not  rejoice  to  know,  that  to  some  of  you  has  come  this 
crown  of  all  experiences,  this  glad  and  complete  submission  of 
your  converted  life  to  Christ,  in  which  you  have  become  a  new 
confirmation  of  the  Testimony  of  His  Grace  and  Power.  I  thank 
God  with  you  for  this,  which  is  indeed  the  salvation  of  your 
soul. 

I  must  not  seem  to  be  pouring  out  on  you  on  this  first  morning 
the  flood  of  preaching  which  has  been  accumulating  through  a 
whole  year  of  silence.  But  I  have  wanted  to  ask  you  to  think 
with  me  of  how  the  key  of  the  world's  life,  and  of  every  Chris- 
tian's experience,  lies  deep  in  that  Incarnation  which  it  is  the 
privilege  of  the  Christian  pulpit  to  proclaim  and  preach.  If 
what  I  have  been  saying  to  you  is  true,  then  that  great  manifes- 
tation of  God  must  be  preaching  itself  forever.  All  history,  all 
life,  must  be  struggling  to  confirm  the  Testimony  of  Christ.  I 
have  known  well  how  faithfully  the  Gospel  of  the  Incarnation  has 
been  preached  to  you  from  this  pulpit  since  I  have  been  away. 
With  ever  deeper  satisfaction  I  have  known  that  God  was  preach- 
ing it  to  each  of  you  in  silent  sermons,  out  of  all  that  He  has 
sent  or  has  allowed  to  come  into  your  lives.  You  have  had  trou- 
bles and  anxieties,  sickness,  pains;  some  of  you  sorrows  which 
have  torn  your  hearts  and  homes  asunder,  and  changed  your  lives 
forever.  Have  they  not  shown  you  something  ?  Has  not  God, 
through  them,  shown  you  something  of  how  near  He  is  to  you 
and  how  He  loves  you,  and  how  capable  your  human  natures  are 
of  containing  ever  more  and  more  of  Him  ?  You  have  had  de- 
lights, joys;  happiness  has  burst  on  some  of  you  with  a  great 
gush  of  sunshine,  and  opened  upon  others  with  that  calm  and  grad- 
ual glow  which  is  even  richer  and  more  blessed.  Have  you  not 
learned  something  in  most  personal  and  private  consciousness  of 
what  the  world  meant  when  the  tidings  ran  abroad  from  Bethle- 
hem: "Behold,  your  King  is  come.  The  Tabernacle  of  God  is 
with  His  children  men  "  ?  The  children  have  turned  another  page 
in  the  delightful  book  of  opening  life.  The  active  men  and 
women  have  seen  what  seemed  the  full-blown  flower  open  some 
deeper  heart  of  richness.     The  thinker  has  learned  some  new 


450  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

lessons  of  the  infiniteness  of  truth.  The  old  have  found  age, 
grown  ever  more  familiar,  declare  itself  in  unexpected  ways  their 
friend,  and  seen  its  hard  face  brighten  with  the  mysterious  pro- 
mises of  things  beyond,  which  it  cannot  explain,  but  whose  real- 
ity and  richness  it  will  not  let  them  doubt.  "We  are  all  growing 
older.  Oh,  how  dreary  and  wretched  it  would  be  if  those  words 
did  not  mean  that  through  Christ,  in  Christ,  we  are  always  gain- 
ing more  knowledge  of  what  God  is  and  what  we  may  be. 

As  I  look  around  upon  your  faces,  I  cannot  help  asking  myself 
in  hope  whether  it  must  not  be  that  some  of  you  are  ready  for 
the  Gospel  now,  for  whom,  in  the  years  heretofore,  it  has  seemed 
to  have  no  voice.  Has  not  some  new  need  opened  your  eyes? 
Has  not  some  new  mercy  touched  your  hearts  ?  Has  not  the  very 
steady  flow  and  pressure  of  life  brought  you  to  some  new  ground, 
where  you  are  ready  to  know  that  life  is  not  life  without  the 
faith  of  Him  who  is  the  Revelation  of  God  and  of  ourselves  ?  I 
will  believe  it,  and  believing  it,  I  will  take  up  again,  enthusias- 
tically, the  preaching  of  that  Christ  who  is  always  preaching 
Himself  in  wonderful,  and  powerful,  and  tender  ways  even  to 
hearts  that  seem  to  hear  Him  least. 

To  those  who  do  hear  Him  and  receive  Him  there  comes  a 
peace  and  strength,  a  patience  to  bear,  an  energy  to  work,  which 
is  to  the  soul  itself  a  perpetual  surprise  and  joy,  a  hope  unquench- 
able, a  love  for  and  a  belief  in  fellow  man  that  nothing  can  dis- 
turb, and,  around  all,  as  the  great  element  of  all,  a  certainty  of 
God's  encircling  love  to  us  which  conquers  sin  and  welcomes  sor- 
row, and  laughs  at  Death  and  already  lives  in  Immortality. 
What  shall  we  say  of  it  that  is  not  in  the  words  of  Christ's  be- 
loved Disciple,  who  knows  it  all  so  well :  "  To  as  many  as  receive 
Him,  to  them  gives  He  power  to  become  the  son  of  God." 

Let  us  say  then  to  one  another,  "  Sursum  corda  !  Lift  up  your 
hearts !  "  Let  us  answer  back  to  one  another,  "  We  do  lift  them 
up  unto  the  Lord ;  "  and  so  let  us  go  forward  together  into  what- 
ever new  life  He  has  set  before  us. 

There  was  a  change,  it  has  been  said,  in  the  appearance  of 
Phillips  Brooks,  when  he  was  seen  again  in  the  pulpit,  after 
his  long  absence.  It  required  an  effort  to  be  reconciled  to 
the  altered  aspect.  He  was  thinner  in  form,  also,  having 
lost  weight  while  in  India,  it  may  have  been  in  consequence 
of  the  excessive  heat.  He  had  said  as  he  was  contemplating 
the  possibilities  which  his  year  abroad  presented,  "Every  now 
and  then  it  comes  over  me  that  the  gap  is  to  be  so  great  that 


yET.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  451 

the  future,  if  there  is  any,  will  certainly  be  something  dif- 
ferent in  some  way  from  the  past."  His  manner  showed  the 
difference,  and  was  not  quite  the  same,  as  if  he  had  been 
subdued  into  deeper  humility  by  the  honors  which  had  been 
heaped  upon  him.  The  perspective  of  life  had  been  modi- 
fied by  the  increase  of  knowledge  and  of  wisdom.  / 

But  the  greatest  change  was  in  his  preaching.  He  was  tjf 
now  entering  upon  the  third  and  last  phase  in  his  develop- 
ment. In  the  first,  which  included  his  ministry  in  Philadel- 
phia, he  had  written,  perhaps,  his  most  beautiful  sermons, 
full  of  the  poetry  of  life,  disclosing  the  hidden  significance 
of  the  divine  allegory  of  human  history,  —  a  great  artist, 
himself  unmoved  as  he  unrolled  the  panorama  of  man.  In 
the  second  period,  he  had  been  at  war  with  the  forces  which 
were  undermining  faith,  and  not  without  suffering,  his  own 
soul  being  torn  with  the  conflict;  yet  in  those  dark  days, 
always  appearing  like  a  tower  of  strength.  That  period  was 
over  now.  He  had  felt  while  abroad  that  another  subtle  im- 
ponderable change  in  the  atmosphere  of  human  existence  was 
modifying  the  situation.  The  tendency  was  toward  theism, 
not  yet,  perhaps,  distinctly  toward  Christianity,  but  there 
was  improvement  visible  from  the  highest  outlook.  The 
mechanical  theory  of  the  world  was  yielding  to  the  evidences 
of  faith.  He  had  still  the  same  message  for  those  who  were 
feeling  the  action  of  the  storm  as  it  subsided.  He  met  with 
his  old  force  those  belated  travellers  who  had  not  noted  the 
new  signs  in  the  spiritual  horizon.  But  to  speak  to  the 
new  age  was  now  his  distinctive  mission.  His  preaching 
changed  to  correspond  to  the  change  within.  He  addressed 
himself  in  his  totality  as  a  man  to  the  common  humanity, 
doing  greatly  whatever  he  did,  and  assuming  the  greatness 
of  those  to  whom  he  spoke.  He  fell  back  upon  the  simplest 
issues  of  life ;  the  simplest  truths  were  the  main  themes  of 
his  teaching.  But  in  all  this  he  illustrated  the  truth  of 
Goethe's  remark,  "Whatever  a  man  doth  greatly,  he  does 
with  his  whole  nature."  In  his  earlier  years,  as  in  his  "Lec- 
tures on  Preaching,"  he  had  said  that  "the  thought  of  rescue 
has  monopolized  our  religion  and  often  crowded  out  the  thought 


452  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

of  culture."  Now  the  idea  of  rescue  became  more  promi- 
nent, but  it  was  the  rescue  of  men  from  the  danger  of  losing 
the  great  opportunity  of  life,  —  the  chance  which  was  given 
of  making  the  most  of  the  divine  privilege  of  the  children 
of  God. 

From  this  time  he  was  wont  to  remark  that  he  had  l^ut 
one  sermon.  He  said  to  one  of  his  friends  that  he  had  given 
up  writing  essays  and  was  going  to  preach  sermons.  The 
remark  is  recalled  by  Rev.  C.  H.  Learoyd,  who  was  im- 
pressed by  it,  as  having  some  deeper  bearing  than  the  words 
conveyed.  It  had  seemed  to  others  the  characteristic  of  his 
Boston  ministry  that  he  had  been  preaching  sermons ;  but  he 
saw  deeper  depths  in  sermons,  which  he  proposed  to  fathom. 
He  had  by  no  means  grown  indijEferent  to  the  intellectual 
problems  involved  in  theological  reconstruction.  He  followed 
them  with  interest,  and  took  his  part  in  their  discussion.  He 
retained  his  allegiance  to  the  old  formulas  of  belief,  and 
yet  with  a  difference,  for  at  least  he  had  learned  that  they 
had  not  the  quality  of  finality.  The  full  truth  was  some- 
thing larger  always  than  the  intellect  could  adequately  for- 
mulate. But  meantime  the  highest  duty  of  man  was  to  live, 
in  the  full  sense  of  that  great  word,  as  apostles  and  evangel- 
ists, as  Christ  himself  had  used  it.  To  help  men  to  live  in 
this  sense  now  became  his  ruling  passion  in  every  sermon. 
His  gifts  of  imagination  he  occasionally  invoked,  and  there 
were  occasional  sermons  when  his  creative  genius  seemed 
to  flash  living  pictures  upon  the  canvas,  as  of  old,  before  his 
hearers.  But  these  were  not  so  common  as  before.  His 
method  of  preaching  became  more  frequently  extempora- 
neous, when  a  great  soul  was  set  free  to  pour  itself  forth 
without  regard  to  form  of  utterance.  He  allowed  more  range 
to  the  impassioned  intensity  of  feeling,  and  he  himself 
showed  signs  of  being  visibly  moved  by  his  own  emotion, 
instead  of  standing,  as  in  his  early  years,  cool  and  unimpas- 
sioned,  even  nonchalant,  while  all  his  hearers  were  thrilled 
with  excitement.  Yet  in  this  new  phase  of  his  life  he  was 
listened  to  more  intently  than  ever ;  there  was  an  added  ele- 
ment of  awe,  as  the  man  in  himseK,   in  the  lofty  reaches 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  453 

of  his  character,  stood  revealed  in  every  sermon.  He  came 
closer  to  his  world  and  dearer  to  the  hearts  of  all  the  people. 
There  was  no  longer  any  question  about  his  greatness.  He 
had  made  the  final  conquest  of  the  human  heart.  It  was  un- 
derstood tacitly,  if  not  explicitly,  that  when  he  declined  the 
call  to  Harvard  it  had  been  that  he  might  give  himself  unre- 
servedly to  all  who  wanted  him.  It  now  slowly  dawned 
upon  him  that  what  the  people  wanted  was  himself,  not  his 
eloquence,  or  his  gifts  of  any  kind.  All  this  was  beginning 
to  be  understood  when  he  came  back  to  Boston  to  resume 
his  work.  But  it  was  a  beginning  destined  to  increase  its 
force  with  each  successive  year.  There  were  still  before  him 
greater  depths  of  sacrifice  and  of  self-abnegation,  to  be  met 
by  an  ever  larger  demand  on  the  part  of  the  people.  This 
was  the  way  in  which  saints  had  been  recognized  in  the  olden 
time,  before  the  process  had  developed  into  the  machine 
methods  of  later  mediaevalism.  The  canonization  of  Phillips 
Brooks  by  the  voice  of  a  people's  sovereignty  had  now  begun, 
to  be  made  manifest  with  growing  emphasis  in  the  years  that 
follow. 

In  a  sermon  preached  on  September  30,  the  second  Sunday 
after  his  return,  we  have  Phillips  Brooks  communing  with 
himself  as  he  takes  up  the  burden  of  life  anew.  This  chapter 
from  his  own  experience,  for  such  in  reality  it  is,  he  has 
entitled  "Visions  and  Tasks;"  his  text,  "While  Peter 
thought  on  the  vision,  the  Spirit  said.  Behold,  three  men 
seek  thee."  He  was  thinking  of  the  possibility  that  the 
vision  might  fade  as  the  emotions  grow  less  eager  and  ex- 
cited with  the  passing  of  the  years.  The  remedy  lies  in 
action.  The  picture  is  that  of  Peter,  after  the  vision  has 
ended,  plodding  over  the  dusty  hills  to  meet  the  men  who 
were  seeking  him.  The  practical  life  is  needed  in  order  to 
complete  the  meditative  life.  When  a  man  has  had  his 
vision  of  some  great  truth  which  satisfies  his  soul,  the  com- 
ing of  his  fellow  men,  and  their  knocking  at  the  doors  of  his 
heart,  seems  at  first  like  an  intrusion.  "  Why  can  they  not 
leave  him  alone  with  his  great  idea?"  So  ideas  would  hover 
like  a  great  vague  cloud  over  a  world  all  hard  and  gross  and 


454  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1883 

meaningless,  if  it  were  not  for  the  man  who  brings  the  fire 
down  and  makes  the  whole  of  nature  significant  and  vocal. 
These  passages  which  follow  have  the  essence  of  autobi- 
ography :  — 

It  is  in  the  power  of  man  to  stand  between  the  abstract  truth 
upon  one  side  and  the  concrete  facts  of  life  upon  the  other.  To 
this  end  he  must  cultivate  the  two  capacities  within  him,  —  the 
gift  of  knowing  and  the  gift  of  loving.  In  some  way  he  must 
still  cultivate  the  capacity  of  knowing,  "  whether  by  patient  study 
or  quick-leaping  intuition,  including  imagination  and  all  the  poetic 
power,  faith,  trust  in  authority,  the  faculty  of  getting  wisdom  by 
experience,  everything  by  which  the  human  nature  comes  into 
direct  relationship  to  truth."  On  the  other  hand,  he  must  culti- 
vate Love,  the  power  of  sympathetic  intercourse  with  things  and 
people,  the  power  to  be  touched  by  the  personal  nature  of  those 
with  whom  we  have  to  do,  —  love,  therefore,  including  hate,  for 
hate  is  only  the  reverse  utterance  of  love.  These  two  together, 
the  powers  of  knowing  and  of  loving,  must  make  up  the  man,  and 
must  work  together  also  in  all  men  in  order  to  a  genuine  man- 
hood. It  is  not  a  question  of  greatness,  but  of  genuineness  and 
completeness.  The  chemical  elements  are  in  a  raindrop  as  truly 
as  in  the  cataract  of  Niagara.  The  power  of  knowing  and  loving 
must  be  in  every  man  as  truly  as  in  Shakespeare  or  Socrates. 
The  more  perfectly  the  knowing  faculty  and  the  loving  faculty 
meet  in  any  man,  the  more  that  man's  life  will  become  a  trans- 
mitter and  interpreter  of  truth  to  other  men.  This  is  the  char- 
acteristic of  all  the  greatest  teachers.  This  is  where  the  power 
of  a  mother  lies,  that  she  stands  between  the  vision  of  the  highest 
truths  and  a  human  soul  on  the  other,  and  the  knowing  power 
and  the  loving  power  are  moulded  together  into  perfect  oneness, 
and  intelligence  and  love  are  perfectly  blended.  This  was  the 
characteristic  of  Christ,  that  He  was  full  of  grace  and  truth;  no 
rapt  self-centred  student  of  the  abstract  truth,  nor  the  sentimental 
pitier  of  other  men's  woes.  He  comes  down  from  the  mountain 
where  He  had  been  glorified  with  the  light  of  God  to  meet  the 
men  who  were  seeking  Him. 

It  is  the  result  of  some  great  experience,  also,  in  the  life  of  a 
man  that  it  makes  him  a  purer  medium  through  which  the  highest 
truth  shines  on  other  men.  Henceforth  he  is  altered ;  he  becomes 
tenderer,  warmer,  richer;  he  seems  to  be  full  of  truths  and  reve- 
lations which  he  easily  pours  out.  Now  you  not  merely  see  him, 
you  see  through  him  to  things  behind.  It  is  not  that  he  has 
learned   some  new  facts,  but  the  very   substance  of  the  man  is 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  455 

altered,  so  that  he  stands  no  longer  as  a  screen,  but  as  an  atmo- 
sphere through  which  eternal  truths  come  to  you  all  radiant. 

This  principle  must  be  applied  to  every  doctrine,  to  the  truth 
of  immortality,  or  of  the  Trinity,  or  of  the  idea  of  God.  It  may 
have  been  a  vision  of  the  sinfulness  of  sin.  Overwhelmed  with 
that  knowledge,  a  man  may  sit  and  brood  upon  his  sad  estate. 
But  all  history  bears  witness  that  so  to  receive  the  vision  brings 
despair.  If  there  is  any  soul  weary  with  its  consciousness  of  sin 
and  danger,  the  way  to  help  such  a  soul  is  to  make  it  to  see  in  its 
own  sinfulness  the  revelation  of  the  sinfulness  of  all  the  world. 
Then  let  it  forget  its  own  sinfulness  and  go  forth,  full  of  that 
impulse  of  the  horror  of  sin,  and  try  to  save  the  world. 

There  is  a  danger  of  selfishness  in  religion,  which  makes  a  man 
to  say,  "I  am  content,  for  I  have  seen  the  Lord."  It  is  a  terri- 
ble thing  to  have  seen  the  vision,  and  to  be  so  wrapped  up  in  its 
contemplation  as  not  to  hear  the  knock  of  needy  hands  upon  our 
doors. 

As  Phillips  Brooks  entered  upon  tbis  new  stage  of  his  his- 
tory he  casts  a  backward  glance  at  the  possibilities  he  has 
left  behind  him.  He  is  determined  to  cultivate  the  faculty 
of  knowing  by  every  means  in  his  power,  but  some  of  the 
methods  of  knowing  may  be  closed  to  him  as  he  follows  after 
the  men  who  are  seeking  him.  In  a  sermon,  also  written 
soon  after  his  return  from  abroad,  he  took  for  his  text  the 
words  "I  know  how  to  be  abased."  There  is  something  very 
personal  in  this  extract :  — 

I  must  pass  on  and  speak  about  the  way  in  which  a  man  may 
know  how  to  be  poor  in  learning.  That  was  our  second  point. 
There  are  many  of  us  who  need  that  knowledge,  —  many  of  us 
who  before  we  have  got  well  into  life  see  what  a  great  world 
learning  is,  and  also  see  for  a  certainty  how  hopeless  it  is  that 
we  shall  ever  do  more  than  set  our  feet  upon  its  very  outermost 
borders.  Some  life  of  practical  duty  claims  us ;  some  career  of 
business,  all  made  up  of  hard  details,  sharp,  clear,  inexorable, 
each  one  requiring  to  be  dealt  with  on  the  instant,  takes  posses- 
sion of  us  and  holds  us  fast,  and  the  great  stream  of  learning, 
into  which  we  long  to  plunge  and  swim,  sweeps  by  our  chained 
feet,  and  we  can  only  look  down  into  its  tempting  waters  and  sigh 
over  our  fate.  How  many  practical  men,  men  who  seem  to  be 
totally  absorbed  and  perfectly  satisfied  in  their  busy  life,  really 
live  in  this  discontent  at  being  shut  out  from  the  richness  of 
learning.     Is  there  a  right  way  and  a  wrong  way,  a  wise  way 


456  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

and  a  foolish  way,  of  living  in  that  discontent  ?  Indeed  there  is. 
The  foolish  ways  are  evident  enough.  The  unlearned  man  who 
by  and  by  is  heard  sneering  at  learning,  and  glorifying  machiner- 
ies, boasting  that  he  sees  and  wants  to  see  no  visions,  and  that 
he  never  theorizes,  —  he  has  not  known  how  to  be  ignorant.  He 
has  let  his  ignorance  master  and  overcome  him.  It  has  made 
him  its  slave.  The  man  who,  the  more  he  becomes  conscious  of 
his  hoplessness  of  great  scholarship,  has  grown  more  and  more 
sensible  of  what  a  great  thing  it  is  to  be  a  scholar ;  and  at  the 
same  time,  by  the  same  process,  has  grown  more  and  more  re- 
spectful toward  his  own  side  of  life,  more  and  more  conscious  of 
the  value  of  practical  living  as  a  true  contribution  to  the  great 
final  whole ;  the  man,  therefore,  who  has  gone  on  his  way,  as 
most  of  us  have  to  do,  with  little  learning,  but  has  also  gone  on 
his  way  doing  duty  faithfully,  developing  all  the  practical  skill 
that  is  in  him,  and  sometimes,  just  because  their  details  are  so 
dark  to  him,  getting  rich  visions  of  the  general  light  and  glory 
of  the  great  science,  seen  afar  off,  seen  as  great  wholes,  which 
often  seem  to  be  denied  to  the  plodders  who  spend  their  lives  in 
the  close  study  of  those  sciences,  —  he  is  the  man  vrho  knows  how 
to  be  unlearned.  It  is  a  blessed  thing  that  there  is  such  a  know- 
ledge possible  for  overworked,  practical  men.  The  man  who  has 
that  knowledge  may  be  self-respectful  in  the  face  of  all  the  col- 
leges. He  may  stand  before  the  kings  of  learning  and  not  be 
ashamed ;  for  his  lot  is  as  true  a  part  of  life  as  theirs,  and  he  is 
bravely  holding  up  his  side  of  that  great  earth  over  which  the 
plans  of  God  are  moving  on  to  their  completeness. 

There  is  one  other  sermon  to  be  mentioned  here,  for  it  is 
the  companion  of  the  sermon  on  "How  to  be  abased,"  writ- 
ten at  the  same  time,  with  only  a  week's  interval,  and  from 
words  in  the  same  text,  "How  to  abound."  There  are  pas- 
sages here  to  be  remembered,  as  if  they  were  spoken  for  a 
warning  to  himself,  prophetic  words  of  those  later  years,  in 
which,  having  learned  to  be  abased,  he  reaped  the  fruit  of 
abasement  in  the  larger  abundance  of  life :  — 

Many  of  the  popular  men  have  been  tyrannized  over  and  ruined 
by  their  popularity.  Their  principles  have  crumbled;  their  self- 
hood has  melted  away ;  they  have  become  mere  stocks  and  stones 
for  foolish  men  to  hang  garlands  on,  not  real  men,  real  utterances 
of  the  divine  life,  leading  their  fellow  men,  rebuking  sins,  inspir- 
ing struggles,  saving  souls. 

Ah,  yes !      Not  merely  to  make  men  love  you  and  honor  you, 


mT.  47]         RETURN  TO  BOSTON  457 

but  how  to  be  loved  and  honored  without  losing  yourself  and 
growing  weak,  —  that  is  the  problem  of  many  of  the  sweetest, 
richest,  most  attractive  lives ;  and  there  is  only  one  solution  for 
it,  which  blessed  indeed  is  he  who  has  discovered!  ...  If  the 
much  loved  man  can  look  up  and  demand  the  love  of  God,  if  he 
can  crave  it  and  covet  it  infinitely  above  all  other  love,  if  laying 
hold  of  its  great  freedom,  he  can  make  it  his,  .  .  .  then  let 
him  come  back  and  take  into  a  glowing  heart  the  warmest  admi- 
ration and  affection  of  his  brethren,  the  heaven  that  he  carries  in 
his  heart  preserves  him.  They  cannot  make  him  conceited,  for 
he  who  lives  with  God  must  be  humble.  .  .  .  He  who  knows 
that  God  loves  and  honors  him  may  freely  take  all  other  love 
and  honor,  however  abundant  they  may  be,  and  he  will  get  no 
harm. 

The  recognition  given  to  Phillips  Brooks  in  England  had 
had  no  counterpart  hitherto  in  America.  It  had  been  taken 
for  granted  that  he  knew  in  what  honor  his  name  was  held. 
But  the  return  to  his  work  was  an  occasion  for  extending 
some  formal  welcome.  A  dinner  was  given  him  by  the 
Clericus  Club  at  Young's  Hotel,  on  the  evening  of  Septem- 
ber 24.  The  feeling  was  very  deep  and  tender  when  once 
more  he  stood  among  them,  the  same,  and  yet  changed  in 
some  imperceptible  way  within.  He  was  silent,  and  the 
usual  hilarity  of  his  manner  was  wanting.  Rev.  Charles  H. 
Learoyd  presided,  with  the  guest  of  honor  on  his  right,  and 
the  Bishop  of  Ehode  Island  on  his  left.  Bishop  Clark  re- 
marked that  we  had  a  lion  present,  but  a  lion  who  would  not 
roar.  In  the  very  few  words  spoken  by  Mr.  Brooks,  one 
sentence  is  recalled:  after  alluding  to  his  journey  he  said 
that  he  felt  more  than  ever  what  a  good  thing  it  was  to  be 
an  Episcopal  minister,  in  the  diocese  of  Massachusetts,  and 
in  the  city  of  Boston.  There  were  speeches  made,  telling  him 
the  estimate  in  which  he  was  held,  and  he  listened  with  head 
bowed,  his  characteristic  attitude.  No  record  has  been  kept 
of  the  evening,  beyond  the  poem  by  the  Rev.  William  R. 
Huntington :  — 

NATURA  NATURANS 

Natnra,  Mistress  of  the  Earth, 
A  study  hath,  they  say, 


458  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1883 

Where  century  by  century, 
She  sitteth  moulding  clay. 

Fast  as  the  images  are  ^^onght, 

Her  lattice  wide  she  throws, 
And  on  the  ample  window-sill 

Arranges  them  in  rows. 

A  sprightly  critic  happening  by. 

One  idle  summer's  mom, 
Made  bold  to  chaff  this  lady  fair, 

In  half  good-natured  scorn. 

"Natura,  Bona  Dea,"  said  he, 
"I'm  bored  to  death  to  find 
What  everlasting  sameness  marks 
These  products  of  your  mind. 

"  The  men  you  sculpture  into  form 

Might  just  as  well  be  rolled  ; 

Peas  in  a  pod  are  not  more  like, 

Nor  bullets  from  one  mould. 

"  Dear  lady,  quit  the  ancient  ruts. 
Retake  the  point  of  view ; 
Do  differentiate  a  bit, 

Evolve  us  something  new." 

Piqued  was  the  goddess  at  that  word, 

Kesentful  flashed  her  eye, 
While  all  the  artist  in  her  rose 

To  give  his  taunt  the  lie. 

*'  I  '11  show  yon  something  fresh,"  she  cried, 
"  I  '11  teach  you  how  it  looks ; "  — 
Then  plunged  her  fingers  in  the  clay, 
And  modelled  Phillips  Brooks  ! 

Another  reception  followed,  given  him  by  his  "brethren  of 
the  clergy  "  in  the  diocese,  which  took  the  form  of  a  break- 
fast at  the  Hotel  Brunswick,  on  the  morning  of  Thursday, 
September  27,  and  the  bishop  of  the  diocese  presided.  This 
was  the  letter  of  invitation  expressing  to  him  the  feeling  of 
the  clergy,  through  a  committee  appointed  for  the  purpose :  — 

Medfokd,  Mass.,  July  2,  1883. 
Dear  Mr.  Brooks,  —  Some  of  your  brethren  of  the  clergy 
in  this  diocese,  having  learned  of  your  expected  return  home  in 
September,  beg  to  ask  you  to  meet  them  at  a  breakfast  at  Hotel 
Brunswick,  September  27,  or  at  such  other  date  as  will  suit  your 
convenience. 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  459 

In  conveying  this  invitation,  we  venture  to  assure  you  not  only 
of  the  pleasure  with  which  we  have  heard  of  the  distinguished 
marks  of  respect  and  honor  you  have  received  in  other  lands,  but 
of  the  greater  pleasure  with  which  we  have  felt  that  all  those 
honors  were  so  worthily  bestowed  on  one  who  already  possesses 
the  admiration  and  affection  of  his  brethren  at  home.  You  are 
sure  of  a  warm  welcome  from  all  who  may  have  the  privilege  of 
meeting  you  on  the  occasion  proposed. 
Believe  us  to  be 

Very  sincerely  yours, 

Chas.  L.  Hutchins, 
Charles  C.  Grafton, 
Percy  Browne. 

The  General  Convention  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  to 
which  he  was  a  delegate  from  the  diocese  of  Massachusetts, 
was  held  in  October,  and,  fortunately  for  Mr.  Brooks,  in 
the  city  of  Philadelphia,  for  it  enabled  him  to  fulfil  his 
ecclesiastical  obligations,  and,  at  the  same  time,  to  satisfy 
his  longings  to  be  with  his  friends  in  the  place  he  had  not 
ceased  to  love.  In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Cooper  he  indulges, 
as  he  often  did,  in  his  expression  of  devotion  to  the  city 
which  was  so  much  to  him,  —  "  Why  did  I  ever  leave  Phila- 
delphia!" But  these  words,  so  easily  understood  by  his 
friends,  must  not  be  construed  as  meaning  that  he  regretted 
the  change.  It  was  rather  a  sigh  from  a  man  who  was  bear- 
ing the  burden  and  the  heat  of  the  day,  as  he  thought  of  the 
moment  when,  in  his  earlier  years,  with  all  the  freshness  of 
the  morning  of  life,  Philadelphia  had  given  him  his  great 
opportunity,  and  revealed  to  him  the  joy  of  pure  living,  as 
he  had  not  dreamed  of  it  before.  Nothing  could  quite  com- 
pensate to  him  for  the  loss  of  that  glory  of  his  youth.  As 
honors  and  renown  increased,  he  was  trying  to  disown  the 
conviction  that  there  had  passed  away  a  joy  and  beauty  from 
the  earth.  It  was  his  pleasure  to  talk  of  Philadelphia  as  if 
the  glory  and  beauty  would  have  remained  if  he  had  never 
left  there. 

When  the  General  Convention  was  over  he  was  ready  at 
last  to  resume  his  work  as  a  parish  minister.  He  had  formed 
a  great  resolution  to  give  himself  henceforth  more  exclusively 


460  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

to  the  duties  of  his  parish,  and  as  far  as  possible  deny  him- 
self to  outside  calls  on  his  time  and  strength.  How  the  reso- 
lution was  kept  will  appear.  There  were  some  things  quite 
beyond  his  control.  He  took  up,  of  course,  his  new  posi- 
tion as  one  of  the  chaplains  at  Harvard,  going  to  Cam- 
bridge in  November  to  conduct  morning  prayers.  There 
came  to  him,  while  in  Philadelphia,  a  call  from  the  Evangel- 
ical Alliance  to  make  an  address  on  the  13th  of  November, 
when  it  was  proposed  in  New  York  to  commemorate  the  four 
hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Martin  Luther.  He 
struggled  hard  between  his  new  resolution  on  the  one  hand, 
and  on  the  other  his  desire  to  speak  his  mind  regarding  the 
great  reformer :  — 


Philadblphia,  October  13,  1883. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  I  have  your  telegram   and  shall  look  for 
your  letter  in  Boston,  whither  I  go  to-night.      The  Evangelical 
Alliance  are  very  good,  but  I  fear  it  is  impossible,  for 

1.  I  am  no  man  for  such  occasions. 

2.  I  think  there  is  something  of  the  kind  in  Boston. 

3.  I  must,  MUST,  MUST  begin  to  stay  at  home  and  do  my 
work! 

Convention  is  flat,  stale,  and  unprofitable.      People  are  jolly. 

Philadelphia,  October  15,  1883. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  I  have  just  got  back  from  Boston,  and  find 
your  note  about  the  Luther  occasion  waiting  for  me  here.  I  have 
been  thinking  about  it  ever  since  I  received  your  telegram  on 
Saturday,  and  have  wanted  exceedingly  to  do  it,  but  this  morning 
I  have  felt  compelled  to  telegraph  you  that  I  must  not  think  of 
it.  If  there  were  six  months  in  which  to  get  ready  for  what 
would  be  to  me  a  most  unfamiliar  duty,  I  would  try  with  trem- 
bling. But  in  a  month  all  crowded  full  as  this  next  month  is 
to  be,  I  do  not  dare  to  do  it,  in  justice  to  those  who  have  asked 
me,  or  to  Dr.  Luther.  I  agree  with  you  that  it  is  a  most  splen- 
did opportunity  to  say  things  that  we  want  said.  It  cannot  be 
made  a  small  or  party  celebration.  It  must  open  the  whole  rela- 
tion of  Christianity  to  human  kind.  But  all  that  makes  it  the 
more  necessary  that  the  Oration  of  the  occasion  should  be  no 
crude  and  hurried  thing,  but  something  well  matured  and  thor- 
ough. I  am  very  much  afraid  that  I  could  not  do  it  in  any 
length  of  time.     I  am  sure  I  could  not  do  it  in  three  busy  weeks. 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  461 

I  hope  somebody  may  be  found  who  will  be  able,  by  having 
more  leisure  or  by  having  preparation  already  made,  to  undertake 
it,  for  I  should  think,  as  you  do,  that  one  great  Oration  would 
be  far  better  than  a  number  of  addresses.  I  hope  the  new  ar- 
rangement will  not  have  to  be  adopted.  So  I  must  not  accept 
what  I  hope  will  not  be  proposed.  But  all  I  can  say  is  I  am  so 
much  interested  in  the  subject,  and  so  sensible  of  the  honor  which 
the  Alliance  has  done  me  in  asking  me  to  come,  that  I  will  do 
anything  I  possibly  can.  I  am  sure  you  will  let  the  committee 
know  that  I  do  not  slight  their  invitation,  nor  decline  it  without 
careful  consideration. 

But  the  call  was  one  which  he  found  he  could  not  refuse. 
His  soul  was  full  of  the  significance  of  all  that  Luther  meant 
to  the  modern  world.  The  days  he  had  spent  in  Germany 
wandering  in  the  Luther  land  were  still  living  in  his  memory 
and  were  charged  with  inspiration. 

I  made  a  delightful  journey  [so  he  had  written  to  one  of  his 
friends]  down  through  the  Luther  land,  stopping  at  every  place 
I  could  find  which  had  anything  to  do  with  him,  —  a  new  great 
big  German  "  Life  of  Luther  "  in  my  trunk,  which  I  spelled  out 
of  evenings. 

He  had  watched  the  proceedings  among  the  Germans  pre- 
paratory to  an  adequate  celebration  of  the  greatest  German 
man.  To  no  address  did  he  ever  give  himself  with  more 
glowing  enthusiasm,  for  with  it  was  combined  a  true  historic 
insight  into  Luther's  work.  The  glory  of  his  eloquence  was 
at  the  highest  as  he  spoke;  he  was  uttering  his  strongest 
convictions :  — 

It  is  the  personality  of  Luther  which  holds  the  secret  of  his 
power.  .  .  .  We  are  to  think  of  one  of  the  greatest  men  of  his- 
tory. .  .  .  Indeed,  the  name  and  fame  of  Luther  coming  down 
through  history  under  God's  safe-conduct  has  been  full  of  almost 
the  same  vitality,  and  has  been  attended  by  almost  the  same  ad- 
miration and  abuse  as  was  the  figure  of  Luther  in  that  famous 
journey  which  took  him  in  his  rude  Saxon  wagon  from  Witten- 
berg to  Worms  when  he  went  up  to  the  Diet;  and  at  Leipzig, 
Nilrnberg,  Weimar,  Erfurt,  Gotha,  FrankfUrt,  the  shouts  of  his 
friends  and  the  curses  of  his  enemies  showed  that  no  man  in  Ger- 
many was  loved  or  hated  as  he  was. 


462  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

The  force  of  Luther  was  distinctively  a  religious  force. 
These  words  of  Phillips  Brooks  about  the  man  whom  he  was 
praising  describe  his  own  experience  and  remind  us  of  his 
own  career :  — 

There  are  two  sentences  out  of  two  parables  of  Jesus  which  de- 
scribe indeed  the  two  components  of  the  strongest  strength  of  all 
religious  men.  One  is  this,  from  the  parable  of  the  vineyard: 
"When  the  time  of  fruit  grew  near,  the  lord  of  the  vineyard  sent 
his  servants  to  the  husbandmen  that  they  might  receive  the  fruit 
of  the  vineyard ;  "  and  the  other  is  the  cry  of  the  returning  prod- 
igal: "I  will  arise  and  go  to  my  father."  Put  these  two  to- 
gether into  any  deep  and  lofty  soul  (you  cannot  put  them  into 
any  other)  and  what  a  strength  you  have !  The  consciousness  of 
being  sent  from  God  with  a  mission  for  which  the  time  is  ripe, 
and  the  consciousness  of  eager  return  to  God,  of  the  great  human 
struggle  after  Him,  possessing  a  nature  which  cannot  live  without 
Him,  —  the  imperious  commission  from  above  and  the  tumultuous 
experience  within,  —  these  two,  not  inconsistent  with  each  other, 
have  met  in  all  the  great  Christian  workers  and  reformers  who 
have  moved  and  changed  the  world.  These  two  lived  together 
in  the  whole  life  of  Luther.  The  one  spoke  out  in  the  presence 
of  the  emperor  at  Worms.  The  other  wrestled  unseen  in  the 
agonies  of  the  cloister  cell  at  Erfurt. 

To  Phillips  Brooks,  Luther  appeared  as  the  exponent  of 
religion,  pure  and  simple,  rather  than  the  theologian.  He 
boldly  declared  Luther  a  mystic  and  the  highest  representa- 
tive of  mysticism  for  all  time.  In  view  of  this  aspect  of  the 
man,  he  placed  him  above  Calvin  the  theologian,  or  Zwingle 
the  politician,  or  the  English  ecclesiastics.  But  conjoined 
with  the  mysticism  was  morality:  "He  was  the  moralist  and 
the  mystic."  And  again,  as  he  expounds  these  two  charac- 
teristics of  Luther,  we  are  thinking  of  Phillips  Brooks. 

These  are  the  universal  human  elements  of  religious  strength 
and  character.  The  theologian  may  be  far  separated  from  human- 
ity, the  mere  arranger  of  abstract  ideas.  The  ecclesiastic  may  be 
quite  unhuman,  too,  the  manager  of  intricate  machineries.  But 
the  man  who  is  truly  moralist  and  mystic  must  be  full  of  a  gen- 
uine humanity.  He  is  the  prophet  and  the  priest  at  once.  He 
brings  the  eternal  Word  of  God  to  man,  and  he  utters  the  universal 
cry  of  man  to  God.     Nothing  that  is  human  can  be  strange  to 


^T.  47]         RETURN  TO  BOSTON  463 

him,  and  so  nothing  that  is  human  can  count  him  really  strange  to 
it.  David,  Isaiah,  John  the  Baptist,  Paul  —  nay,  let  us  speak 
the  highest  name,  Jesus,  the  Christ  Himself  —  these  elements 
were  in  them  all.  Grace  and  truth,  faith  and  conscience,  met 
in  them  and  made  their  power.  These  elements  united  in  our 
Luther,  and  so  it  was,  as  the  result  of  them,  that  he  inspired  hu- 
manity and  moved  the  souls  of  men  and  nations  as  the  tide  moves 
the  waves. 

The  following  passage  shows  that  Phillips  Brooks  under- 
stood the  meaning  of  Luther's  principle  of  Justification  by 
Faith.     He  saw  beneath  the  letter  its  correlated  truths :  — 

The  mystic  took  a  still  deeper  tone.  To  him  the  whole  pic- 
ture of  man  bargaining  with  God  was  an  abomination.  God  and 
the  soul  are  injfinitely  near  to  each  other.  God  is  in  the  soul. 
The  soul  also  is  in  God.  In  a  great  free  confidence,  in  perfect 
trust,  in  the  realization  of  how  it  belongs  to  Him,  in  unquestion- 
ing acceptance  of  His  love,  the  soul  takes  God's  mercy  and  God's 
goodness  into  itself  in  virtue  of  its  very  belonging  to  Him.  Not 
by  a  bargain,  as  when  you  buy  your  goods  across  the  counter,  but 
by  an  openness  and  willingness  which  realizes  the  oneness  of  your 
life  with  God's,  as  when  the  bay  opens  its  bosom  to  the  inflow  of 
the  sea,  so  does  your  soul  receive  the  grace  of  God.  However  he 
may  have  stated  it  in  the  old  familiar  forms  of  bargain,  this  was 
Luther's  real  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith.  It  was  mystic, 
not  dogmatic.  It  was  of  the  soul  and  the  experience,  not  of 
the  reason.  Faith  was  not  an  act,  but  a  being,  —  not  what  you 
did,  but  what  you  were.  The  whole  truth  of  the  immanence  of 
God  and  of  the  essential  belonging  of  the  human  life  to  the  divine : 
the  whole  truth  that  God  is  a  power  in  man  and  not  simply  a 
power  over  man,  building  him  as  a  man  builds  a  house,  guiding 
him  as  a  man  steers  a  ship,  —  this  whole  truth,  in  which  lies  the 
seed  of  all  humanity,  all  progress,  all  great  human  hope,  lay  in 
the  truth  that  justification  was  by  faith  and  not  by  works.  No 
wonder  that  Luther  loved  it.  No  wonder  that  he  thought  it 
critical.  No  wonder  that  he  wrote  to  Melanchthon,  hesitating  at 
Augsburg,  "Take  care  that  you  give  not  up  justification  by  faith. 
That  is  the  heel  of  the  seed  of  the  woman  which  is  to  crush  the 
serpent's  head." 

He  takes  up  the  question  whether  Protestantism  has  been 
a  failure.  If  it  is  to  be  thought  of  as  a  power  aspiring  to 
take  the  place  of  Rome,  and  to  govern  mankind  after  the 


464  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1883 

same  fashion,  or  if  we  think  of  it  as  a  system  of  fixed  doc- 
trines, claiming  infallibility,  and  refusing  all  prospect  of 
development,  seeking  to  hold  men  together  by  loyalty  to 
Confessions  of  Faith,  or  in  submission  to  some  central  eccle- 
siastical authority,  then  it  has  failed  as  it  ought  to  have 
failed. 

But  there  is  more  to  say  than  that.  These  centuries  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  life  made  by  the  ideas  of  Luther  answer  the  question. 
The  Protestantism  of  Milton  and  of  Goethe,  of  Howard  and  of 
Francke,  of  Newton  and  of  Leibnitz,  of  Bunyan  and  of  Butler, 
of  Wordsworth  and  of  Tennyson,  of  Wesley  and  of  Channing,  of 
Schleiermacher  and  of  Maurice,  of  Washington  and  of  Lincoln, 
is  no  failure.  We  may  well  dismiss  the  foolish  question,  and 
with  new  pride  and  resolve  brighten  afresh  the  great  name  of 
Protestant  upon  our  foreheads. 

Have  we  not  seen  to-day  something  of  what  Protestantism 
really  is,  —  the  Protestantism  which  cannot  fail  ?  Full  of  the 
sense  of  duty  and  the  spirit  of  holiness  there  stands  Luther,  — 
moralist  and  mystic.  Conscience  and  faith  are  not  in  conflict, 
but  in  lofty  unison  in  him.  Through  him,  because  he  was  that, 
God's  waiting  light  and  power  stream  into  the  world,  and  the  old 
lies  wither  and  humanity  springs  upon  its  feet.  Ah,  there  is  no 
failure  there !  There  cannot  be.  The  time  will  come  —  perhaps 
the  time  has  come  —  when  a  new  Luther  will  be  needed  for  the 
next  great  step  that  humanity  must  take,  but  that  next  step  is 
possible  mainly  because  of  what  the  Monk  of  Wittenberg  was  and 
did  four  hundred  years  ago.  There  is  no  failure  there.  Only 
one  strain  in  the  music  of  the  eternal  success,  — -  fading  away  but 
to  give  space  for  a  new  and  higher  strain. 

The  address  on  Luther  must  take  rank  with  his  best  pro- 
ductions, such  as  his  tribute  to  Lincoln.  He  could  not  have 
spoken  with  such  wisdom,  devotion,  and  insight  if  he  had 
not  freely  absorbed  what  was  great  in  Luther.  But  what  is 
now  most  striking,  as  one  reads  this  beautiful,  glowing 
oration,  is  that  men  were  even  then  speaking  of  Phillips 
Brooks  in  terms  similar  to  those  he  was  applying  to  Martin 
Luther :  — 

Some  men  are  events.  It  is  not  what  they  say  or  what  they 
do,  but  what  they  are,  that  moves  the  world.  Luther  declared 
great  truths ;  he  did  great  deeds ;  and  yet  there  is  a  certain  sense 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  465 

in  which  his  words  and  deeds  are  valuable  only  as  they  showed 
him,  as  they  made  manifest  a  son  of  God  living  a  strong,  brave, 
clear-sighted  human  life.  It  is  thus  that  I  have  spoken  of  him 
so  far,  feeling  his  presence  still  through  the  deep  atmosphere  of 
these  four  hundred  years.  It  is  not  certainly  as  the  founder  of 
any  sect ;  more,  but  not  most,  it  is  as  the  preacher  of  certain 
truths;  but  most  of  all  it  is  as  uttering  in  his  very  being  a  reas- 
sertion  of  the  divine  idea  of  humanity,  that  he  comes  with  this 
wonderfully  fresh  vitality  into  our  modern  days. 

The  address  as  written  or  as  published  is  not  quite  what  it 
was  in  the  delivery.  He  dwelt  at  length  on  the  drama  of 
Luther's  life,  and  portrayed  vividly  its  striking  scenes. 

I  heard  his  Luther  speech  in  New  York  [writes  Bishop  Lawrence], 
and  then  he  did  what  I  never  knew  him  to  do  at  any  other  time. 
He  had  a  great  audience  in  the  Academy  of  Music,  and  it  was  a 
great  occasion.  He  felt  it.  He  read  from  his  manuscript,  but 
when  it  came  to  the  burning  of  the  Pope's  Bull  he  left  his  man- 
uscript, stepped  to  the  side  of  the  desk,  then  to  the  front  of  the 
platform,  and  launched  forth  on  a  most  eloquent  and  impassioned 
description  of  the  scene.  He  then  returned  to  the  desk  and  con- 
tinued to  read  from  the  manuscript.  My  impression  was  that  on 
the  impulse  of  the  moment  he  depicted  it  in  extemporized  lan- 
guage, or  expanded  what  the  manuscript  contained. 

In  the  fall  of  1883  appeared  the  third  volume  of  his  ser- 
mons, published  simultaneously  in  England  and  America, 
with  the  title,  "Sermons  preached  in  English  Churches." 
As  he  put  the  sermons  in  order  for  printing,  he  had  in  view 
the  reception  given  him  by  the  English  people,  dedicating 
the  volume  "To  many  friends  in  England  in  remembrance 
of  their  cordial  welcome. "  The  circumstance  of  the  sermons 
having  been  preached  in  England  is  the  bond  of  unity  in 
the  volume  rather  than  their  careful  selection  out  of  a  large 
number  with  reference  to  some  special  purpose  of  his  own. 
While  in  India  he  had  written  to  his  brother  in  Boston :  — 

There  is  something  which  I  wish  you  would  do  some  time, 
when  it  is  not  much  bother.  When  I  left  I  took  some  sermons 
with  me  in  a  great  hurry.  I  did  not  make  a  very  good  selection, 
and  do  not  like  what  I  have  brought ;  when  I  get  to  England  I 
may  preach  some  more.  Would  it  be  much  trouble  for  you  to 
go  some  afternoon  into  my  study,  and  look  in  the  back  of  my 

VOL.  n 


466  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1883 

writing-table  and  find  six  or  eight  sermons,  among  the  later  ones, 
which  you  think  would  do,  and  send  them  to  me  at  Baring's, 
only  marking  them  not  to  be  forwarded,  but  kept  for  me  there  ? 
You  will  know  about  the  ones  to  send.  There  is  one  about 
Gamaliel,  which  I  remember. 

But  the  character  of  the  sermons  is  of  the  same  purport  as 
in  his  other  volumes.  He  never  wrote  a  sermon  vaguely, 
for  the  mere  sake  of  writing  one.  Indeed,  he  could  not  write 
one  unless  he  were  moved  by  some  motive.  Very  often  a 
special  controversial  aim  is  buried  beneath  a  form  which 
seems  adapted  to  general  circumstances,  and  we  can  still  feel 
the  force  of  his  moral  indignation  as  we  recall  the  moment 
in  which  the  sermon  had  its  birth.  Such,  for  example,  are 
at  least  two  of  those  included  in  the  "  Sermons  preached  in 
English  Churches."  One  of  them  is  called  the  "Mind's  Love 
for  God,"  from  the  words  of  Christ  where  He  enjoins  the 
love  of  God  not  only  with  the  heart  but  with  the  intellect. 
"Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  .  .  .  thy  mind." 
In  this  sermon  we  have  vigorous  protest  against  the  tendency 
he  had  so  often  encountered,  in  the  church  and  outside  of 
it,  to  depreciate  the  intellect  in  matters  of  religion.  No- 
thing more  excited  his  intellectual  contempt  than  the  atti- 
tude of  those  who,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  after  the  fashion  of 
a  spurious  intellectualism,  held  up  the  intellectual  formulas 
of  other  ages  as  final  and  authoritative,  yet  refused  to  allow 
to  the  present  age  the  right  to  examine  those  formulas,  or 
even  to  attempt  to  restate  them  in  the  language  of  the  mod- 
ern world,  as  though  the  mere  action  of  the  modern  intellect 
were,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  either  ineffective  or  else  de- 
structive and  dangerous.  In  this  sermon  he  passes  in  review 
the  different  religious  attitudes,  —  those  who  cling  to  the 
Bible  with  the  affection  of  the  heart,  but  refuse  to  it  the 
love  of  the  intellect,  declining  to  consider  any  questions  as 
to  where  it  came  from,  or  from  what  parts  it  is  made  up, 
how  its  parts  belong  together,  and  the  nature  of  its  authority. 
He  alludes  to  those  who  repel  all  questions  about  the  na- 
ture of  God,  crying  out,  "You  must  not  try  to  understand, 
you  must  only  listen,  worship,  and  obey;"  or  those  who. 


^T.  47]         RETURN  TO  BOSTON  467 

when  the  incarnation  of  Christ  is  mentioned,  and  the  ques- 
tion is  raised  among  other  questions,  of  the  way  the  sonship 
of  Christ  is  related  to  the  sonship  of  all  other  men  in  God 
say  in  rebuke,  "You  must  not  ask;  Christ  is  above  all  ques- 
tions." Or  again,  when  one  would  learn  of  the  saint  at 
Christ's  sacrament,  what  that  dear  and  lofty  rite  means  to 
him,  must  he  be  told,  "You  must  not  rationalize.  It  is  a 
mystery;  the  reason  has  no  function  here." 

He  goes  on  to  remark  that  he  is  not  disparaging  "in  the 
least  degree  the  noble  power  of  unreasoning  love."  But 
what  he  pleads  for  is  the  possibility  of  a  deeper,  fuller  love, 
the  love  of  the  reason  and  the  understanding  as  well;  for  the 
deeper  the  knowledge  the  greater  the  possibility  of  love. 
What  most  arouses  his  indignation  is 

not  the  devout  Christians  who  take  this  ground  of  refusing  a  place 
to  the  mind  in  religion,  but  a  curious  way  of  talking  which  seems 
to  me  to  have  grown  strangely  common  of  late  among  the  men 
who  disbelieve  in  Christianity.  It  is  patronizing  and  quietly  in- 
sulting; it  takes  for  granted  that  the  Christian's  faith  has  no 
real  reason  at  its  heart,  nor  any  trustworthy  grounds  for  thinking 
itself  true.  At  the  same  time,  it  grants  that  there  is  a  certain 
weak  side  of  human  nature  where  the  reason  does  not  work,  where 
everytliing  depends  on  sentiment  and  feeling,  where  not  what  is 
true,  but  what  is  beautiful  and  comforting  and  reassuring  is  the 
soul's  demand;  and  that  side  of  the  nature  it  gives  over  to  re- 
ligion. Because  that  side  of  the  nature  is  the  most  prominent 
part,  and  indeed  sometimes  seems  to  be  the  whole  of  weaker  kinds 
of  men  and  women,  it  accepts  the  necessity  of  religion  for  these 
weak  people,  and  does  not  desire  its  immediate  extinction;  only 
it  must  not  pretend  to  be  a  reasonable  thing.  Theology  must  not 
call  itself  a  science,  and  Faith  must  know  it  is  a  dream. 

Against  this  one  of  the  many  forms  of  the  exaggerated, 
provoking  sentimentalism  of  the  nineteenth  century  he  pro- 
tests in  the  name  of  religion  and  of  historical  Christianity :  — 

Think  of  David  and  his  cry,  "Thy  testimonies  are  wonder- 
ful. I  have  more  understanding  than  my  teachers,  for  thy  testi- 
monies are  my  study."  Think  of  Paul,  "O  the  depth  of  the 
riches  both  of  the  wisdom  and  knowledge  of  God."  Think  of 
Augustine,    Luther,    Calvin,    Milton,    Edwards,    and    a   hundred 


468  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

more,  the  men  whose  minds  have  found  their  loftiest  inspiration 
in  religion,  how  they  would  have  received  this  quiet  and  contemp- 
tuous relegation  of  the  most  stupendous  subject  of  human  thought 
to  the  region  of  silly  sentiment.  They  were  men  who  loved  the 
Lord  their  God  with  all  their  minds.  The  noble  relation  of  their 
intellects  to  Him  was  the  supreme  satisfaction  of  their  lives. 

Another  sermon  in  this  volume  which  deserves  mention  is 
called  "Gamaliel,"  from  the  text,  "Gamaliel,  a  doctor  of 
the  law,  had  in  reputation  among  all  the  people  "  (Acts  v. 
34).  To  this  sermon  we  have  seen  that  Mr.  Brooks  attached 
importance,  for  it  was  the  only  one  he  specified  when  asking 
for  sermons  to  be  sent  to  him.  It  is  a  plea  for  absolute  free- 
dom in  the  search  for  truth,  resting  on  faith  in  God  as  the 
final  safeguard  of  the  truth,  —  "If  this  work  be  of  men,  it 
will  come  to  naught;  but  if  it  be  of  God,  ye  cannot  over- 
throw it,  lest  haply  ye  be  found  even  to  fight  against  God." 

Every  great  teacher,  every  great  scholar,  ought  to  be  aware 
of  the  mystery  and  of  the  mightiness  of  truth,  and  therefore  he 
ought  to  be  prepared  to  see  truth  linger  and  hesitate  and  seem 
to  be  retarded,  and  even  seem  to  be  turned  back,  and  yet  to  keep 
a  clear  assurance  that  Truth  must  come  right  in  the  end  and  that 
the  only  way  to  help  her  is  to  keep  her  free,  so  that  she  shall  he 
at  liberty  to  help  herself.  .  .  .  The  scholar  of  truth  must  trust 
truth.  .  .  .  The  student  must  claim  for  himself  and  for  all 
men,  liberty.  ...  If  you  limit  the  search  for  truth  and  forbid 
men  anywhere,  in  any  way,  to  seek  knowledge,  you  paralyze  the 
vital  force  of  truth  itself.  That  is  what  makes  bigotry  so  disas- 
trous to  the  bigot. 

The  sermon  on  Gamaliel  is  personal,  as  when  it  describes  the 
ideal  of  a  great  teacher  such  as  Phillips  Brooks  would  fain  have 
been.  He  took  Gamaliel  to  be  the  type  of  such  a  teacher, 
broad-minded,  inculcating  earnestly  his  own  views  of  truth, 
knowing  at  the  same  time  that  truth  is  larger  than  his  view, 
—  one  of  those  men  who  give  others  the  chance  to  make  his- 
tory, while  they  relegate  themselves  to  obscurity.  "There 
are  few  things  finer  than  to  see  the  reverence  and  gratitude 
with  which  the  best  men  of  active  life  look  back  to  the  quiet 
teachers  who  furnished  them  with  the  materials  of  living." 
With  such  an  ideal  of  teaching,  he  contrasts  the 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  469 

men  who  are  set  upon  making  all  the  world  live  in  their  own 
way,  who  have  no  real  faith  in  God,  and  therefore  no  real  faith 
in  men.  Human  force  and  goodness  seem  to  them  to  be  not 
vital  growths  with  real  life  in  them,  but  skilfully  arranged  de- 
vices all  artificially  planned  and  pinned  together,  when,  if  you 
altered  the  place  of  any  single  pin,  the  whole  must  fall.  Such 
men  must  blight  the  possibilities  of  any  community  they  live  in. 
.  .  .  With  God  are  the  final  issues  and  destinies  of  things. 
Work  as  man  will,  he  cannot  make  a  plan  succeed  which  God 
disowns;  work  as  man  will,  he  cannot  make  a  plan  fail  which 
God  approves.  .  .  .  These  words  of  Gamaliel  are  the  words  of 
all  really  progressive  spirits.  They  were  the  words  of  Martin 
Luther,  who  opened  Europe  and  made  the  best  of  modern  history 
a  possibility.    .    .    . 

Luther  worked ;  Gamaliel  worked.  To  hold  your  truth,  to 
believe  it  with  all  your  heart,  to  work  with  all  your  might,  first 
to  make  it  real  to  yourself  and  then  to  show  its  preciousness  to 
other  men,  and  then  —  not  till  then,  but  then  —  to  leave  the  ques- 
tions of  when  and  how  and  by  whom  it  shall  prevail  to  God ;  that 
is  the  true  life  of  the  believer.  There  is  no  feeble  unconcern 
and  indiscriminateness  there,  and  neither  is  there  any  excited 
hatred  of  the  creed,  the  doctrine,  or  the  Church,  which  you  feel 
wholly  wrong.  You  have  not  fled  out  of  the  furnace  of  bigotry 
to  freeze  on  the  open  and  desolate  plains  of  indifference.  You 
believe  and  yet  you  have  no  wish  to  persecute. 

All  this  came  straight  from  the  heart  and  head  of  the 
preacher.  He  had  spoken  the  word  "persecute,"  which 
seemed  almost  out  of  place  in  "this  enlightened  tolerant 
age."  But  there  were  ominous  signs  in  the  body  ecclesiasti- 
cal. The  preacher  was  forecasting  the  future.  It  is  some- 
what remarkable  that  the  nineteenth  century,  with  its 
boasted  freedom,  has  seen  more  attempts  at  religious  ostra- 
cism, and  caused  more  suffering  for  the  sake  of  religious 
beliefs,  than  has  been  known  for  two  hundred  years.  We 
must  go  back  to  the  seventeenth  century  for  an  analogous 
moment  in  human  history  since  the  great  Reformation.  In 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  Mr.  Mill  foresaw  the 
danger  and  made  his  plea  for  Liberty.  Phillips  Brooks,  in 
this  sermon,  is  occupied  with  the  thought  which  he  will  later 
elaborate  in  his  book  on  Tolerance.  Now  he  closed  his  ser- 
mon with  a  great  appeal,  invoking  the  time  when   every 


470  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

"form  of  terrorism  shall  have  passed  away,  when  we  shall 
frankly  own  that  there  is  nothing  for  which  God  in  any 
world  will  punish  any  of  his  children  except  sin." 

This  sermon  on  Gamaliel  was  in  every  sense  a  sermon  for 
the  times.  He  preached  it  in  the  Temple  Church  in  London, 
rich  with  historical  associations,  its  audience  mostly  made  up 
of  men,  lawyers  in  large  numbers  among  them,  and  the  most 
cultivated  people  of  England.  He  was  standing  in  Hooker's 
place,  and  his  utterance  was  worthy  of  Hooker,  and  such  as 
he  would  have  welcomed.  The  sermon  left  a  profound  im- 
pression, and  is  still  recalled  as  great.  One  who  listened  to 
him  wrote  him  such  a  letter  as  he  was  wont  to  receive,  but 
he  was  touched  and  pleased.  The  letter  conveyed  also  a 
request  that  a  sermon  which  had  produced  such  an  extraor- 
dinary impression  should  be  printed. 

If  I  had  obeyed  my  impulse  last  Sunday  I  should  have  written 
you  after  the  service  to  tell  you  how  deeply  your  words  sank  into 
my  heart,  and,  may  I  say  it,  with  what  pride  I  saw  you  in  the 
old  Temple,  and  knew  that  more  noble  words  of  truth  had  never 
resounded  through  its  historic  walls. 

The  appearance  of  this  new  volume  of  sermons  was  fol- 
lowed, as  previous  volumes  had  been,  by  letters  expressive 
of  admiration  and  gratitude.  But  no  letters  more  beautiful 
or  genuine  ever  came  to  him  than  those  from  his  English 
friends. 

Your  visit  to  us  this  summer  [writes  a  high  dignitary  of  the 
Church  of  England]  has  left  a  mark,  spiritual  and  intellectual, 
which,  by  God's  help,  will  not  soon  be  effaced  from  the  Church 
which  welcomed  you  and  delighted  to  listen  to  you.  And  we, 
who  have  to  preach  and  teach,  feel  that  a  prophet  has  been  among 
us,  and  a  new  stimulus  given  to  us,  for  which  we  are  heartily 
grateful  and  solemnly  responsible.  My  gratitude  [another  writer 
says]  has  grown  and  deepened,  and  now  cannot  find  the  proper 
and  suitable  words  in  which  to  express  itself.  I  can  assure  you 
^writes  a  member  of  the  legal  profession  who  heard  him  in  the 
Temple  Church]  I  will  never  forget  the  lessons  of  charity  you 
urged  upon  us.  The  older  I  get,  and  the  more  of  the  world  I 
see,  the  more  I  am  convinced  that  if  Christianity  is  to  lay  hold 
on  the  higher  order  of  intellects,  it  must  be  by  such  noble, 
broad,  elevating  preaching  as  yours. 


JET.  47]        RETURN   TO   BOSTON  471 

The  notices  of  the  book  in  the  papers  showed  that  the 
English  people  still  had  their  prejudices  against  transatlantic 
eloquence  to  overcome.  But  Mr.  Brooks  was  declared  to  be 
an  exception.  "The  quality  which  will  first  strike  the 
reader  of  these  sermons,"  says  one  of  these  book  reviews, 
"is  their  thoroughly  English  and  Anglican  tone."  It  was 
remarked  by  other  critics  that  the  sermons  in  reading  did 
not  suffer  from  the  absence  of  the  impressive  manner  of  the 
preacher. 

On  every  page  we  come  across  sentences  which  lend  them- 
selves readily  to  detached  quotation,  and  they  are  of  a  quality 
which  will  stand  examination  and  provoke  thought ;  indeed,  pas- 
sages of  this  kind  are  so  frequent  that  it  is  next  to  impossible  to 
select  quotations  in  illustration. 

Among  the  sermons  noted  as  most  remarkable  "for  fresh- 
ness and  originality,"  or  "  as  masterpieces  of  profound  thought 
conjoined  with  eloquence  of  expression,"  are  the  one  preached 
at  "Westminster  Abbey,  headed  "Man's  Wonder  and  God's 
Knowledge,"  and  another  at  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  on  the 
"Christian  City."  Almost  every  one  of  the  sermons  receives 
some  special  mention  as  finer  than  any  other.  One  of  these 
notices  is  here  given :  — 

We  are  disposed  to  assign  to  Mr.  Brooks  the  rank  of  the  first 
preacher  of  the  day.  Or,  if  that  be  too  strong  a  statement,  we 
shall  mend  it  by  saying  that  his  pruated  sermons  are  the  best 
we  have  read.  They  are,  without  exception,  great  sermons.  Of 
the  fourteen  sermons  in  this  volume,  it  may  be  said  that  they  are 
great  in  all  respects.  Great  in  the  gravity  of  their  solemn  elo- 
quence, great  in  the  felicity  with  which  word  is  fitted  to  thought, 
and  perfect  simple  expression  is  given  to  deep  and  profound 
thought,  great  also  in  the  insight  into  charactei',  motive,  and 
action,  and  specially  great  in  the  act  which  poses  thought,  speech, 
emotion,  into  one  organic  whole.  Each  sermon  stands  out  clear 
and  vivid  before  us,  perfect  in  the  one  simple  impression  it  makes 
on  our  mind.  It  is  only  as  we  proceed  to  analysis  that  we  dis- 
cover how  much  complexity  and  variety  have  gone  to  make  the 
unity  which  is  perfect  as  the  unity  of  a  true  or  of  a  living  organ- 
ism. There  is  boundless  variety,  manifoldness  of  many  sorts, 
but  all  held  together  by  a  principle  of  life  from  within,  and  not 
of  outward  constraint,  as  staves  are  held  together  by  means  of 


472  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

hoops   in  order  to  make  a  barrel.     Let  our  readers  get  these 
sermons. 

Some  of  the  letters  of  Phillips  Brooks  are  here  given, 
which  cover  these  three  months  after  his  return. 

233  Clarendon  Stbeet,  Boston,  September  24,  1883. 

Dear  old  Cooper,  —  I  've  got  home !  A  thousand  thanks  for 
your  greeting!  I 'm  coming  to  your  house !  Tuesday  afternoon! 
October  2d !  We  had  a  quiet,  happy,  sunny  voyage  in  the  stead- 
iest and  most  comfortable  ship  I  ever  sailed  in,  which,  however, 
does  not  trouble  herself  much  about  speed.  But  she  landed  us 
safe  on  Saturday  afternoon,  and  the  Custom  House  people  chalked 
my  old  shirts  and  trousers,  and  I  was  safe  in  my  big  bed  by 
eleven  o'clock. 

Yesterday  I  preached  the  gospel  again,  and  the  people,  I  am 
afraid,  wondered  whether  I  had  not  forgotten  how.  Lemuel 
Coffin  and  his  wife  graced  the  occasion  with  their  presence.    .    .    . 

Thank  you  for  telling  me  about  the  Ledyards.  They  were 
most  pleasant  and  interesting,  and  added  a  very  great  deal  to  the 
interest  of  my  voyage. 

Well,  well,  next  week  I  shall  see  you.  Look  for  me  on  Tues- 
day afternoon,  and  you  don't  know  how  glad  I  shall  be  to  set 
eyes  on  your  dear  old  face  again. 

Yours  ever  and  ever,  P.  B. 

In  the  following  letter  Mr.  Cooper  acknowledges  a  present 

from  his  friend :  — 

2026  Spruce  Street,  Philadelphia, 
St.  Guy  Fawkes  Day,  1883. 

Dear  good  Phillips,  —  Thanks,  heaps  upon  heaps  of  thanks, 
for  remembering  such  an  old  fogy  upon  his  birthday !  Surely 
you  have  given  such  evidences  of  your  love  and  affection  that  this 
beautiful  etching  was  unnecessary ;  but  as  you  have  sent  it  I 
have  given  it  the  most  conspicuous  place  in  my  study,  and  when- 
ever I  shall  look  at  it,  I  shall  be  reminded  of  your  generous  heart, 
and  of  the  many  years  we  have  known  each  other,  the  happiness 
we  have  experienced,  and  never  a  ripple  of  discord  between  us. 
May  God  bless  you,  dear  old  fellow,  and  make  your  remaining 
years  the  best  and  happiest  of  your  whole  life. 

As  for  me,  why,  when  the  seventieth  milestone  is  passed,  there 
can't  be  many  more  on  the  road.     Well,  it  doesn't  matter  much. 
I  know  in  whom  I  have  believed,  and  I  am  sure  He  will  keep 
that  which  I  have  committed  to  Him  against  that  day.   .   .   . 
Yours  very  affectionately,  Cooper. 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  473 

In  this  letter  to  Rev.  W.  W.  Newton  of  Pittsfield  is  a 
reference  to  tbe  Inter-ecclesiastical  Church  Congress,  which 
Mr.  Newton  had  been  interested  in  organizing :  — 

Dear  Willie,  —  I  cannot  bear  to  be  thought  guilty  of  "  the 
blank  silence  of  unconcern,"  and  so  I  must  write  and  tell  you 
that  I  have  your  Berkshire  Circular,  and  I  wish  nothing  but  good 
to  the  Inter-ecclesiastical  Church  Congress.  But  I  am  of  no  use 
in  such  organized  movements,  nor  have  I  any  great  faith  in  them. 
I  think  that  the  more  freely  the  spirit  of  union  works  the  better, 
and  any  attempts  to  put  it  into  organic  shape,  or  even  to  give  it 
definition  and  expression,  only  do  harm. 

I  may  be  wrong.  I  probably  am.  I  am  not  writing  in  any 
foolish  idea  of  dissuading  you,  nor  of  throwing  even  a  dipperful 
of  cold  water  on  the  scheme;  only  to  say  why  I  myself  cannot 
take  part  in  it ;  and  you  will  understand  me,  and  if  you  don't 
we  '11  talk  it  out  the  next  time  you  get  down  your  feet  before  my 
fire.  Meanwhile  I  wish  all  good  to  everything  you  do,  and  I  am 
sure  of  the  fine  purpose  with  which  you  do  it. 

Your  old  friend,  Phillips  Bkooks. 

233  Claeendon  Street,  Boston,  November  19,  1883, 
Dear  Arthur,  —  I  am  truly  sorry  that  there  is  a  hitch  about 
Peters 's  acceptance  of  the  professorship.  I  should  be  glad  enough 
to  do  anything  I  can  to  make  it  possible.  As  to  the  money  trou- 
ble I  will  gladly  subscribe  $100  a  year  with  others  to  make  up 
$500  additional  salary.  He  certainly  ought  not  to  have  to  de- 
pend upon  the  precarious  chances  of  supply,  although  I  have  no 
doubt  that  he  could  have  considerable  income  from  that  source. 
Is  anything  of  the  nature  of  a  guarantee  fund  possible?  I  see 
no  harm  in  sending  the  article  to  Bishop  Stevens.      They  might 

as  well  know  beforehand  what  the  general  drift  (  "  trend  "   as 

would  say)  of  his  instruction  is  to  be.  But  surely  Bishop  Stevens 
has  not  the  choice  or  rejection  in  his  own  hands.  My  only  ob- 
jection to  sending  the  Article  would  be  that  it  might  seem  to 
recognize  a  right  on  his  part  to  a  larger  share  in  the  selection  than 
belongs  to  each  of  the  other  overseers.  You  will  know  best  about 
this.  I  do  sincerely  hope  that  such  a  man  may  not  slip  through 
our  fingers.  They  had  better  have  lived  in  huts  forever  and  had 
money  enough  to  pay  first-class  professors. 

233  Clare>-don  Street,  Boston,  November  27, 1883. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  Thank  you  for  your  note.      You  must  let 
me  contribute  this  check  to  the  Washburn  Book  fund,  in  which  I 


474  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

am  very  much  interested,  but  of  which  I  never  happen  to  think 
just  at  the  right  moment  to  send  money.  I  rather  like  to  give 
the  Luther  money  in  memory  of  Washburn,  and  for  the  sending 
of  liberal  books  to  Episcopal  parsons.  There  seems  to  be  a  sort 
of  fitness  in  it  all  round.  If  you  will  send  me  some  of  the  Cir- 
culars, I  '11  try  to  put  them  where  they  '11  do  the  most  good.  I 
have  heard  from  the  Evangelical  Alliance  wanting  the  Luther 
Manuscript,  which  I  shall  send,  but  I  suppose  it  will  do  to  let 
what  I  had  written  about  Luther's  life  stand  instead  of  the  epit- 
ome of  it,  which  I  tried  to  extemporize  on  that  tumultuous  even- 
ing. 

I  am  glad  you  liked  [Rev.  Endicott]  Peabody  and  his  plan  of  a 
school  at  Groton.  I  have  hopes  that  he  will  make  a  school  quite 
as  good  as  St.  Paul's,  without  its  drawbacks. 

To  the  Rev.  G.  A.  Strong:  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  December  6,  1883. 
Dear  George,  —  What  a  wretch  I  have  been  to  get  home 
here  and  go  to  work  and  think  a  thousand  times  of  you,  wander- 
ing about  in  those  delightful  places  and  never  once  send  a  word 
to  tell  you  how  glad  I  am  that  you  are  having  such  a  splendid 
time.  Almost  three  months  now  since  I  had  to  make  up  my 
mind  that  we  were  not  to  meet  in  England,  and  turned  my  face 
homeward.  I  should  not  like  to  have  the  people  here  know  how 
restless  I  am,  and  how  hard  it  is  to  get  to  work  again.  But  in- 
deed it  is  only  a  few  weeks  since  I  have  really  been  able  to  count 
myself  thoroughly  settled  in  the  old  life.  Just  after  I  got  home 
there  came  the  General  Convention,  which  was  weary  beyond  all 
description  so  far  as  its  public  business  was  concerned,  though 
there  were  many  pleasant  social  things  connected  with  it.  I  saw 
much  of  Richards,  which,  of  course,  I  enjoyed  immensely.  You 
would  have  liked  to  be  at  the  breakfast  of  the  Alexandria  semi- 
nary men,  where  Potter  and  Charles  Richards  and  Paddock  and 
I  represented  pretty  much  all  there  was  of  our  time.  Dr.  Pack- 
ard was  there.  Then  we  all  went  up  to  Henry  Potter's  conse- 
cration, which  was  very  long  and  gorgeous,  and  by  and  by  the 
Prayer  Book  got  revised  and  the  dreary  convention  adjourned, 
and  we  all  came  home.  Sometimes  I  shut  my  eyes,  and  it  seems 
ridiculously  impossible  that  there  is  really  a  sermon  to  write  for 
next  Sunday,  or  that  Wednesday  evening  lectures  have  begun 
again.  London  and  Berlin  and  Delhi  seem  so  much  more  real 
than  Boston.  Oh,  I  envy  your  being  abroad,  and  I  pity  your 
coming  home ! 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  475 

Mention  has  been  made  of  the  project  to  translate  the 
"  Lectures  on  Preaching  "  into  French.  In  the  correspond- 
ence between  Mr.  Brooks  and  M.  Nyegaard,  we  find  the 
translator  occasionally  puzzled  with  an  English  idiom.  Here 
is  one  which  Mr.  Brooks  explains  :  — 

To  ^^  shoot  without  a  rest  "  means,  in  our  American  vernacular, 
to  fire  a  gun  without  leaning  it  on  any  support,  with  only  the 
steadiness  of  the  hand  to  hold  it.  In  this  sense  it  was  used  by 
the  backwoodsman  to  describe  the  Bishop's  preaching  without 
a  manuscript.  "To  shoot"  is  to  fire  a  gun.  "A  rest"  is  a 
siipport,  or  something  for  the  gun  to  rest  upon.  I  remember 
wondering,  when  you  first  told  me  of  your  intention  to  translate 
the  Book,  whether  this  particular  anecdote  might  not  give  you 
trouble.  If  you  desire  to  consult  me  on  this  or  any  other  point, 
I  shall  be  very  glad  to  hear  from  you. 

I  am  much  interested  in  the  account  of  your  "Caf^  de  tempe- 
rance." I  shall  be  glad  to  hear  of  its  success  and  usefulness. 
That  you  are  wholly  right  in  opening  it  on  Sundays,  and  in  al- 
lowing the  use  of  cards,  I  do  not  doubt  in  the  least. 

On  receiving  a  copy  of  the  translation,  Mr.  Brooks  wrote 
this  letter :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  December  7, 1883. 

Mt  dear  M.  Nyegaard,  —  I  have  just  received  the  two  copies 
of  the  "  Conferences  sur  la  Predication  "  which  you  have  kindly 
sent  me,  for  which  I  thank  you  very  heartily.  I  am  sure  I  need 
not  tell  you  that  I  value  very  highly  the  care  and  thought  and 
labor  which  you  have  so  generously  bestowed  upon  my  book.  I 
wish  the  book  to  which  you  have  given  so  much  time  were  wor- 
thier of  the  pains  which  you  have  lavished  on  it.  I  fear  there 
may  be  people  who  will  say,  "Materiam  superabat  opus."  But, 
none  the  less,  I  thank  you,  and  if  any  help  or  encouragement 
should  come  to  any  preacher  in  your  country  through  this  book, 
I  shall  feel  that  it  is  to  you  more  than  to  me  that  the  credit  will 
belong. 

It  is  very  strange  to  read  one's  own  words  in  a  foreign  tongue. 
It  is  almost  as  if  one's  image  in  a  mirror  took  a  voice  and  spoke 
to  one.  The  words  are  familiar  and  yet  strange,  and  thoughts 
seem  sometimes  to  put  on  new  shades  of  meaning  along  with  their 
new  forms  of  expression.  I  have  found  myself  reading  my  own 
book  quite  through  with  the  attraction  of  the  new  interest  which 
it  gained  from  the  new  form.  I  have  no  right  to  speak  about 
tlie  merit  of  your  work.     I  am  too  poor  a  French  scholar  to  make 


476  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

my  opinion  of  any  value.  I  can  only  say  that  I  have  found  it 
very  smooth  and  easy  reading.  I  do  not  doubt  that  critics  who 
are  competent  to  judge  will  find  abundant  reason  to  approve  and 
praise  the  way  in  which  the  work  of  the  translator  has  been  done. 
I  ought,  perhaps,  to  mention  two  slight  inaccuracies  in  your 
Preface.  Although  I  believe  I  was  the  first,  I  have  not  been 
the  only  American  preacher  who  has  occupied  the  jjulpit  of  West- 
minster Abbey.  Several  have  preached  there  since  my  first  ser- 
mon. And  I  did  preach  at  Windsor  Castle  a  few  years  ago,  on 
the  only  occasion  on  which  I  have  been  invited. 

When  will  you  come  to  America  and  be  my  guest,  and  let  me 
thank  you  personally  for  what  you  have  done  ?  I  beg  you  to  be- 
lieve you  will  be  always  welcome.  With  the  assurance  of  my 
kind  regard,  believe  me  always. 

Yours  most  sincerely, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

Should  you  see  any  notices,  favorable  or  unfavorable,  of  my 
book,  pray  send  them  to  me. 

In  a  letter  to  Rev.  Dr.  W.  N.  McVickar,  he  speaks  of  the 
forty -eighth  birthday :  — 

December  17, 1883. 

Dear  William,  —  It  was  delightfully  kind  of  you  and  your 
sister  to  remember  that  I  was  forty-eight  last  Thursday,  and  to 
send  me  this  delicious  little  token  of  your  good  wishes,  which  I 
received  to-day.  Your  kindness  and  the  beauty  of  your  little 
lamp  almost  reconciled  me  to  the  sadness  of  the  event.  The  day 
passed  calmly.  There  was  no  salute  upon  the  Common  nor  any 
special  form  of  prayer  put  forth  by  the  Bishop;  but  Jim  and 
Sallie  came  up  from  Salem  and  dined  with  me  at  my  brother's, 
and  we  made  believe  it  was  good  fun  to  be  forty-eight  years  old. 
Wait  till  you  try  it,  my  good  fellow,  and  see  how  you  like  it,  to 
have  your  golden  bowl  and  pitcher  in  this  dilapidated  condition. 

But  how  lovely  this  lamp  is.  I  long  to  have  the  20th  of  Jan- 
uary come,  that  you  may  see  how  it  has  taken  its  place  at  once 
as  the  central  glory  of  my  house.  I  shall  smoke  myself  to  death 
for  the  mere  pleasure  of  lighting  my  cigars.  But  lovelier  than 
all  its  loveliness  it  is  that  you  should  have  thought  how  old  I  was, 
and  should  have  cared  that  I  should  enter  on  a  new  stage  of  my 
pilgrimage  with  your  blessing. 

The  20th !  Already  we  are  getting  the  city  ready  for  you, 
and  you  don't  know  how  eagerly  we  shall  welcome  you.  You 
know  that  I  expect  you  both  to  preach  for  me  on  the  following 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  477 

Sunday,  and  shall  not  take  No!  You  must  ask  Cooper  whether 
he  would  rather  take  the  afternoon  or  morning,  and  you  will  take 
the  other  certainly.      A  Merry  Christmas  to  you  all  ! 

P.  B. 

To  Kev.  Mr.  Lefroy  of  Delhi :  — 

233  Clabbndon  Street,  Boston,  December  19,  1883. 

Dear  Mr.  Lefroy,  —  Your  kind  note  has  lain  too  long  unan- 
swered. If  you  knew  how  glad  I  was  to  get  it,  and  how  many 
times  I  have  meant  to  tell  you  so,  you  would  forgive  me.  I  am 
at  work  again,  however,  and  quite  well,  and  every  day  I  see  your 
picture,  which  is  on  my  study  table,  and  think  of  your  work,  and 
it  makes  me  stronger  for  my  own.  Boston  is  not  as  bad  as 
Delhi,  but,  indeed,  it  is  heathen  enough;  and  though  I  am  im- 
mensely fond  of  it,  I  never  realized  till  I  got  home  this  time  how 
much  there  was  to  be  done  in  it  to  make  it  a  true  Christian  town. 
But  the  work  is  delightful  in  Delhi  or  in  Boston,  and  we  do  not 
work  alone. 

You  cannot  tell  how  constantly  I  go  over  all  the  days  of  last 
winter,  and  especially  the  happy  days  in  your  mission.  Only 
last  week  my  box  arrived  from  Calcutta,  and  I  saw  again  the 
queer  things  which  I  bought  in  those  hot  January  days  on  your 
veranda.  It  was  great  fun  to  look  them  over  and  think  how 
different  the  snowstorm  in  our  streets  was  from  the  sunlight  on 
your  field,  where  you  tried  to  drown  out  the  ants.  Tell  me,  are 
the  Maconachies  in  Delhi  still,  and  have  they  forgiven  the  wan- 
dering Yankees  who  came  and  turned  them  out  into  the  yard? 
Do  give  them  my  best  love.  How  I  should  like  to  get  all  the 
old  company  together  to-night  in  my  small  Rectory.  I  will  send 
you  a  picture  of  it,  so  that  you  may  all  know  where  to  come  when 
you  come  to  Boston.  I  will  send  you  my  church,  too;  of  myself 
I  have  no  picture.  If  you  really  want  one  I  will  send  one,  if  I 
ever  submit  to  the  photographer  again. 

You  are  just  now  welcoming  your  friends  who  will  reinforce 
your  strength.  I  congratulate  you  on  the  new  life  which  will  fill 
your  house.  If  you  want  another,  send  for  me  and  I  will  come ! 
Meanwhile  I  ventured  the  other  day  to  give  a  note  to  you  to  an 
old  friend  and  college  classmate  of  mine,  Professor  Agassiz,  one 
of  our  first  naturalists. 

I  shall  always  rejoice  to  hear  from  you.  Remember  me  most 
kindly  to  Mr.  Allnut  and  Mr.  Carlyon.  May  all  best  blessings 
be  with  you  and  your  work. 

Your  friend, 

Phillips  Brooks. 


478  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

December  23,  1883. 
Dear  John  and  Hattie,  —  Just  as  I  came  home  from  Sun- 
day evening  service  here  arrives  a  Sabbath-breaking  express  boy 
with  my  lovely  owl.  I  must  sit  down  at  once  and  thank  you  for 
him,  and  tell  you  how  delightfully  he  looks  in  his  new  home,  and 
how  he  seems  not  to  miss  Wiesbaden  the  least  bit  in  the  world. 
As  to  his  not  being  anything  but  a  reproduction,  I  don't  believe 
a  word  of  it.  He  is  an  original,  I  know !  If  he  could  speak, 
he  would  tell  how  Caius  Julius  Caesar  drank  Rhine  wine  out  of 
him  in  the  Bello  Gallico;  and  he  surely  has  a  wisdom  in  his 
stocky  form  and  out  to  the  tips  of  his  two  head-wings  which  no- 
thing but  eighteen  hundred  years  of  meditation  under  ground  could 
give. 

Here  follow  a  few  extracts  from  the  note-book  kept  on  board 
ship,  as  he  was  returning  to  America :  — 

One  feels  there  is  great  danger  in  the  present  attitude  of  mul- 
titudes of  English  people  towards  Christianity,  accepting  it  with- 
out facing  its  problems,  as  the  religion  of  their  people,  dwelling 
on  its  beautiful  or  comfortable  features,  and  almost  ready  to 
resent  as  simply  disturbing  and  unnecessary  any  effort  to  make 
its  statements  more  reasonable.  Not  so  common  among  us.  It 
is  closely  mixed  up  with  the  loyalty  and  practicalness  and  insti- 
tutionalism  of  the  Englishman.     The  other  temper  also  there. 

You  ride  along  in  a  railroad  train  racing  with  another  which 
runs  parallel  to  yours,  —  the  other  train  is  going  faster ;  if  you 
look  at  it  you  seem  not  merely  to  be  going  slower,  but  to  be  going 
the  other  way,  backwards.  But  turn  and  look  at  the  fixed  land- 
scape, and  you  see  that  you  are  making  no  mean  speed.  So  of 
the  rates  of  progress  in  thought. 

As  on  shipboard  particular  care  is  taken  against  fire,  not  be- 
cause it  is  most  likely,  but  because  its  consequences  would  be  most 
terrible,  so  of  unbelief  in  religious  things. 

Let  us  never  disparage  the  value  of  certain  and  sure  belief 
about  truth.  Whatever  compensations  may  come  in  its  absence 
and  delay,  it  is  nevertheless,  and  we  can  never  forget  that  it  is, 
the  ultimate  purpose  and  ambition  of  the  human  soul,  until  it 
reaches  which,  it  never  can  be  satisfied. 

Sermon  on  the  great  revelation  of  the  Immanence  of  God  in 
these  days. 


^T.  47]  RETURN  TO  BOSTON  479 

The  fallacy  of  thinking  there  ever  was  a  time  of  fixed,  unchan- 
ging religious  ideas.  All  ages,  ages  of  change ;  ours  not  pecul- 
iar; fears  in  all. 

As  Columbus  sailed  to  find  the  Old  World  and  found  the  New, 
so  possibly  a  reaction  (like  the  Puseyite)  may  help  the  progress 
of  truth. 

Putting  wood  on  fire  and  having  it  become  dry  and  hot  all 
through,  then  burst  into  a  flame,  so  of  missions  or  conversions. 

The  ocean,  ever  defeated  by  man,  and  never  conquered. 

The  perpetual  presence  behind  our  life,  with  its  temporary  im- 
pulses, of  God  and  His  life. 

How  old  things  may  pass  away  without  all  things  becoming 
new. 

As  useless  and  provoking  as  it  is  to  have  one  of  those  matches 
which  won't  light  without  the  box,  and  you  haven't  got  the  box. 

No  sooner  done  than  said. 

French  talk  of  a  man  having  the  danger  of  his  qualities. 

Like  the  long  zigzags  up  the  hills,  always  coming  back  into 
sight  of  the  same  points,  but  viewing  them  from  higher  points,  — 
so  of  theological  progress. 

All  the  attractions  of  the  world  are  of  two  kinds,  — those 
made  by  true  cohesion,  and  those  made  by  outside  motives, 
whether  of  pressure  or  of  vacancy. 

"Thou  shalt  tread  upon  the  Lion  and  Adder;  the  young  Lion 
and  Dragon  shalt  thou  tread  under  thy  feet;"  "The  sun  shall 
not  be  Thy  light  by  day,"  etc., — the  universal  Eastern  pray- 


Text :  He  was  wandering  in  the  field,  and  the  man  asked  him 
saying,  "What  seekest  thou  ?  "  And  he  said,  "I  seek  my  bre- 
thren; tell  me,  I  pray  thee,  where  they  feed  their  flocks."  The 
lonely  soul  wandering  in  doubt  and  personal  experience,  and  crav- 
ing the  familiar  ways  of  other  souls  which  may  be  the  very  thing 
that  will  be  his  death. 

The  time  for  confirmation,  I  think,  is  not  childhood,  when 
others  think  for  us ;  not  middle  age,  when  life  grows  weary,  but 
just  at  the  time  when  obedience  to  authority  changes  into  per- 
sonal responsibility,  —  in  the  period  of  youth  when  life  is  fresh 


48o  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1883 

and  untried,  but  the  way  has  to  be  trodden  and  the  traveller  just 
setting  out  needs  a  guide  and  a  helper. 

Sermon  on  the  old  man's  poetry,  — the  way  in  which  the  ro- 
mance and  picturesqueness  of  life  ought  to  increase  for  him  as  he 
grows  older.  The  way  in  which  it  often  is  not  so.  Pity  if  the 
joy  of  life  were  mere  animal  spirits.      The  hope  of  the  Eternal. 

Sermon  on  "Like  as  a  dream  when  one  awaketh,  so  shalt  thou 
make  their  image  to  vanish  out  of  the  city." 

Describe  (1)  the  hopeless  clutching  after  the  dream  when  you 
wake  up.  It  was  so  real  an  instant  ago,  and  now  you  cannot 
even  tell  what  it  was  about.  The  moment's  struggle  to  remem- 
ber, then  the  rising  and  going  about  one's  work.  The  image 
vanishing  out  of  the  city  is  first,  in  the  simple  Jewish  sense, 
dying.  The  moment's  remembrance  of  such  a  man;  sometimes 
the  thought  of  him  flashes  vaguely  across  people's  work,  but  they 
go  their  way  without  him.  Apply  (2)  to  the  remembrance  of 
people,  and  the  many  expedients  of  people  to  maintain  it.  Apply 
(3)  to  the  preservation  of  influence.  The  unvanished  image  of 
forgotten  men.  It  is  in  our  city  now.  The  three  kinds  of  im- 
mortality, Personal,  Memorial,  Influential. 

When  I  see  how  the  real  difficulty  of  multitudes  of  bewildered 
men  is  not  this  or  that  unsolved  problem,  but  the  whole  incapa- 
city of  comprehending  God;  when  I  see  this,  I  understand  how 
the  best  boon  that  God  can  give  to  any  group  of  men  must  often 
be  to  take  one  of  them  and,  bearing  witness  of  Himself  to  him, 
set  him  to  bearing  that  witness  of  the  Lord  to  his  brethren, 
which  only  a  man  surrounded  and  filled  with  God  can  bear. 

The  following  passage  is  significant  for  the  development 
of  Phillips  Brooks  and  might  be  taken  as  a  motto  for  his 
later  years :  — 

"The  Beauty  of  Holiness."  It  seems  as  if  the  Good  Taste  of 
Goodness,  the  ugliness  of  sin,  while  it  cannot  be  used  as  the  first 
creative  motive  for  a  new  life,  must  certainly  come  in  by  and  by 
to  certify  and  assure  the  work  which  conscience  and  obedience 
to  the  Law  of  God  have  done.  Brought  in  at  first  it  must  create 
a  feeble  moral  aestheticism  and  be  fruitful  in  false  and  conven- 
tional standards.  But  it  may  apparently  be  recognized  and  en- 
forced sooner  with  reference  to  the  conditions  of  the  world  and 
society  at  large  than  with  reference  to  the  individual. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

1869-1892 

THEOLOGY.  TENDENCIES  OF  THE  AGE.  FREEDOM  OF  EN- 
QUIRT.  AUTHORITY  AND  CONSCIENCE.  ORTHODOXY. 
FREEDOM  THROUGH  DOGMA.  PROGRESS.  TOLERANCE. 
THE  NEW  THEOLOGY.  DANGERS  OF  FREEDOM.  THE 
BIBLE.  THE  PRAYER  BOOK.  CREEDS.  ANGLICANISM. 
THE  INCARNATION.  THE  TRINITY.  THE  NEW  THEISM. 
PANTHEISM.  MIRACLES.  SIN.  ENDLESS  PUNISHMENT. 
THE  ATONEMENT.  EMPHASIS  ON  THE  WILL.  SUPER- 
NATURAL EXISTENCES.      MYSTICISM.      MORALITY 


The  decade  of  the  eighties  was  marked  by  efforts  at  theo- 
logical reconstruction.  Of  course,  no  exact  limits  can  be 
put  for  movements  in  the  world  of  religious  thought.  Such 
movements  have  a  fashion  of  beginning  before  they  began 
and  of  going  on  after  they  are  over.  But  if  we  may  here 
repeat,  for  the  sake  of  emphasis,  what  has  already  been  said, 
it  is  true,  speaking  in  a  general  way,  that  the  age  of  reli- 
gious doubt  and  of  disaffection  within  the  churches  toward 
dogmas  and  creeds  dates  from  about  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Those  who  were  then  young  men  and  after- 
wards rose  to  prominence  had,  for  the  most  part,  felt  this 
mood.  To  escape  into  a  larger  freedom  from  the  limitations 
of  an  inadequate  theology  was  their  aim.  The  question  of 
subscription  to  religious  formulas  was  then  a  subject  of  anx- 
ious interest,  which  each  man  must  determine  for  himself. 
Of  this  experience  the  story  is  told  in  the  biographies  of 
Maurice  and  Robertson,  Erskine,  Ewing,  Stanley,  Kingsley^ 
Tait,  Jowett,  and  many  others.  Maurice  was  then  the 
strongest  force  in  the  English-speaking  world,  but  Robertson 


482  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

was  the  man  who  brought  the  greatest  relief.  Both  Maurice 
and  Eobertson  were  reinforced  by  Tennyson,  of  whose  "In 
Memoriam  "  it  has  been  often  said  that  it  was  the  most  influ- 
ential theological  work  of  the  age. 

But  Tennyson  carried  the  appeal  to  the  feelings.  There 
was  a  work  still  to  be  done  by  the  intellect,  and  by  criticism, 
in  collating  the  results  of  science  and  of  Biblical  research,  in 
comparing  and  estimating  the  products  of  thought  which  had 
been  working  over  the  old  dogmas,  especially  in  the  depart- 
ment of  historical  theology.  A  new  impetus  had  been  given 
to  historical  research,  in  the  application  of  the  principle  of 
development.  In  the  book  "Essays  and  Reviews,"  which 
appeared  in  England  in  1860,  the  effort  was  made  to  bring 
these  issues  together  and  acquaint  the  English  mind  with  re- 
sults which  had  been  accomplished.  The  principle  of  devel- 
opment, the  antiquity  of  man  and  the  popular  chronology, 
science  and  the  miracle,  the  verbal  inspiration  of  Scripture, 
the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch,  the  true  nature 
of  prophecy,  in  a  word,  the  results  of  German  investigation ; 
the  doctrines  also  of  atonement  and  of  endless  punishment,  — 
these  all  came  up  for  discussion  in  "  Essays  and  Reviews." 
Its  authors  had  determined,  each  for  himself,  to  speak  freely, 
with  the  result  that  consternation  followed  in  those  circles 
where  free  inquiry  had  not  penetrated.  Two  of  the  writers 
were  brought  to  trial  before  the  English  courts,  —  Mr.  Wil- 
liams for  denying  the  doctrine  of  verbal  inspiration,  and  Mr. 
Wilson  for  denying  the  doctrine  of  endless  punishment,  — 
and  both  were  acquitted.  It  was  then  affirmed  (1864)  by  the 
Judicial  Committee  of  Privy  Council  that  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, while  maintaining  the  inspiration  of  Scripture,  gave  no 
theory  of  inspiration,  and  that  to  indulge  the  hope  of  the  final 
restoration  of  all  the  wicked  did  not  contravene  her  formula- 
ries. The  manifest  object  of  the  decision  was  to  secure  for 
the  Church  of  England  the  largest  freedom  to  theological  in- 
quiry, and  as  such  it  must  be  regarded  as  most  significant. 
The  formula  of  subscription  to  the  Articles  was  also  modified, 
relaxed,  as  it  seemed  to  many,  and  a  general  statement  of 
acquiescence  in  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  took  the  place  of 


^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  483 

the  more  stringent  form  calling  for  agreement  with  each  and 
every  article. 

Hardly  had  the  freedom  been  gained  for  which  many  had 
striven  and  longed,  when  it  seemed  to  lose  its  value  and  be- 
come of  no  avail  in  the  severer  crisis  that  followed,  —  in 
the  seventies,  when  Darwin's  name  became  supreme  in  the 
scientific  world,  when  Tyndall,  as  in  1874,  gave  his  famous 
Belfast  address,  where  he  deified  matter  as  the  promise  and 
potency  of  life,  and  when,  for  a  moment,  it  seemed  as  if 
science  had  the  church  at  its  mercy.  The  physical  or  me- 
chanical theory  of  the  universe,  as  then  presented  by  Spencer, 
the  discrediting  of  miracles,  the  disbelief  in  the  efficacy  of 
prayer,  the  doubt  or  the  denial  of  the  existence  of  God  and 
the  immortality  of  the  soul,  —  these  were  the  subjects  then 
agitating  the  mind  of  the  church,  casting  theological  formulas, 
for  the  time,  into  the  background.  But  with  the  eighties 
there  came  another  change.  Philosophers  and  theologians, 
despite  the  difficulties  they  encountered  in  the  conflict  with 
science,  and  despite  their  many  weak  and  apparently  futile 
efforts,  whether  at  resistance  or  at  reconciliation,  had  not 
struggled  in  vain.  The  spiritual  interpretation  of  the  uni- 
verse began  slowly  to  show  its  superiority  over  the  material. 
The  remarkable  controversy  in  1884,  between  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer  and  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  revealed  at  least  that 
the  situation  had  changed.  The  tide  of  religious  doubt, 
which  had  threatened  to  remove  the  foundations  of  religious 
belief,  was  at  last  retreating.  The  worst  of  the  danger  was 
over. 

Years  so  recent  as  the  eighties  cannot  yet  be  regarded  as 
affording  material  for  history,  but  they  may  be  chronicled. 
Recent  as  they  are,  they  have  been  quickly  forgotten  by 
many  under  the  agitations  which  have  marked  the  close  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  The  foremost  characteristic  of  these 
years  was  the  widespread  realization,  within  the  churches,  of 
freedom  to  revert  again  to  creeds  and  dogmas,  and  attempt 
the  reconstruction  of  theology.  In  the  many  books  that  ap- 
peared, the  questions,  whose  discussion  had  only  been  post- 
poned, came  up  for  a  rehearing,  —  inspiration  and  revela- 


484  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

tion,  the  right  use  of  the  Bible,  the  doctrines  of  atonement 
and  incarnation,  the  dogma  of  endless  punishment.  A  few 
of  these  books  maybe  mentioned:  Mulford's  "Republic  of 
God,"  Munger's  "Freedom  of  Faith,"  Newman  Smith's 
"Old  Faiths  in  a  New  Light,"  Newton's  "Use  of  the  Bible," 
and  "Progressive  Orthodoxy,"  by  Professor  Smyth  and  others. 
Mr.  John  Fiske  contributed  a  valuable  essay,  which,  coming 
from  a  distinguished  exponent  of  Spencer's  philosophy,  was 
significant,  — the  "Idea  of  God,"  where  the  effort  was  made 
to  reconcile  with  science  the  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Imma- 
nence. In  England,  from  the  younger  school  of  the  followers 
of  Dr.  Pusey,  there  came  "Lux  Mundi,"  with  restatements 
of  the  doctrines  of  the  incarnation,  the  atonement,  and  in- 
spiration. It  was  characteristic  of  these  many  efforts  to 
recommend  the  church  and  Christianity  to  the  modern  mind, 
that  they  accepted  the  principle  of  development  in  theology. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  those  now  began  to  speak,  who  ad- 
vocated the  retention  of  the  old  dogmas  unchanged  in  their 
statement,  uninfluenced  by  any  touch  of  the  modern  life. 

What  position  did  Phillips  Brooks  take  in  this  era  of 
creative  theological  activity,  of  confusion  also,  and  of  contro- 
versy ?  As  we  study  his  work,  it  will  be  apparent  that  what 
he  stood  for  was  most  characteristic  of  the  man,  most  impor- 
tant also,  when  these  years  shall  come  up  for  more  deliberate 
valuation.  In  his  book  "The  Influence  of  Jesus,"  he  had 
already  made  a  contribution  to  theology  of  the  highest  im- 
portance ;  indeed  no  more  important  or  influential  utterance 
in  theology  either  preceded  or  followed  it.  He  did  not  now 
write  any  treatise  which  can  be  construed  as  a  direct  con- 
sideration of  the  question,  —  in  what  way  religious  recon- 
struction must  proceed,  what  were  to  be  its  methods  or  its 
limits,  or  what  its  results.  But  he  read  the  books  of  im- 
portance as  they  appeared;  always  an  interested  spectator  of 
what  went  on  around  him.  In  his  own  way  he  took  frequent 
occasion  to  speak  his  mind.  When  he  spoke,  it  was  with 
force  and  directness,  with  the  tone  of  mastery  and  authority. 
He  felt  a  sense  of  responsibility  to  the  church  and  to  the 
world. 


^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  485 

In  considering  subjects  which  come  before  us,  we  may  allow 
a  multitude  of  complicated  circumstances  to  distract  our  mind, 
but  as  soon  as  anything  seems  to  be  of  great  importance  it  lays 
hold  of  the  sense  of  responsibility  within  us  and  becomes  abso- 
lutely simple. 

These  words  of  Phillips  Brooks,  in  one  of  his  occasional 
addresses,  give  us  the  man  and  his  method.  In  everything 
he  said  during  these  eventful  years  there  is  the  air  of  so- 
lemnity, the  sense  of  responsibility,  as  of  one  who  carried 
the  burden  of  his  contemporaries,  and  was  accountable  for 
every  utterance  to  the  supreme  tribunal  of  humanity.  One 
thing  he  fastened  upon  as  absolutely  simple  and  of  the 
highest  significance  amid  all  complications,  —  the  grandeur 
of  the  moment  which  had  brought  liberty  and  freedom  of 
inquiry  to  the  modern  world. 

With  regard  to  all  advances  in  theology,  whether  by  the  race 
at  large  or  by  the  single  thinker,  there  are  one  or  two  observa- 
tions which  may  be  made,  and  which,  it  seems  to  me,  ought  con- 
stantly to  be  kept  in  mind  in  times  like  these,  when  the  world 
of  theological  thought  is  so  full  of  free  activity.  For  the  first 
time  in  many  centuries  the  hand  of  external  restraint  is  abso- 
lutely taken  off  from  theological  thinking.  Neither  painful  pen- 
alties nor  social  disesteem  —  hardly,  except  in  the  extremest 
cases,  even  ecclesiastical  reproof  —  will  attach  themselves  to  free 
speculation  in  theology.  To  many  people  this  state  of  things 
seems  full  of  danger.  To  many  others  it  seems  full  of  hope. 
But  those  who  hope  the  most  from  it  must  be  supremely  anxious 
that  those  who  feel  the  spirit  of  the  age  should  feel  it  worthily, 
and  move  from  conviction  to  conviction,  not  lightly  and  frivo- 
lously, but  seriously  and  calmly,  always  valuing  each  special 
movement  only  as  a  stage  in  the  long,  never-forgotten  search  of 
the  soul  after  the  perfect  truth  and  God.*     1883. 

We  have  seen  during  all  these  years  a  deepening  of  the  reli- 
gious thought  of  our  people.  We  have  seen  God  lead  us  into 
those  broad  fields  of  speculation  where  we  once  thought  it  was 
unwise  or  unsafe  to  go.  We  have  seen  the  books  of  criticism 
opened  and  examined  freely.  We  have  seen  those  things  which 
seemed  essential  to  Christianity  again   and   again  shown  to  be 

^  Cf .  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  227. 


486  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

incidental  to  Christianity.     We  have  seen  how  absolutely  simple 
Christianity  is.^     1885. 

If  I  were  to  group  together  all  the  things  that  I  have  tried 
to  picture  to  you,  —  and  remember  that  religion  is  nothing  in  the 
world  but  the  highest  conception  of  life,  —  the  word  that  is  to 
express  this  all,  the  word  that  is  to  carry  forward  men  as  they 
come  to  believe  in  it,  what  shall  it  be?  In  every  department 
of  life,  whether  I  look  at  politics,  at  government,  at  social  life, 
and  the  relation  of  ethics  thereto,  whether  I  look  at  religion, 
there  is  only  one  word  that  expresses  the  cord  that  binds  the 
human  race:  that  word  is  sympathy.  Present  and  past  religion 
seems  to  have  been  developing  conditions  under  which  sympathy 
might  work.  The  characteristic  word  of  the  past  hundred  years 
has  been  Liberty.  Liberty  is  a  negative  term,  —  the  removal  of 
obstacles,  the  setting  free  of  conditions  under  which  the  essential 
and  absolute  and  positive  power  of  sympathy,  of  the  relation  of 
man  to  man  under  the  recognition  of  their  brotherhood,  should 
find  its  place  and  expression.*     1889. 

There  are  three  things  which  constitute  the  characteristics  of 
the  religion  of  our  time:  its  greater  humanness  extends  what 
it  believes  to  every  man ;  its  larger  conception  of  sanctity  finds 
its  operation  in  fields  that  used  to  be  counted  secular;  and  its 
conception  of  work,  of  labor  to  be  carried  on  and  of  effect  pro- 
duced, finds  expression  in  its  practical  activities.'     1889. 

In  the  largest  survey  we  can  take  of  Mr.  Brooks's  the- 
ological position,  he  appears  as  solicitous  that  the  freedom 
of  inquiry,  which  has  been  gained,  shall  not  be  imperilled  by 
the  dangers  that  wait  on  liberty.  Against  the  dogmatist,  on 
the  one  hand,  who  denied  individual  freedom  and  asserted 
the  claims  of  an  external  authority,  and  against  the  individ- 
ualist, on  the  other,  who  rejected  the  past  as  having  no 
claim  on  the  reverence  of  the  present  age,  he  waged  equal 
war.  It  is  hard  to  say  which  position  was  most  obnoxious 
to  him.  He  would  fain  mediate  between  them.  His  first 
impulse  was  controversial,  but  the  sober  second  thought 
prevailed,  to  keep  him  out  of  controversy.  It  has  been 
already  remarked,  and  more  than  once,  for  the  point  is  an 

1  Cf .  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  148. 

2  Cf .  Ibid.  p.  176.  3  Cf.  Ibid.  p.  174. 


I/' 


^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  487 

important  one,  that  in  his  preaching  his  constitutional  re- 
serve disappeared,  and  he  gave  his  whole  heart  to  the  people. 
But,  in  doing  so,  he  still  obeyed  the  laws  of  the  preacher's 
art,  and  kept  out  of  sight  the  reminders  of  controversial  the- 
ology. While  they  were  in  his  consciousness  and  affected  him 
in  the  preparation  of  every  utterance,  yet  in  the  completed 
product  his  treatment  is  so  impersonal  that  one  might  ima- 
gine he  had  never  heard  of  their  existence. 

There  were  occasions,  however,  when  he  yielded  to  the 
first  impulse,  and  let  himself  go  with  the  full  force  of  his 
nature,  against  what  he  believed  to  be  false  in  theology. 
Then  he  was  like  the  cyclone  in  his  destructive  power.  He 
gave  vent  to  his  gift  of  saying  things  in  perfect  form,  — 
epigrammatic  sentences  which  linger  in  the  memory  as 
axioms.  These  occasions  were  rare,  —  meetings  of  the 
Church  Congress,  essays  at  the  Clericus  Club,  and  one  mem- 
orable occasion,  to  be  mentioned  in  a  later  chapter.  Thus, 
in  1884,  in  a  paper  on  Authority  and  Conscience,  read  before 
the  Church  Congress,  which  met  at  Detroit,  he  denounced 
the  principle  that  external  authority  was  the  ground  of  reli- 
gious faith,  or  that  it  afforded  any  basis  for  certitude,  or 
carried  any  moral  or  spiritual  value.  Such  a  principle  would 
kill  faith  and  the  Christian  church  altogether,  for  the  mere 
assent  which  it  demanded  had  in  it  nothing  of  the  nature 
of  faith.  He  passed  in  review  the  career  of  Newman,  the 
grounds  of  High  Anglicanism,  the  Vincentian  canon,  the 
claims  of  what  some  had  called  the  "oecumenical  mind." 
The  theory  that  the  councils  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries 
were  infallible,  and  had  given  final  limits  to  the  human 
mind  in  theological  inquiry,  he  dismissed  with  the  remark 
that  any  dangers  which  the  Church  might  have  to  encounter 
by  making  conscience  and  free  inquiry  her  guides,  even  with 
the  possibility  of  error,  —  these  "  dangers  are  alive  and  hope- 
ful in  comparison  with  the  dead  and  hopeless  dangers  of  a 
church  which,  under  the  strong  power  of  authority,  commits 
itself  to  a  half -developed,  a  half -recorded,  and  a  half -under- 
stood past."^ 

1  Cf.  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  118. 


488  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-92 

But,  in  the  midst  of  this  invective,  he  could  not  be  one- 
sided or  allow  the  comprehensiveness  of  his  intellectual  and 
spiritual  outlook  to  disappear.  He  advocated  individualism 
'  and  private  judgment  as  the  final  court  of  appeal,  but  in  so 
doing  sought  to  reconcile  them  with  authority.  There  was 
this  truth  "  in  the  current  laudations  of  authority  and  depre- 
cations of  individualism: "  — 

The  individual  does  not  stand  alone.  Backed  by  the  past, 
surrounded  by  the  present,  with  the  world  beside  him,  nay,  with 
the  world,  in  the  great  old  Bible  phrase,  "set  in  his  heart,"  it 
is  his  right,  his  duty,  his  necessity,  to  feed  himself  out  of  all, 
while  yet  to  his  own  personal  conscience  must  come  the  final  test. 
The  true  individualism  is  not  the  individualism  of  Robinson 
Crusoe,  but  the  individualism  of  St.  Paul.  ...  To  use  author- 
ity for  evidence  ;  to  feel  the  power  of  reverend  beauty  which  be- 
longs to  ancient  goodness ;  to  distrust  ourselves  long  when  we 
differ  from  the  wisest  and  the  best;  to  know  that  the  whole  truth 
can  and  must  come,  not  to  the  one  man,  but  to  the  whole  of 
humanity;  and  to  listen  to  that  whole  as  it  groans  and  travails 
■with  its  yet  unmastered  truth  —  to  do  all  this,  and  yet  to  let 
ourselves  call  no  conviction  ours  till  our  own  mind  and  conscience 
has  accepted  it  as  true  —  that  which  is  really  the  great  human 
truth  after  which  the  theories  of  Church  authority  are  searching, 
—  that  is  the  genuine  relation,  I  take  it,  of  the  conscience  to 
authority.  And  that  has  nothing  in  it  of  the  spirit  of  slavish- 
ness  or  death. 

There  is  another  essay  entitled  "Orthodoxy,"  resembling 
in  its  tone  the  essay  on  Authority  and  Conscience,  but  even 
more  severe  in  its  arraignment  of  the  principle  of  authority, 
when  applied  in  an  exclusive  way,  without  the  corrective  of 
individual  responsibility  or  of  the  freedom  of  private  judg- 
ment. The  essay  on  Orthodoxy  was  read  before  the  Clericus 
Club  in  1890.  It  differs  from  the  earlier  essay,  in  that  it 
was  not  written  with  a  view  to  publication.  There  is  humor 
here,  and  satire.  He  notes  that  the  word  "Kakodoxy," 
which  the  old  Fathers  coined  as  the  opposite  of  "Ortho- 
doxy," a  "  delightful  word  "  he  calls  it,  has  not  maintained 
its  place,  but  has  yielded  to  "heresy,"  which  indicates  the 
more  personal  element.  His  comments  on  the  "spirit  of 
orthodoxy"  are  these:  (1)  It  makes  much  use  and  wrong 


^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  489 

use  of  the  principle  of  authority;  (2)  it  is  haunted  and  hin- 
dered by  the  sense  of  the  need  of  immediate  utility  of  truths ; 
(3)  it  associates  itself  with  the  idea  of  unity,  and  regards 
the  spirit  of  freedom,  the  personal  search  for  truth  as  dis- 
turbing the  unity  of  the  church;  (4)  it  is  inspired  by  the 
notion  of  safety  ;  (5)  it  satisfies  the  disposition  which  is  very 
strong  in  many  natures,  the  desire  for  fixity.  On  all  these 
points  he  comments  at  some  length.  He  satirizes  the  desire 
for  safety  as  "singing  the  timid  psalm  of  the  man  who  is 
thankful  for  the  refuge  of  orthodoxy,  — '  Thou  hast  set  my 
feet  in  a  small  room.'  " 

In  regard  to  the  disturbance  of  the  church,  which  was  the 
complaint  made  of  those  who  were  engaged  in  the  personal 
search  for  truth,  he  felt  strongly  and  expressed  himself  with 
vigor.  He  had  denounced  publicly  and  privately  the  silen- 
cing of  a  clergyman,  who  had  been  giving  a  course  of  lectures 
on  the  Bible,  because  it  created  disturbance.  He  criticised 
much  of  the  speculation  of  religious  writers  at  the  time  as 
beset  by  this  consideration,  —  fear  of  disturbing  the  peace 
of  the  church :  — 

Here  is  the  essential  limitation,  both  of  the  interest  and  the 
importance  of  two  much-read  and  much-talked-of  books  of  our 
own  day.  The  authors  of  "Lux  Mundi "  and  the  writers  of 
"Progressive  Orthodoxy"  alike  are  asking  not  simply  what  is 
absolutely  true,  but  what  can  be  reconciled  to  certain  preestab- 
lished  standards  of  unity,  outside  of  which  they  must  not  go. 
This  makes  the  unsatisfactoriness  of  both  the  books.  They  have 
no  primary  or  intrinsic  value.  They  are  uninteresting  except  as 
considered  in  relation  to  the  positions  of  their  authors.  They 
are  rather  psychological  studies  than  investigations  of  truth.  All 
such  secondary  questions  besetting  an  argument  or  exposition 
destroy  its  reality,  and  make  even  the  unity  which  it  tries  to  pre- 
serve an  artificial  thing,  a  mere  modus  vivendi  of  parties,  con- 
scious of  but  trying  to  conceal  discordance  rather  than  a  true 
harmony  of  frankly  differing  but  sympathetic  minds. 

In  his  criticism  of  orthodoxy,  PhiUips  Brooks  was  not 
combating  formulas  or  articles  of  faith  which  go  under  that 
designation.  There  is  no  evidence  that  he  rejected  any  of 
the  decisions  of  councils  to  which  his  Church  had  lent  her 


490  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-92 

sanction.  He  is  not  known  by  the  denial  of  any  article  of 
the  creeds,  or  as  giving  his  approval  to  any  attitude  in  his- 
torical theology  which  the  church  of  the  past  had  condemned 
as  false.  In  this  sense  of  the  word  he  was  orthodox.  What 
he  was  resisting  was  a  tendency  in  the  use  of  the  word  "or- 
thodoxy "  to  condemn  free  inquiry,  or  the  duty  of  private 
judgment.  But  even  while  opposing  what  he  felt  was  at 
war  with  the  interests  of  truth,  he  yet  strove  to  be  fair,  to 
recognize  the  good  there  was  or  might  be  in  an  attitude  with 
which  he  had  no  sympathy.  It  is  important  to  let  him  speak 
here  for  himself :  — 

»  Orthodoxy  is,  in  the  Church,  very  much  what  prejudice  is  in  the 
single  mind.  It  is  the  premature  conceit  of  certainty.  It  is  the 
treatment  of  the  imperfect  as  if  it  were  the  perfect.  And  yet  pre- 
judice is  not  to  be  ruthlessly  denounced.  It  is  not  only  to  be  ac- 
cepted as  inevitable ;  it,  or  that  for  which  it  stands,  is  to  be  ac- 
knowledged as  indispensable.  If  prejudice  can  only  be  kept  open 
for  revision  and  enlargement,  if  it  can  be  always  aware  of  its  par- 
tialness  and  imperfection,  then  it  becomes  simply  a  point  of  depar- 
ture for  newer  worlds  of  thought  and  action,  or,  we  may  say,  a 
working  hypothesis,  which  is  one  stage  of  the  progress  toward  truth. 

It  is  possible  to  think  of  orthodoxy  in  that  way,  and  then  it 
clearly  manifests  its  uses.  It  does  beyond  all  doubt  put  into 
forms  of  immediate  effectiveness  great  truths  which  in  their  large 
conception  seem  to  stand  so  far  away,  and  so  to  wait  for  their  full 
revelation,  that  they  are  hard  to  apply  to  present  life.  It  does 
no  doubt  seem  to  make  capable  of  transportation  and  transmission 
truths  which  in  their  deeper  spirituality  it  is  not  easy  to  think 
of  except  as  the  sacred  and  secret  possession  of  the  individual 
soul.  It  has  no  doubt  served  to  carry  the  Church  over,  as  it 
were,  some  of  those  periods  of  depressed  and  weakened  vitality 
which  come  between  the  exalted  and  spontaneous  conditions  which 
are  its  true  life.  The  same  service,  perhaps,  it  renders  also  to 
the  personal  experience,  bridging  the  sad  chasms  between  the 
rock  of  belief  on  this  side  and  the  rock  of  belief  on  that  side 
with  the  wooden  structure  of  conformity. 

These,  briefly  stated,  are  the  uses  of  orthodoxy.  Against 
these  meagre  uses  are  to  be  set  the  vastly  predominant  evil  which 
the  whole  principle  of  orthodoxy  brings  to  personal  freedom  and 
reality  on  one  side,  and  to  the  purity  and  extension  of  truth  upon 
the  other.     The  indictment  which  can  be  sustained  against  it  is 


^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  491 

tremendous.  Orthodoxy  begins  by  setting  a  false  standard  of 
life.  It  makes  men  aspire  after  soundness  in  the  faith  rather 
than  after  richness  in  the  truth.  It  exalts  possessions  over  char- 
acter, makes  more  of  truths  than  of  truthfulness,  talks  about 
truths  as  if  they  were  things  which  were  quite  separated  from 
the  truth-holder,  things  which  he  might  take  in  his  hand  and  pass 
to  his  neighbor  without  their  passing  into  and  through  his  nature. 
It  makes  possible  an  easy  transmission  of  truth,  but  only  by  the 
deadening  of  truth,  as  a  butcher  freezes  meat  in  order  to  carry 
it  across  the  sea.  Orthodoxy  discredits  and  discourages  inquiry, 
and  has  made  the  name  of  "free-thinker,"  which  ought  to  be  a 
crown  and  glory,  a  stigma  of  disgrace.  It  puts  men  in  the  base 
and  demoralizing  position  in  which  they  apologize  for  seeking  new 
truth.  It  is  responsible  for  a  large  part  of  the  defiant  liberalism 
which  not  merely  disbelieves  the  orthodox  dogma,  but  disbelieves 
it  with  a  sense  of  attempted  wrong  and  of  triumphant  escape.  It 
is  orthodoxy,  and  not  truth,  which  has  done  the  persecuting. 
The  inquisitions  and  dungeons  and  social  ostracisms  for  opinion's 
sake  belong  to  it.  And  in  the  truths  which  it  holds  it  loses  dis- 
crimination and  delicate  sense  of  values,  holding  them  not  for 
their  truth  so  much  as  for  their  use  or  their  safety ;  it  gives  them 
a  rude  and  general  identity,  and  misses  the  subtle  difference 
which  makes  each  truth  separate  from  every  other.  Orthodoxy 
deals  in  coarse  averages.  It  makes  of  the  world  of  truth  a  sort 
of  dollar-store,  wherein  a  few  things  are  rated  below  their  real 
value  for  the  sake  of  making  a  host  of  other  things  pass  for  more 
than  they  are  worth,  and  in  the  lives  of  those  who  live  by  it 
orthodoxy  makes  no  appeal  to  poetry  or  imagination.  There, 
too,  it  delights  in  the  average  condition.  It  would  maintain  the 
sea  of  belief  and  emotion  at  one  fixed  level.  It  would  give  no 
place  on  one  hand  to  great  floods  of  fulness  which  uplift  the  soul, 
nor  on  the  other  to  pathetic  periods  of  ebb  and  emptiness  which 
lay  bare  its  deepest,  most  unsatisfied  desires.  It  has  its  own 
tumults  of  the  lower  sort,  — tumults  of  envy  and  contempt,  of 
suspicion  and  dislike,  which  it  stirs  in  human  minds,  but  the 
loftiest  and  profoimdest  passions  and  struggles  it  catches  sight  of 
only  to  shudder  at  and  denounce.  These  are  the  evil  things 
which  the  spirit  of  orthodoxy  does  and  is,  all  of  which  sum  them- 
selves up  in  this,  —  that  it  is  born  of  fear,  and  has  no  natural 
heritage  either  from  hope  or  love.^ 

At  the  opposite  extreme  from  the  ecclesiastical  temper, 
with   its   devotion   to   dogma,    stood   the   so-called   Liberal 
^  Essays  and  Addresses,  pp.  193-195. 


492  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

school,  and  the  Free  Eeligionists,  who  regarded  freedom  as 
attainable  only  by  the  rejection  of  dogma.  But  from  this 
attitude  Phillips  Brooks  diverged  as  widely  and  deeply  as 
from  the  ecclesiastical  attitude.  He,  too,  was  free,  —  and 
this  was  what  puzzled  and  confused  many  of  his  contempora- 
ries, —  he  could  stand  in  a  pulpit  of  the  Episcopal  Church, 
speaking  forth  with  all  boldness,  no  man  hindering  him,  the 
living  truths  which  their  own  souls  hungered  after  and 
eagerly  welcomed,  unhampered  by  dogmas  and  traditions, 
apparently  more  free  than  they  were.  They  could  draw  only 
one  inference,  —  like  themselves,  he  must  have  attained  his 
freedom  by  the  abandonment  of  ecclesiastical  dogmas  and 
traditions.  But  then  came  the  question,  How  could  he  re- 
main in  the  Episcopal  Church,  with  its  Creeds  and  Articles 
of  Religion?  They  could  not  impugn  his  honor  or  sincerity, 
for  these  were  the  most  transparent  qualities  in  his  nature, 
and  his  sincerity  and  simplicity  were  manifestly  sources  of 
his  power.  The  only  alternative  was  to  discredit  his  intel- 
lectual capacity.  It  was  also  said  that  he  was  so  absorbed 
with  the  supreme  motive  of  love  for  humanity,  that  he  gave 
no  thought  to  these  things  with  which  other  men  were  con- 
cerned. Some  of  these  expressions  of  opinion  regarding  him 
are  here  given:  — 

He  was  not,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  that  word,  a  thinker,  a 
logician.  He  never  argues,  he  never  attempts  to  establish  a  cer- 
tain position,  to  controvert  the  position  of  another.  He  is  not 
a  logician;  he  is  not,  in  that  sense,  a  teacher.  He  seems  to 
have  had  no  sort  of  interest  in  theological  debates,  theological 
distinctions  or  questions  of  any  kind.  He  seems  to  have  been 
entirely  unaffected,  consciously  at  any  rate,  by  modern  criticism, 
for  example,  the  authenticity  and  authorship  of  Biblical  books, 
,  the  question  of  miracle,  the  natural  and  the  supernatural.  All 
these  questions  he  put  on  one  side.  He  did  not  care  for  them. 
His  mental  make-up  did  not  lead  him  to  become  interested  in 
them. 

A  distinguished  Unitarian  clergyman,  who  held  Phillips 
Brooks  in  high  esteem,  says  of  him  :  — 

t/  He  was  not  a  theologian,  as  Jesus  was  not.    .    .    .   Had  he  been 

a  man  of  an  intellectual  cast,  he  might  have  wavered  in  his  faith. 


^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  493 

...  I  am  not  sure  that,  through  his  love  of  man,  this  preacher 
was  always  strictly  consistent  in  all  his  words  and  acts.  Few 
who  maintain  the  orthodox  view  nowadays  are  consistent.  They 
are  apt  to  be  larger  than  their  creeds.  .  .  .  His  intellectual  lim- 
itations defended  and  favored  him  in  his  peculiar  office.  Had  he 
been  more  profound  and  philosophic  as  a  thinker,  he  might  have 
lost  something  of  clearness  in  his  vision,  .  .  .  Some  of  his  fellow 
churchmen  dreaded  him  for  his  breadth  of  view  and  feeling;  and 
some  of  us,  for  these,  would  have  claimed  him  as  a  Unitarian. 
Well,  he  was  Unitarian  in  his  assertion  of  mental  freedom. 

In  these  extracts  there  is  contained  the  implication  that 
religious  and  intellectual  freedom  is  only  to  be  gained  by  the 
rejection  of  tradition  and  dogma.  That  was  one  of  the  com- 
monplaces of  "liberal  religion."  But  it  was  the  character- 
istic of  Phillips  Brooks  that  he  stood  above  the  sphere  of  the 
commonplace,  whether  in  ecclesiasticism  or  in  liberalism. 
He  was  cast  in  a  very  different  mould.  He  had  attained  his 
freedom  through  dogma,  not  by  its  rejection,  and  dogma 
continued  to  minister  to  his  freedom.  This  is  one  of  the 
secrets  of  his  power,  of  his  superiority,  of  his  universality. 
He  had  a  larger  freedom  than  those  who  rejected  tradition, 
for  they  were  free  to  move  only  in  one  direction,  and  he  was 
free  to  move  in  every  direction.  Such  freedom,  so  rare,  so 
unparalleled,  had  come  to  him  by  the  secret  he  had  learned 
when  he  was  preparing  his  soul  for  his  work,  —  the  power  of 
appropriating  dogma  by  translating  it  into  terms  of  life. 
Only  a  man  of  the  highest  intellectual  capacity  was  capable 
of  such  a  process.  Let  Phillips  Brooks  spealc  on  this  point 
for  himself.  In  a  preface  which  he  wrote  for  a  little  book 
compiled  from  the  writings  of  Maurice  called  "Truth  and 
Action,"  he  says :  — 

The  days  in  which  we  live  are  a  good  deal  given  to  contempt 
for  theology.  In  this  great  teacher  of  our  day  there  was  a  noble 
rebuke  and  protest  against  that  feeble  and  enfeebling  scorn.  He 
was  altogether  a  theologian.  For  him  all  knowledge  which  de- 
served the  name  of  knowledge  was  theology.  Our  weak  way  of 
talking  about  dogma  as  an  excrescence  and  encumbrance  found 
no  tolerance  with  him.  He  was  no  dogmatist,  but  he  got  rid  of 
dead  dogmas,  not  by  burying  them  or  burning  them,  but  by  filling 
them  with  life. 


494  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

In  his  note-book  for  1882  are  to  be  found  these  hints :  — 

A  serious  sermon  on  Dogma.  What  difference  it  really  does 
make  whether  men  believe  these  things ;  whether  they  should  teach 
them  to  others;  whether  character  has  relations  to  belief;  what 
it  all  has  to  do  with  destiny.  The  justification  of  the  belief 
that  all  men  have  always  had  of  the  Importance  of  believing. 

This  same  principle  is  stated  often  in  his  earlier  writings, 
in  his  "Lectures  on  Preaching"  and  in  "The  Influence  of 
Jesus."  Li  1884,  in  his  address  on  Authority  and  Con- 
science, he  repeats  it :  — 

Authority  is  the  ship  in  which  the  dogma  sails.  I  get  my 
dogma  from  authority,  as  I  get  my  package  from  the  ship.  But 
it  is  the  soul,  the  conscience,  which  turns  the  dogma  back  again 
to  truth.  No  soul  can  feed  on  dogma,  as  no  man  can  eat  the 
package  which  is  landed  on  the  wharf.  Authority  may  bring 
what  dogma  has  been  given  it  to  bring.  Only  the  dogma  which 
can  be  opened  into  truth  can  live.  Only  the  truth  which  the  soul 
appropriates  gives  life.  Authority  is  responsible  for  safe  packing 
and  safe  transportation,  but  the  real  living  part  of  the  process  is 
when,  after  the  unpacking  has  taken  place,  the  conscience  tries 
to  turn  the  dogma  which  it  has  received  back  again  into  truth. ^ 

And  again,  so  late  as  1890,  there  is  evidence  that  on  this 
point  his  conviction  had  not  changed :  — 

And  what  is  another  question  that  is  before  us  perpetually? 
It  is  the  question  of  the  separation  of  dogma  and  life.  Men  are 
driven  foolishly  to  say  on  one  side  that  dogma  is  everything,  and 
on  the  other  that  life  is  everything.  As  if  there  could  be  any 
life  that  did  not  spring  out  of  truth !  As  if  there  could  be  any 
truth  that  was  really  felt  that  did  not  manifest  itself  in  life! 
It  is  not  by  doctrine  becoming  less  earnest  in  filling  itself  with 
all  the  purity  of  God ;  it  is  only  by  both  dogma  and  life,  doc- 
trine and  life,  becoming  vitalized  through  and  through,  that  they 
shall  reach  after  and  find  another.  Only  when  things  are  alive 
do  they  reach  out  for  the  fulness  of  their  life  and  claim  that 
which  belongs  to  them.^ 

The  explanation  of  Phillips  Brooks's  development,  which 
gave  him  this  method  of  attaining  the  highest  and  largest 
freedom  possible  to  man,  has  been  already  shown,  as  we 

1  Cf.  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  114. 

2  Cf.  Ibid.  p.  181. 


^T.  33-s6}  THEOLOGY  495 

have  traced  the  process  of  his  growth  from  boyhood.  His 
love  for  humanity  included  the  past  as  well  as  the  present. 
He  assumed  as  an  axiom,  borne  out  by  his  knowledge  of  life 
and  history,  that  freedom  was  the  end  of  human  existence, 
for  which  it  was  seen  toiling  in  every  age.  He  built  upon 
this  presumption  as  the  corner-stone  of  his  religious  philoso- 
phy, that  dogmas  had  not  been  fastened  upon  the  church  for 
the  purpose  of  limiting  the  freedom  of  man,  but  rather  for 
enlarging  and  securing  it.  History  became  unintelligible 
upon  any  other  basis,  and  in  the  history  of  humanity  his 
soul  delighted,  as  bringing  him  at  every  point  the  confirma- 
tion of  the  Divine  revelation.  In  one  sense  he  was  not  a 
dogmatic  preacher,  defending  in  the  pulpit  ecclesiastical  doc- 
trines. Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  the  hidden  motive  and  inspi- 
ration of  many,  if  not  most,  of  his  sermons  was  some  recondite 
aspect  of  dogma,  into  whose  meaning  he  had  penetrated,  and 
in  so  doing,  caught  fresh  confirmation  of  the  higher  possi- 
bilities in  humanity.  But  it  was  his  method  to  conceal  the 
process  in  his  own  mind,  and  to  make  such  a  doctrine  glow 
with  life  and  beauty  as  to  charm  his  hearers,  till  it  seemed 
like  a  new  truth.  And  there  was  this  further  peculiarity 
about  him,  that  he  would  not  discuss  doctrines,  as  mere  opin- 
ions. When  that  kind  of  talk  went  on  he  was  silent.  But 
let  him  gain  a  new  glimpse  of  some  relation  between  the 
doctrine  and  life,  and  then  his  whole  nature  would  be  stirred 
to  its  very  depths.  And  it  must  still  further  be  said,  that 
he  was  constantly  revolving  these  doctrines  of  the  church  in 
his  mind.  They  were  never  absent  from  his  consciousness 
at  home  or  abroad.  They  constituted  his  mental  furniture, 
the  conditions  of  all  his  thinking.  They  had  been  drilled 
into  him  from  his  childhood,  as  had  the  hymns  which  he  had 
learned  to  repeat  on  Sunday  evenings,  as  a  boy  at  home. 
For  three  years  he  had  devoted  himself  to  studying  their 
deeper  meaning  in  the  theological  school.  For  the  first  ten 
years  of  his  ministry  it  had  been  his  highest  enjoyment  to 
review  the  whole  field  of  doctrines,  interpreting  them  in 
terms  of  life,  and  in  so  doing  had  laid  the  foundation  of  his 
fame  and  power  as  a  preacher. 


496  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  Phillips  Brooks  was 
not  quite  the  man  that  he  was  assumed  to  be  by  those  whose 
motive  it  was  that  liberty  was  to  be  attained  by  the  negation 
of  the  historic  faith.  His  view  of  progress  and  the  method  of 
progress,  also  differed  from  the  popular  conception.  Pro- 
gress was  a  great  word  with  him,  constantly  on  his  lips,  and 
the  idea  for  which  it  stood  inspired  him  with  hope  and  enthu- 
siasm. He  could  not  separate  his  conviction  of  progress  from 
his  faith  in  humanity.  But  he  felt  that  true  progress  was 
endangered  by  a  tendency  to  regard  it  as  an  emancipation 
from  the  past.  Thus,  in  a  sermon  preached  before  the  grad- 
uating class  of  the  Institute  of  Technology,  in  1892,  he  took 
Progress  for  his  theme.  His  text  was  the  words  of  St.  Paul 
(Phil.  iii.  12),  "I  press  on,  if  so  be  that  I  may  apprehend 
that  for  which  also  I  was  apprehended  by  Christ  Jesus:  "  — 

There  are  two  kinds  of  progress  in  St.  Paul's  life,  — the  one 
where  he  is  represented  as  migrating  from  one  situation  to  an- 
other, the  other  where,  as  in  the  text,  he  makes  deeper  entrance 
into  the  condition  in  which  he  already  stands. 

Now  these  two  kinds  of  progress  which  Paul  sets  before  us  are 
seen  in  every  individual  life  that  truly  completes  itself,  and  in 
all  the  development  of  mankind.  There  is  a  progress  of  migra- 
tion in  which  one  leaves  the  country  in  which  he  has  been  living 
and  goes  forward  into  another ;  and  there  is  a  progress  of  occupa- 
tion, where  a  man  enters  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  things  in 
which  he  is  already  involved. 

It  is  the  last  of  these  two  forms  of  progress  that  is  the  greatest 
and  richest  to  the  soul,  by  which  a  man  takes  deeper  possession 
of  the  thing  already  possessing  him.  Our  fathers  migrated  to 
this  country  and  occupied  it,  hut  their  occupation  has  been  greater 
than  was  their  migration. 

It  is  the  same  in  regard  to  truth.  Sometimes  a  man  goes  on 
to  new  truth,  but  he  never  loses  his  hold  on  the  great  truths  he 
has  acquired.  I  always  hold  my  truth,  but  I  am  forever  progress- 
ing in  it.  It  is  always  given  more  and  more  as  I  am  able  to 
receive  more  and  more. 

The  real  truth  in  the  troublesome  theology  of  these  days  is 
that  God  is  leading  the  people,  not  away  from  the  old  truths,  but 
down  deeper  into  them. 

It  is  not  primarily  a  time  of  belief  or  unbelief,  of  the  accep- 
tance or  rejection  of  the  things  which  our  fathers  believed;   but 


>^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  497 

it  is  a  great  time  of  definition,  in  which  God  is  letting  us  see 
more  deeply  into  the  real  meaning  of  those  things  which  our 
fathers  believed,  which  have  held  the  world  in  ages  past,  and 
which  the  world  will  come  to  hold  more  and  more  strongly  in  the 
future,  until  it  comes  to  see  how  in  the  heart  of  them  —  contra- 
dictory as  many  of  the  statements  and  applications  of  them  have 
been  —  lie  the  eternal  verities,  the  rich  and  blessed  certainties, 
of  how  man  is  forever  God's,  and  how  God  has  striven  for  the 
possession  of  the  children  to  whom  He  longs  to  give  Himself. 

Although  he  was  in  sympathy  with  what  was  called  the 
"new  theology,"  yet  his  motive  in  advocating  its  claims  was 
distinctively  his  own,  and  not  wholly  to  be  identified  with 
the  position  of  many  of  his  contemporaries.  His  reason  for 
rejoicing  in  the  movements  of  thought  and  the  expressions  of 
religious  conviction  was  the  implication  of  the  larger  freedom 
which  had  come  to  the  Christian  church.  It  had  been,  as  we 
have  seen  in  his  early  years,  the  fear  that  his  freedom  would 
be  reduced  by  becoming  a  Christian  minister,  which  had  de- 
terred him  from  committing  himself  to  the  ministry  as  a  pro- 
fession. Then  had  come  the  discovery  that  in  reality  he  had 
enlarged  his  freedom  as  he  could  have  done  in  no  other  way. 
He  was  free  in  the  pulpit  and  in  the  parish  and  in  the  world 
to  manifest  himself  in  the  rich  variety  of  his  endowment,  to 
give  expression  to  the  whole  content  of  his  soul.  More  than 
he  valued  the  "new  theology"  did  he  value  the  freedom  of 
which  it  was  the  evidence.  In  this  respect  his  own  age 
seemed  to  him  one  of  the  few  greatest  in  the  world's  history; 
and  he  looked  forward  to  the  future  as  still  more  glorious, 
because  it  would  have  the  opportunity  of  realizing  what  was 
wrapped  up  in  this  treasure  of  human  freedom.  Because  he 
loved  and  cherished  freedom,  he  resisted  the  ecclesiastical 
moods  which  were  urging  authority  as  a  means  of  repressing 
freedom. 

But  there  was  another  side  to  the  question,  there  was  a 
danger  to  be  encountered  and  to  be  feared.  Intimations 
abounded  that  the  new  freedom  might  degenerate  into  laxity 
or  indifference.  Against  this  danger  he  protested  with  even 
more  earnestness,  if  that  were  possible,  than  against  the  or- 
thodoxy which  assailed  freedom  in  the  opposite  direction. 

VOL.  II 


498  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-92 

It  is  difficult  to  do  full  justice  to  his  position,  but  at  least 
the  attempt  must  be  made.  He  had  been  called  a  Unitarian, 
"in  his  assertion  of  mental  freedom,  in  his  superiority  to 
narrow  lines  of  sect,  his  wide  sympathies,  his  more  than  tol- 
erance for  all  sincere  and  earnest  thought."  All  this  was 
true  of  him.  He  did  believe  in  tolerance.  But  he  also  be- 
lieved that  the  tolerance  which  was  grounded  in  indifference 
to  dogma  or  rose  from  the  ruins  of  its  rejection  was  a  dan- 
gerous thing.  He  saw  that  a  new  word  needed  to  be  spoken 
on  the  subject  of  tolerance.  He  had  gone  through  the  books 
on  the  subject,  the  various  pleas  that  had  been  put  forth  in 
the  different  generations  in  behalf  of  tolerance,  and  none  of 
them  satisfied  him, — Milton's  "Areopagitica,"  Eoger  Wil- 
liams's "Bloody  Tenent  of  Persecution  for  Cause  of  Con- 
science," Jeremy  Taylor's  "Liberty  of  Prophesying,"  Locke's 
"Letter  of  Toleration,"  Lessing's  "Nathan  the  Wise,"  and 
John  Stuart  Mill's  "On  Liberty."  He  determined,  there- 
fore, to  bring  to  his  age  a  contribution  of  his  own,  showing 
on  what  principle  his  own  tolerance  rested.  In  1885  he 
accepted  the  invitation  from  the  "Select  Preachers'  Syndi- 
cate," to  preach  before  the  University  of  Cambridge.  He 
took  for  his  subject  "Tolerance,"  as  that  of  all  others  upon 
which  he  most  wished  to  speak  on  a  representative  occasion. 
In  1886  he  enlarged  his  sermon  into  two  lectures,  which  he 
delivered  before  the  General  Theological  Seminary  in  New 
York,  and  afterwards  before  the  Philadelphia  Divinity 
School  and  the  Episcopal  Theological  School  in  Cambridge, 
and  then  he  gave  his  further  sanction  to  his  utterance  by 
their  publication.  In  its  artistic  form,  its  learning,  its  in- 
tellectual penetration,  this  small  book  deserves  a  place  by 
the  side  of  his  Lectures  on  Preaching.  But  there  came  to 
him  no  chorus  of  plaudits  on  its  appearance.  In  eccle- 
siastical circles  the  subject  was  unwelcome,  and  in  the  cir- 
cles of  "liberal"  thought  tolerance  upon  the  grounds  he 
urged  seemed  unmeaning  and  vain.  Yet  one  may  believe 
his  conclusion  is  that  to  which  the  world  must  ultimately 
come. 

The  book  on  tolerance  is  a  very  personal  one,  for  he  was 


^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  499 

vindicating  his  own  position,  his  mental  freedom,  his  supe- 
riority to  narrow  sectarian  lines,  his  wide  sympathies,  his 
own  tolerance  for  all  sincere  and  earnest  thought.  He  was 
guarding  himself  against  "being  travestied  and  misdescribed 
either  by  bigotry,  on  the  one  hand,  or  by  what  is  called 
'  free  thought '  on  the  other."  His  tone  is  at  times  tender 
and  pathetic.  He  was  gentle  and  kind,  for  he  had  adversa- 
ries to  conciliate  if  possible.  He  knew  that  his  position  was 
a  difficult  one  to  maintain,  but  he  was  determined  to  make 
it  clear,  and  to  enforce  and  recommend  it  by  the  fascination 
of  his  eloquence  and  his  wide  observation  and  experience  of 
life.  He  took  for  his  text,  if  we  may  call  it  so,  a  passage 
from  the  writings  of  Maurice,  which  he  admits  sounds  like 
a  paradox,  but  will  come  to  be  an  axiom,  —  "  It  is  the  nat- 
ural feeling  of  all,  that  charity  is  founded  upon  the  uncer- 
tainty of  truth.  I  believe  that  it  is  founded  on  the  certainty 
of  truth." 

The  Lectures  on  Tolerance  are  of  importance  as  giving  the 
latest  convictions  of  Phillips  Brooks  on  the  questions  relating 
to  his  age  with  which  he  had  been  concerned.  In  some  re- 
spects there  had  been  a  change  in  his  attitude  compared  with 
that  of  his  earlier  years,  and  yet  of  no  fundamental  charac- 
ter. But  the  philosophy  underlying  these  expressions  of  his 
soul  is  more  clear  and  emphatic  and  profound  than  when  he 
first  began  to  teach.  This  little  treatise  so  abounds  with 
striking  thought  and  felicitous  sentences  that  it  must  be  read 
to  be  appreciated.  A  few  extracts  from  it  may  serve  the 
purpose  of  showing  its  leading  motive. 

There  are  few  subjects  so  interesting  and  important  which  have 
been  so  inadequately  treated.  There  is  no  worthy  book  on  the 
subject.  To  write  one  might  well  be  the  satisfaction  and  honor 
of  any  man's  life. 

The  passion  for  toleration  in  our  time  has  much  to  do  with  the 
vagueness  and  uncertainty  of  belief.  We  must  realize  the  inten- 
sity with  which  men  believed  things  in  the  seventeenth  century 
before  we  presmne  to  judge  their  intolerance.  In  the  way  we 
merely  try  to  be  harmless  we  are  like  steamers  in  the  fog,  whis- 
tling that  they  may  not  run  into  others  nor  they  into  us.     It  is 


/ 


500  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

$afe,  but  commerce  makes  no  great  progress  thereby,  and  it  shows 
no  great  skill  in  navigation. 

In  his  argument  for  tolerance  he  was  required  to  meet  that 
class  of  minds  which  have  been  in  the  habit  of  thinking  that 
strong,  positive  conviction  was  incompatible  with  tolerance. 

It  would  not  be  strange  if  we  had  all  felt  such  a  fear.  It 
would  be  strange  if  any  of  us  had  escaped  it,  so  studiously,  so 
constantly,  so  earnestly,  has  the  world  been  assured  that  positive 
faith  and  tolerance  have  no  fellowship  with  one  another.  "The 
only  foundation  for  tolerance,"  said  Charles  James  Fox,  "is  a 
degree  of  skepticism." 

The  perfect  tolerance  could  not  come  about  by  mere  eclec- 
ticism. 

Some  day  —  this  is  the  dream  that  haunts  some  amiable 
minds  —  some  great  peacemaker  will  pick  out  from  every  system 
of  thought  its  choicest  dogma  and,  setting  them  together,  will 
build  a  dogmatic  home  where  every  soul  will  be  completely  satis- 
fied, because  when  it  looks  up  it  will  see  its  own  chief  article  of 
faith  set  in  a  place  of  honor  in  its  walls.  But  the  result  of  such 
an  effort  would  be  a  thing  of  shreds  and  patches,  dropping  to 
pieces  as  soon  as  the  man  who  devised  it  was  dead.  It  is  the 
fatal  difficulty  of  eclecticism,  "that  each  man  wants  to  make  his 
own  selection,  and  no  man  can  choose  for  others,  but  only  for 
himself." 

He  defined  true  tolerance  as  "the  willing  consent  that 
other  men  should  hold  and  express  opinions  with  which  we 
disagree,  until  they  are  convinced  by  reason  that  those  opin- 
ions are  untrue." 

"Earnest  discussion  is  a  part  of  tolerance."  "It  might  have 
all  the  power  to  put  down  error  by  force,  and  it  would  never  use 
it.  But  true  tolerance  must  be  utterly  impatient  toward  dishon- 
esty, hypocrisy,  self-conceit,  or  cant.  There  is  a  moral  intoler- 
ance which  must  go  with  intellectual  tolerance  to  give  it  vigor." 

The  nature  of  tolerance  ...  is  composed  of  two  elements, 
both  of  which  are  necessary  to  its  true  existence,  and  on  the  har- 
monious and  proportionate  blending  of  which  the  quality  of  the 
tolerance  which  is  the  result  depends.  These  elements  are,  first, 
positive  conviction;  and  second,  sympathy  with  men  whose  con- 
victions differ  from  our  own. 


'/r/./-^." 


^T.  sss^}  THEOLOGY  501 

True  tolerance  consists  in  the  love  of  truth  and  the  love  of 
man,  each  brought  to  its  perfection,  and  living  in  harmony  with 
one  another,  .  .  .  orbed  and  enfolded  in  the  greater  love  of 
God.  The  love  of  truth  alone  grows  cruel.  It  has  no  pity  for 
man.  .  .  .  And  the  love  of  man  alone  grows  weak.  It  trims 
and  moulds  and  travesties  the  truth  to  suit  men's  whims. 

The  advice  to  give  to  every  bigot  whom  you  want  to  make  a 
tolerant  man  must  be  not,  "Hold  your  faith  more  lightly  and 
make  less  of  it,"  but,  "Hold  your  faith  more  profoundly  and 
make  more  of  it."  Get  down  to  its  first  spiritual  meaning; 
grasp  its  fundamental  truth.  So  you  will  be  glad  that  your 
brother  starts  from  that  same  centre,  though  he  strikes  the  same 
circumference  at  quite  another  point  from  yours. 

It  is  true,  strange  as  it  sounds  at  first,  that  the  more  deeply 
and  spiritually  a  man  believes  in  fixed,  endless  punishment  of 
wicked  men,  the  more  and  not  the  less  tolerant  he  will  become 
of  his  brother  who  cherishes  eternal  hope. 

Nor  is  the  promise  of  the  future  to  be  found  in  the  idea  that 
some  day  one  of  the  present  forms  of  faith,  one  of  the  present 
conceptions  of  God  and  man  and  life,  shall  so  overwhelmingly 
assert  its  truth  that  every  other  form  of  faith  shall  come  and  lay 
its  claims  before  its  feet  and  ask  to  be  obliterated  or  absorbed. 
Truth  has  not  anywhere  been  so  monopolized.  And  no  man  who 
delights  in  the  activity  of  the  human  mind,  as  the  first  condition 
of  the  attainment  of  final  truth  by  man,  can  think  complacently 
of  any  period  short  of  the  perfect  arrival  at  the  goal  of  absolute 
certainty  with  reference  to  all  knowledge,  when  man  shall  cease 
to  wonder  and  to  inquire,  and  so  pass  out  of  the  possibility  of 
error  and  mistake. 

The  real  unity  of  Christendom  is  not  to  be  found  at  last  in 
identity  of  organization,  nor  in  identity  of  dogma.  Both  of  those 
have  been  dreamed  of  and  have  failed.  But  in  the  unity  of  spir- 
itual consecration  to  a  common  Lord  ...  all  souls  shall  be  one 
with  each  other  in  virtue  of  that  simple  fact,  in  virtue  of  that 
common  reaching  after  Christ,  that  common  earnestness  of  loy- 
alty to  what  they  know  of  Him.  There  is  the  only  unity  that  is 
thoroughly  worthy  either  of  God  or  man. 

That  seems  to  many,  I  know,  to  be  dim  and  vague.  It  is  a 
terrible  and  sad  sign  of  how  far  our  Christianity  is  from  its  per- 
fection that  now,  after  these  centuries  of  its  sway,  the  central 
key  and  secret  of  its  power  should  seem  dim  and  vague  to  men. 


502  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

The  modifications  of  theological  belief,  whose  coming  had 
been  long  delayed,  and  the  expansion  and  development  of  dog- 
mas, requiring  the  contributions  of  many  thinkers,  were  tak- 
ing shape  in  the  decade  of  the  eighties,  as  a  distinct  system 
of  doctrines  to  which  the  name  was  given  of  the  "new  theo- 
logy." For  this  result  Phillips  Brooks  had  been  preparing 
the  way.  No  one  in  America  had  done  more  than  he  to 
show  that  a  change  was  needed,  and  what  the  nature  of  the 
change  must  be.  From  this  point  of  view,  if  his  Lectures 
on  Preaching  and  his  book  on  the  Influence  of  Jesus,  as 
well  as  almost  every  sermon  he  preached,  were  studied,  it 
would  appear  that  he  was  in  sympathy  with  the  attempt  to 
reconstruct  the  foundations  of  religious  belief.  It  was  the 
one  issue  imparting  imity  and  consistency  to  his  thinking 
from  the  time  that  he  began  to  preach.  On  this  point  he 
has  spoken  most  plainly.  In  a  sermon  preached  in  1884, 
and  afterward  published  with  his  sanction,  he  says :  — 

We  hear  much  of  what  is  called  the  "New  Theology."  Let 
us  not  quarrel  about  a  name.  In  that  which  is  generally  and 
vaguely  designated  by  that  name  I  think  we  ought  thoroughly 
to  believe.  It  seems  to  me  as  if  the  Christian  world  to-day 
were  entering  upon  a  movement,  nay,  had  already  entered  upon 
and  gone  far  in  a  movement,  which  is  certainly  to  be  not  less 
profound  and  full  of  meaning  than  the  great  Protestant  Refor- 
mation of  three  centuries  ago.  The  final  meaning  of  that  move- 
ment really  is  the  nearness  of  the  soul  of  God  to  the  soul  of  man, 
and  of  the  soul  of  man  to  God.  It  is  the  meaning  of  the  Incar- 
nation.* 

In  his  essay  on  Authority  and  Conscience  (1884),  there  is 
a  similar  statement :  — 

We  hear  much  to-day  about  the  "  New  Theology."  It  is 
not  a  name,  it  is  not  a  thing  to  fear.  If  man  is  really  growing 
nearer  to  God,  not  farther  away  from  God,  every  advancing  age 
must  have  a  new  theology. 

And  again,  in  a  sermon,  preached  so  early  as  1878,  he  had 
spoken  even  more  strongly :  — 

^  The  sermon  from  which  this  extract  is  taken  was  published  in  Unity  Church- 
Doer  Pulpit,  Chicago,  December  15,  1885. 


^T.  33-56']  THEOLOGY  503 

I  believe  the  new  is  better  than  the  old.  The  new  theology 
in  all  its  great  general  characteristics  I  love  with  all  my  heart. 
I  rejoice  to  preach  it,  as  Moses  must  have  felt  his  heart  fill  with 
joy  as  he  went  forth  to  pray  for  the  calmer  sky  and  the  stilled 
thunder. 

In  the  same  sermon  he  took  occasion  to  speak  of  some  of 
the  more  special  features  of  the  new  theology.  ^ 

Shall  we  take,  then,  at  once  the  most  prominent  of  all  in- 
stances, the  growing  freedom  of  thought  about  the  Bible  ?  It  is 
the  tendency  over  which  lecturers  shout  on  their  platforms  and 
church  councils  in  their  council  chambers.  The  lecturers  and 
the  church  councils  both  recognize  the  fact.  A  fact  no  doubt  it 
is.  To  very  many  Christian  men  to-day  the  Bible  stands  no 
longer  surrounded  by  that  kind  of  supernatural  authority  which 
establishes  the  truth  of  every  statement  in  its  pages.  It  has 
come  to  seem  to  many  men  what  it  really  is,  a  gathering  of  many 
wonderful  books  from  many  times,  —  the  time  and  authorship  of 
some  of  them  being  doubtful,  —  which  have  been  brought  together 
because  of  their  common  character  and  their  common  bearing  on 
one  great  religious  process  which  runs  through  the  history  of  man, 
—  the  revelation  of  the  Eternal  Father  to  mankind  in  Jesus 
Christ.  Clearly  enough,  such  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  the 
Bible  must  set  the  mind  free  for  a  treatment  of  it  and  a  study 
of  its  contents  such  as  has  not  always  been  possible.  .  .  .  The 
world  will  never  go  back  again  to  the  old  ideas  of  verbal  inspira- 
tion. 

It  was  an  unusual  thing  for  Phillips  Brooks  to  make  state- 
ments like  these  in  the  pulpit.  Indeed,  he  avoided  so  care- 
fully any  allusion  to  current  theological  questions,  about 
which  opinions  were  at  variance,  that  it  came  to  be  assumed 
by  many  that  he  had  none,  and  some  even  thought  he  was 
incapable  of  forming  theological  conclusions.  He  had  them, 
but  he  kept  them  out  of  the  pulpit.  In  his  preaching  he 
looked  at  things  suh  specie  eternitatis.  His  aversion  to  ab- 
stract discussion,  where  opinions  as  such  were  defended  or 
criticised,  his  desire  to  get  at  the  concrete  reality  of  life, 
from  whence  opinions  grew,  and  to  bring  all  religious  notions 
to  this  supreme  test,  was  his  ruling  motive,  which  gave  him 
his  distinctive  quality  as  a  preacher.     But  there  came  excep- 

1  Cf.  Sermons,  voL  viii.  p.  341. 


504  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

tional  moments,  when  he  felt  the  necessity  of  putting  himself 
on  record,  that  men  might  know  where  he  stood  on  the 
special  issues  of  the  hour.  When  he  made  these  statements 
about  the  new  theology,  his  object  was  not  merely  to  take 
sides  in  a  controversy,  or  to  rank  himself  in  the  lists.  He 
had  a  more  serious  purpose,  —  to  utter  a  warning  against 
impending  danger  which  threatened  the  issues  of  life.  He 
was  jealous  for  freedom's  sake;  he  was  consumed  with  zeal 
as  he  saw  the  tendency  of  the  time  to  rest  in  mere  notions, 
or  to  suppose  that  there  was  any  advantage  gained  simply 
by  changing  one's  opinions  in  theology.  Thus,  in  his  ser- 
mon on  the  "Mitigation  of  Theology"  (1878),  he  took  for 
his  text  a  passage  in  Exodus,  where  Moses  tells  the  Egyp- 
tians that  he  will  pray  for  the  thunder  and  hail  to  cease,  but 
yet  he  knows  that  the  cessation  of  fear  will  not  bring  Pha- 
raoh and  his  people  to  the  obedience  of  the  divine  will.  The 
general  character  of  the  change  taking  place  in  theology  is 
the  subject  before  him.  "It  is  a  desire  to  escape  from  the 
severer,  stricter,  more  formal,  more  exacting  statements  of 
truth  and  duty,  and  to  lay  hold  of  the  gentler,  more  gracious, 
more  spiritual,  more  indulgent  representations  of  God,  and 
of  what  He  asks  of  man." 

With  this  great  change  in  the  aspect  of  faith  he  confesses 
his  deep  sympathy,  as  the  prophecy  of  a  new  and  richer 
coming  of  the  kingdom  of  the  Lord  of  love  and  of  life.  But 
then  comes  his  protest.  Men  are  attributing  a  power  to  the 
mere  change  of  thought  on  the  nature  of  God  which  it  can 
never  possess.  There  is  a  temptation  to  think  that  the  work 
of  religion  will  be  accomplished  for  the  world  when  these 
new  and  glorious  ideas  shall  have  become  supreme  and  uni- 
versal, when  the  old  severe  theology  shall  have  been  de- 
throned and  the  truth  be  proclaimed  that  "God  is  love." 
The  time  has,  therefore,  come  when  some  one  ought  to  speak 
the  words  that  Moses  spoke  to  Pharaoh,  —  "The  thunder 
shall  cease  and  there  shall  be  no  more  hail.  But  as  for  thee 
and  thy  servants,  I  know  that  ye  will  not  fear  the  Lord." 
Men  are  in  danger  of  attributing  to  the  new  theology  that 
same  impossible  virtue  which  men  attributed  to  the  old  the- 


^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  505 

ology,  —  the  virtue  in  itself  of  making  men  good  and  strong 
and  pure. 

Against  that  danger  I  want  to  warn  you  and  myself.  .  .  . 
Constantly  in  New  England,  which  a  generation  ago  was  full 
of  the  sternest  teachings,  I  hear  the  lamentations  of  men  who 
were  brought  up  under  the  Puritan  theology.  I  have  grown 
familiar  to  weariness  with  the  self-excuse  of  men  who  say,  "Oh, 
if  I  had  not  had  the  terrors  of  the  Lord  so  preached  to  me  when 
I  was  a  boy,  if  I  had  not  been  so  confronted  with  the  woes  of 
hell  and  the  awfulness  of  the  judgment  day,  I  should  have  been 
religious  long  ago."  My  friends,  I  think  I  never  hear  a  meaner 
or  a  falser  speech  than  that.  Men  may  believe  it  when  they  say 
it,  — I  suppose  they  do,  — but  it  is  not  true.  It  is  unmanly, 
I  think.  It  is  throwing  on  their  teaching  and  their  teachers,  or 
their  fathers  and  their  mothers,  the  fault  which  belongs  to  their 
own  neglect,  because  they  have  never  taken  up  the  earnest  fight 
with  sin  and  sought  through  every  obstacle  for  truth  and  God. 
It  has  the  essential  vice  of  dogmatism  about  it,  for  it  claims  that 
a  different  view  of  God  would  have  done  for  them  that  which  no 
view  of  God  can  do,  that  which  must  be  done,  under  any  system, 
any  teaching,  by  humility  and  penitence  and  struggle  and  self- 
sacrifice.  Without  these,  no  teaching  saves  the  soul.  With 
these,  under  any  teaching,  the  soul  must  find  its  Father. 

From  such  a  passage  as  this  one  might  almost  infer  that 
the  preacher's  sympathy  with  the  new  theology  was  weak  or 
half-hearted.  But  it  was  not.  He  takes  up  in  turn  the 
points  at  issue,  where  the  arbitrary  has  passed  into  the  essen- 
tial, the  narrow  into  the  broad,  the  formal  into  the  spiritual. 
He  was  in  profoundest  accord  with  the  change  at  every 
point :  — 

It  is  so  radical  that  we  cannot  fully  comprehend  or  state  it, 
but  it  fills  us  with  joy.  It  has  made  religion  a  new  thing  for 
multitudes  of  souls.  It  has  swept  the  heavy  cloud  away,  and  let 
the  sunlight  into  many  a  life.  It  has  brought  fertility  to  many 
a  desert.  And  the  thanksgivings  of  men  and  women  who  have 
found  that  their  religion  may  be  just  the  love  of  God  because  He 
has  loved  them,  and  that  in  that  pure  love  of  God  lies  their  salva- 
tion, makes  the  song  and  the  glory  of  these  new  years  of  God. 

He  considers  briefly  some  of  the  points  at  issue  between 
the  theologies,  and  finds  in  them  a  deeper  gain  for  the  soul. 


5o6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

This  outbreak  of  protest  against  the  dreadful  doctrine  of  end- 
less punishment  is  really  nothing  but  an  utterance  of  the  profound 
conviction  that  not  by  threats  of  punishment,  however  awful  and 
however  true,  but  by  the  promises  of  love  are  men  to  be  brought 
into  the  best  obedience  of  God. 

He  touches  upon  the  question  of  the  sacredness  of  the  Day 
of  Rest,  the  departure  from  the  severer  rules  under  which 
men  lived  some  twenty  years  ago.  But  if  these  things  are 
welcomed  only  because  they  bring  freedom  from  constraint, 
there  has  been  no  gain,  but  rather  injury.  The  change 
which  has  been  effected,  when  rightly  viewed,  has  been 
"from  the  easy  to  the  hard,  and  not,  as  men  are  always 
choosing  to  think  it,  from  the  hard  to  the  easy."  The 
change  has,  indeed,  been  to  freedom,  but  it  is  harder  to  live 
in  freedom  than  to  live  as  a  slave.  The  dangers  of  freedom 
are  far  more  subtle  and  far  more  dangerous  than  those  from 
which  the  escape  has  been  made.  "As  much  deeper  as  this 
new  love  lies  below  that  old  terror,  so  much  the  deeper  must 
the  new  watchfulness  and  scrupulousness  go  below  the  old." 

Unless  this  is  its  effect  in  us,  our  milder  conception  of  God's 
present  and  future  dealing  with  the  souls  of  men,  however  true 
it  may  be  in  itself,  is  a  curse  to  us  and  not  a  blessing.  Unless 
it  does  this  for  us,  we  are  making  the  truth  of  God  have  the 
power  of  a  lie.  We  ought  to  be  afraid  of  any  theology  which 
tampers  with  the  sacredness  of  duty  and  the  awfulness  of  life. 
I  would  far  rather  be  a  believer  in  the  most  material  notions  of 
eternal  penalty,  and  get  out  of  that  belief  the  hard  and  frightened 
solemnity  and  scrupulousness  which  it  has  to  give,  than  to  hold 
all  the  sweet  broad  truth  to  which  God  is  now  leading  us,  and 
have  it  make  life  seem  a  playtime  and  the  world  a  game.^ 

This  sermon,  from  which  these  extracts  have  been  made, 
was  a  very  special  sermon,  called  forth  by  some  special  ex- 
perience, some  exceptional  urgency  of  motive.  But,  in  a 
sermon  preached  in  1884,  and  sanctioned  for  publication  by 
himself,  he  takes  up  the  same  issues,  going  over  the  ground 
in  much  the  same  way.  Once  more  he  defends  the  new  the- 
ology, and  proclaims  his  adherence  to  it  in  most  emphatic 
words.     His  text  was  the  words  of  St.  Peter,  —  "  As  free 

1  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  viii.  pp.  337  ff. 


^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  507 

and  not  using  your  freedom  for  a  cloak  of  maliciousness  but 
as  the  servants  of  God."  All  the  earnestness  and  intensity 
of  his  nature  was  thrown  into  this  sermon  as  he  discussed  his 
theme, — the  "dangers  of  liberty."  Because  he  was  the 
champion  and  friend  of  the  new  truth,  he  had  the  best  right 
and  the  best  wisdom  to  declare  its  dangers. 

The  fact  is,  the  world  has  now  become  a  place  where  it  must 
become  a  great  deal  worse  world,  or  a  great  deal  better  world, 
than  it  has  been  before.  It  is  a  familiar  truth  to  us  that  men 
come  to  such  places  in  their  lives ;  why  should  not  the  world  come 
to  such  a  place  in  hers  ? 

The  new  theology  called  for  better  men  if  it  was  to  hold 
its  own.  Unless  this  followed  there  was  danger  of  relapse 
into  a  state  of  things  worse  than  had  been  before.  In  pro- 
phetic vision  there  could  be  recalled  the  situation  in  the  age 
before  the  Reformation,  where  each  successive  effort  at  re- 
form only  seemed  to  set  the  world  back,  and  the  bondage 
was  renewed  in  more  bitter  form.  Even  when  Luther  came, 
and  the  reform  at  last  was  accomplished,  and  men  were  set 
free  to  rejoice  in  their  freedom,  there  had  followed  an  age 
of  decline  and  moral  weakness  which  put  in  peril  the  very 
existence  of  the  Protestant  religion.  So,  too,  in  the  age 
when  Christ  appeared  and  proclaimed  the  freedom  of  the 
children  of  God.  If  the  larger  liberty  and  freedom  from 
outward  constraint  now  coming  to  the  modem  world  were 
not  construed  as  the  greater  necessity  for  an  inward  self- 
restraint,  it  would  have  come  in  vain,  and  the  world  would 
fall  back  into  its  old  leading-strings. 

Freedom  is  thrust  upon  us,  and  we  must  take  it  whether  we 
will  or  not.  Happiest  is  he  who  takes  it  most  completely  and 
most  joyfully,  but  also  most  seriously  and  with  the  deepest  sense 
of  its  dangers.    .    .    . 

O  generous  young  man  rejoicing  in  your  freedom,  there  is  no 
manly  way  to  use  your  freedom  except  this.  God  grant  you  the 
grace  to  be  great  enough  to  live  in  these  days  of  freedom. 

II 

Those  who  only  heard  Phillips  Brooks  on  Sundays  in  the 
pulpit  of  Trinity  Church,  especially  those  who  heard  him 


i 


5o8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

only  occasionally,  got  but  an  incomplete  expression  of  the 
man.  There  was  another  side  to  his  life  as  a  parish  minis- 
ter. In  his  Wednesday  evening  lectures,  and  in  his  Bible 
class,  he  presented  a  different  aspect  of  his  teaching.  The 
congregation  of  Trinity  Church,  those  who  were  familiar  with 
this  part  of  his  work,  were  inclined  to  attach  to  it  an  equal 
if  not  a  higher  importance  than  to  the  Sunday  ministrations. 
The  Wednesday  evening  lectures  were  not  only  interesting 
in  the  highest  degree,  but  they  came  closer  to  many  people 
than  did  his  sermons.  Here  he  attempted,  what  he  seemed 
to  avoid  in  the  pulpit,  the  impartation  of  religious  know- 
ledge, the  discussion  of  religious  theories  and  theological 
opinions.  Notwithstanding  his  aversion  to  dealing  with 
abstractions,  or  mere  head  notions  about  the  truth,  yet,  as 
people  were  embarrassed  by  the  variety  and  conflict  of  theo- 
logical opinions,  or  by  intellectual  difficulties,  he  made  it 
part  of  his  duty  every  year  to  deal  with  these  things.  It 
was  thought  and  said  by  some  that  he  was  indifferent  to  the 
distinctive  teaching  of  his  own  church,  or  cared  but  little  for 
the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  and  its  usages  and  rites.  But 
the  criticism  came  from  those  who  knew  only  of  his  work  on 
Sundays,  when  his  sermons  were  addressed  to  the  whole 
body  of  humanity,  and  rose  above  the  level  of  religious  in- 
formation to  the  higher  walks  of  the  spiritual  life.  And  yet 
for  Wednesday  evening  lectures  or  for  Bible  class  he  had 
made  the  thorough  preparation,  whose  final  outcome  was  in 
the  sermon,  when  the  limitations  of  opinions  and  the  empty 
abstractions  had  disappeared  from  his  mind. 

In  these  special  ministrations  he  appears  as  doing  a  work 
which  of  itself  alone  would  have  been  regarded  as  sufficient 
by  the  ordinary  parish  minister.  His  note-books  bear  wit- 
ness to  the  preparation  for  each  lecture,  with  what  care  he 
collated  opinions  and  traced  their  relation  to  the  realities  of 
human  life.  In  this  way  he  took  up  the  Prayer  Book  and 
its  offices,  giving  courses  of  lectures  in  successive  years  on 
the  Church  Catechism,  on  the  Ten  Commandments,  on  the 
Creeds,  treated  article  by  article,  on  the  Baptismal  Office,  and 
on  the  Office  for  Confirmation.     One  year  he  lectured  upon 


^T.  sss^}  THEOLOGY  509 

the  "Versicles"  in  the  Morning  and  Evening  Prayer,  and 
in  the  other  offices.  Another  year  he  took  up,  verse  by 
verse,  the  Te  Deum.  Studies  in  the  life  of  Christ  were  rich 
and  almost  exhaustless  in  their  variety.  The  fruits  of  them 
appeared  in  his  sermons,  or  in  his  book  on  the  "Influence  of 
Jesus;  "  but  in  their  form  as  given  in  the  Wednesday  evening 
lectures  they  have  a  peculiar  charm  of  their  own.  As  all  this 
work  was  done  extemporaneously,  the  record  of  it  only  re- 
mains in  the  written  analyses  prepared  for  his  use,  or  in  the 
notes,  more  or  less  full,  made  by  those  who  were  present. 

For  this  work  the  preparation  required  must  needs  be 
thorough,  for  his  audience  was  intelligent  and  cultured,  and 
there  were  always  present  those  who  were  familiar  with  the 
latest  literature  in  Biblical  criticism.  Thus  we  find  him 
studying  Ewald  and  Kuenen  and  Wellhausen,  as  he  treats 
of  Old  Testament  history,  or  Keim  and  Hausrath,  Reuss, 
Shiirer,  and  other  modern  writers  on  the  New  Testament 
times.  Those  who  heard  him  preach  on  Sunday  sometimes 
fancied  that  he  knew  nothing  of  Biblical  criticism,  or  was 
indifferent  to  it,  because  no  mention  of  modern  Biblical 
literature  was  made,  no  names  referred  to  or  cited  as  au- 
thorities. He  did  his  work  by  a  sort  of  intuition,  it  was 
supposed. 

Perhaps  he  himself  was  at  fault  for  this  impression,  in  his 
careful  removal  of  all  traces  of  his  work  in  the  finished  re- 
sult, just  as  the  perfect  story  must  be  so  told,  that  no  evi- 
dence of  labor  on  the  part  of  the  narrator  shall  be  evident. 
But  another  reason  for  this  impression  about  him  was  that 
he  made  so  prominent  the  positive  truth  that  remained,  after 
criticism  had  done  its  work,  that  the  hearer  came  away  im- 
pressed with  this  alone.  And,  in  truth,  he  did  so  subordi- 
nate modern  Biblical  studies  to  the  end  of  making  the  divine 
revelation  stand  forth  more  clearly,  using  it  for  this  purpose 
alone,  that  he  tended  to  become  indifferent  to  it,  as  one 
discards  the  scaffolding  when  the  structure  is  done.  The 
"higher  criticism"  of  the  Bible  is  in  danger  of  becoming  a 
subject  of  such  absorbing  interest  that  the  student  is  tempted 
to  linger  in  it,  as  if  it  were  an  end  in  itself,  and  not  the 


5IO  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

means  to  a  higher  end.  But  what  Phillips  Brooks  valued 
was  the  stronger  witness  it  bore  to  the  reality  of  the  truth 
which  God  was  imparting.  He  carried  his  own  torch  with 
him  wherever  he  went,  the  conviction  that  God  was  speaking 
to  the  soul,  and  high  above  all  the  critical  details  it  shone 
clearly,  the  one  thing  most  unmistakably  evident. 

The  question  was  discussed  in  these  years  in  the  Clericus 
Club  and  elsewhere,  whether  it  was  the  duty  of  the  clergy  to 
give  to  the  people  the  results  of  modern  Biblical  criticism,  or 
how  it  should  be  done  in  order  not  to  weaken,  but,  if  possi- 
ble, increase  the  people's  confidence  in  the  Bible.  He  had 
no  difficulty  on  this  point.  He  kept  back  nothing  that  he 
thought  or  believed,  and  yet  so  presented  it  as  to  make  the 
old  truth  about  the  Bible  seem  the  clearer  and  the  stronsrer. 
We  may  look  in  upon  him,  in  one  of  those  Wednesday  even- 
ing lectures  in  the  chapel  of  Trinity  Church.  The  date  is 
January  7,  1880,  and  his  subject  was  the  Doctrine  of  the 
Bible.  It  was  one  of  a  course  on  Christian  Doctrine,  where 
other  topics  were  the  doctrines  of  God,  the  Trinity,  the  In- 
carnation, the  Work  of  Christ,  Conversion,  the  Holy  Spirit, 
the  Church,  and  the  Lord's  Supper.  It  may  be  taken  as  a 
fair  specimen  of  hundreds  of  similar  occasions  in  his  week-day 
ministry,  and  incidentally  as  a  specimen  of  his  mode  of  work. 
From  these  rough  notes  in  his  sermon  book,  the  clear  tenor  of 
his  way  is  visible :  — 

THE   DOCTRINE    OF   THE    BIBLE 

Reasons  why  this  doctrine  comes  in  here.  All  the  future  doc- 
trines are  to  be  gathered  out  of  the  Bible,  and  so  we  must  know 
where  the  Bible  stands.  Its  close  connection  with  the  doctrine 
of  God  was  shown  in  the  last  lecture.  Bear  that  in  mind  as  we 
speak.  After  a  short  recapitulation,  turn  to  the  antecedent  pro- 
bability of  a  Revelation.  Not  likely  that  God  should  leave  His 
children  unreached  if  He  could  communicate  with  them.  Espe- 
cially if  they  and  He  were  moral  creatures,  and  the  experiment 
of  their  life  were,  as  would  appear,  a  moral  experiment.  The 
witness  to  this  probability  by  all  the  religious  systems  and  their 
revelations.  Growing  sense  that  revelation  is  constant,  only 
coming  to  climax  at  certain  times. 

Now  such  a  Revelation,   what   shall   it  be?     Primarily  to  a 


^T' 33-5^1  THEOLOGY  511 

Person,  because  it  is  of  a  Person.  Nothing  but  a  personality 
can  really  alter  a  personality.  No  description  can  do  it.  Let 
me  see  a  man's  son,  and  know  that  he  and  his  father  are  in  true 
accord,  and  then  I  understand  the  father.  So  to  brutes  a  man 
may  tell  of  manhood.  So  to  men  God  may  declare  Himself 
through  manhood.  And  so  the  real  exhibition  of  God  must  be 
through  human  life.  Books  may  record. that,  but  their  real  value 
is  in  what  they  record. 

Thus  Christ  is  the  true  Revelation  of  God,  and  the  Bible  gets 
its  value  from  being  the  description  of  Christ.  The  story  of  a 
revelation,  more  properly  than  a  revelation  itself.  And  so  its 
various  parts  differ  with  the  quality  of  what  they  have  to  tell  of. 
So  the  Revelation  lies  behind  the  Bible,  and  the  Bible  is  to  the 
Revelation  like  the  sunshine  to  the  sun. 

Trace  then  the  growth  of  the  Bible ;  a  familiar  tale.  Suppose 
some  person  who  knew  nothing  of  it ;  show  how  you  would  begin 
with  the  Gospels,  the  free  place  for  critical  inquiry.  The  his- 
torical Christ.  The  character  of  Christ.  The  Divine  Christ. 
Then  the  Disciples  and  the  Future  Books  from  them.  Then  the 
Old  Testament  and  its  authority.  The  degree  of  Christ's  sanc- 
tion; the  sufficiency  of  it.  Authenticity,  Authority,  meaning 
of  these  words.  There  stands  our  Bible,  then!  Where  did  we 
get  it  ?  The  saying  that  the  Church  gave  it  to  us.  The  mean- 
ing of  that.  Only  that  the  Church.assured  us  that  such  and  such 
books  were  written  by  such  and  such  men.  There  lies  their  true 
value.  This  is  seen  in  the  clear  certainty  that  if  a  new  epistle 
of  St.  Paul  could  be  identified,  we  would  accept  it,  or  if  one  of 
the  accepted  ones  should  be  discredited,  we  would  cast  it  aside. 

And  now,  how  did  these  writers  write  ?  The  old  theories  of 
verbal  and  plenary  inspiration.  But  without  them  look  at  the 
real  state  of  the  case.  A  solemn  and  dear  person  to  be  written 
about.  A  watching  world.  A  deep  sense  of  responsibility.  A 
mind  quickened  by  sympathy  with  his  mind.  All  these  together 
seem  to  make  a  power  of  accuracy  and  faithfulness  which  is  all 
we  could  desire.  Apply  this  to  the  Apostles.  Apply  to  the 
Old  Testament  prophets.  Add  there  the  Jewish  love  for  geneal- 
ogy, etc.  This,  too,  a  divine  ordinance.  As  the  result  of  all  we 
have  a  noble  certainty  gathering  about  the  precious  story. 

Does  it  involve  unerring  accuracy?  Answer,  "No."  Still, 
in  the  historic  record  there  may  be  misstatements  of  detail.  And 
in  the  Apostolic  development  there  may  be  wrong  anticipations 
(like  the  anticipation  of  the  end  of  the  world),  but  yet  the  picture 
is  true.  Suppose  this  state  of  things,  and  then  suppose  we  had 
such  a  record  of  it,  would  it  not  be  vastly  valuable  ?     Enough. 


512  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

The  cases  of  direct  communication,  as  when  the  words  are 
used,  "The  word  of  the  Lord  came  unto  me,"  etc.  The  fact 
certain  and  credible  enough.      The  manner  of  conveyance. 

The  revisions  of  the  Bible:   modern  learning  on  it. 

Return  to  the  idea  of  Christ  being  the  true  Revelation.  The 
Bible  showing  Him. 

This  feature  of  Mr.  Brooks's  work  in  his  capacity  as  a 
parish  minister  is  important  and  might  be  studied  at  much 
greater  length.  But  it  was  richer  in  its  quality,  and  more 
vital  in  its  bearings,  than  any  summary  of  it  would  reveal. 
The  testimony  to  its  value  from  those  who  had  the  privilege 
of  its  enjoyment  equals,  if  it  does  not  surpass,  any  testimony 
borne  to  his  preaching.  Especially  are  the  courses  of  lec- 
tures on  the  Catechism,  on  the  Creed,  and  on  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments recalled  as  glowing  with  the  beauty  and  truth 
with  which  he  clothed  them  from  his  wide  studies  and  his 
large  observation  of  life,  and  especially  from  his  own  reli- 
gious experience.  He  made  his  people  love  and  rejoice  in 
the  Prayer  Book,  till  the  vestiges  of  prejudice  or  misunder* 
standing,  if  such  there  were,  faded  away.  He  loved  the 
Prayer  Book  as  he  loved  the  Bible.  It  was  an  integral  ele- 
ment in  his  life.  He  believed  in  it  as  it  stood,  and  for  himself 
never  desired  improvement  or  change,  whether  by  addition  or 
omission.  Its  literary  value  was  like  that  of  the  Bible,  dis- 
closing at  every  turn  the  rich,  deep  moods  of  a  humanity 
larger  than  that  of  the  individual  man.  He  loved  it  as  a 
product  of  the  Christian  ages.  There  were  those  who  were 
annoyed  at  its  phrases,  sometimes  at  what  seemed  its  dark 
assumptions,  who  could  never  quite  be  reconciled  to  passages 
in  the  marriage,  baptismal,  or  burial  offices.  It  was  not 
that  he  had  become  callous  to  these  things  by  much  repeti- 
tion, or  recited  them  in  a  perfunctory  way,  attaching  no 
meaning  to  them.  It  fell  to  him  as  the  minister  to  large 
congregations  to  say  these  offices  frequently,  but  he  never 
said  them  without  feeling  more  and  more  keenly  their  signifi- 
cance, or  asking  himself  anew  as  to  the  meaning  of  their 
words.  Nothing  with  which  he  came  in  contact  could  long 
remain  conventional  or  meaningless.     The  process   of  his 


^T.  sssS']  THEOLOGY  513 

inner  life  consisted  in  vitalizing  his  environment,  in  the 
church,  in  the  Bible,  or  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 
As  by  the  methods  of  Biblical  criticism  he  had  entered  more 
fully  into  the  meaning  and  reality  of  the  revelation  recorded 
in  Scripture,  so  by  the  process  of  historical  criticism  did  he 
seek  to  penetrate  more  deeply  into  the  moods  of  a  common 
humanity  as  uttered  in  the  Prayer  Book.  In  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  Prayer  Book,  as  in  the  interpretation  of  the 
Bible,  he  advocated  freedom.  He  had  found  this  freedom 
for  himseK  in  the  summary  given  in  the  Church  catechism, 
where  historical  Christianity  as  presented  in  the  creeds  is 
condensed  into  the  statement  that  we  learn  from  them  to 
believe  in  "  God  the  Father  who  made  me  and  all  the  world ; 
God  the  Son  who  redeemed  me  and  all  mankind ;  God  the 
Holy  Ghost  who  sanctifieth  me  and  all  the  people  of  God." 

Evidently  any  statement  of  belief  in  which  two  men,  or  more 
than  two,  unite  must  be  of  sufficient  simplicity  and  breadth  freely 
to  hold  within  itself  these  vital  differences.  This  is  the  beauty 
and  value  of  our  Church's  Creed.  "We  all  believe  it,  and  no  two 
thinking  men  hold  it  alike.  It  is  as  various  as  their  various 
personalities  with  which  it  has  entered  into  union. 

The  Church  has  no  unwritten  law,  no  interpretation  of  her 
creed  to  which  her  children  must  conform.  That  is  a  truth  con- 
cerning her  on  which  we  must  always  insist.  She  has  her  creed 
in  which  all  her  children  believe,  and  all  believe  differently. 
Thus  she  keeps  the  union  of  identity  and  variety,  which  all  living 
things  must  have.  Thus  she  bids  each  believer  be  a  sharer  in 
the  belief  of  all,  while  at  the  same  time  he  holds  his  own  per- 
sonal conviction  clear.  Dogmatism  loses  the  liberty  and  life  of 
personal  conviction,  skepticism  loses  the  largeness  of  the  univer- 
sal faith.  The  Church,  if  she  holds  her  creed  as  a  creed  ought 
to  be  held,  is  neither  dogmatic  nor  skeptical,  but  keeps  both  the 
special  and  the  universal,  and  makes  them  minister  to  each  other. 
This  is  why  she  is  the  home  of  generous  belief.  This  is  why,  if 
one  may  recognize  how,  as  is  the  case  with  most  epigrams  of 
comparison,  not  merely  the  laureate's  famous  words  but  also  their 
reverse  is  true :  — 

"  There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  creeds 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  doubt."  ^ 


Cf.  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  216. 


VOL.  n 


514  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-92 

There  were  times  in  his  experience  when  he  rejoiced  to 
rise  above  the  monotonous  plains  of  life,  but  quite  as  often 
he  loved  to  walk  them  with  the  race,  as  one  indistinguishable 
from  the  mass  of  men,  sharing  in  the  common  fears  and  the 
common  hopes,  and  loving  the  common  language  wherein 
they  had  found  expression.  If  he  seemed  at  times  to  soar 
almost  beyond  the  sight  of  human  vision,  or  to  be  standing 
on  heights  inaccessible  to  ordinary  human  aspiration,  yet  it 
also  pained  him  to  differ  from  the  great  human  verdicts,  the 
voice  of  the  people,  till  it  bred  the  suspicion  that  he  might 
be  wrong  and  must  revise  his  individual  judgment.  Such 
was  his  attitude  toward  the  offices  of  his  own  church.  The 
only  criticism  he  made  was  on  the  danger  of  a  conservatism 
which  could  see  nothing  outside  the  Prayer  Book.  In  his  ser- 
vices at  Appleton  Chapel  where  he  frequently  made  the  extem- 
poraneous prayer,  for  it  was  not  a  congregation  of  the  Epis- 
copal Church,  he  experienced  the  difficulty,  not  unfamiliar 
to  the  Episcopal  clergy,  when  attempting  to  say  the  prayers 
without  the  book.  He  would  sometimes  begin  with  repeat- 
ing a  form  of  prayer,  and  when  his  memory  failed  him,  in 
the  nervousness  of  the  situation,  would  break  away  into  im- 
passioned language  of  his  own.  One  might  gain  the  impres- 
sion that  he  was  hampered  by  the  form  and  abandoned  it  for 
a  higher  liberty. 

These  things  are  mentioned  here  because  they  have  their 
connection  with  his  theology.  It  would  be  a  waste  of  time 
to  conjecture  what  kind  of  man,  or  of  preacher,  or  of  theolo- 
gian, he  would  have  made,  if  his  mother  had  not  migrated 
in  his  infancy  to  the  Episcopal  Church.  He  had  been 
brought  up  to  the  Prayer  Book,  and  the  foundations  of  his 
religious  life  were  built  upon  the  teaching  of  the  Church 
catechism.  So  deep  had  the  training  gone  that  he  could  not 
have  escaped  from  it  if  he  would.  More  than  with  most 
children,  had  it  taken  hold  of  his  inmost  being.  And  to  it 
he  owed  his  peculiar  character  as  a  theologian.  When  he 
came  to  years  of  discretion,  he  ratified  his  mother's  judg- 
ment, and  in  his  manhood  rejoiced  in  his  lot  among  the 
churches.     His  theology  was  Anglican  theology  in  its  high- 


>ET.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  515 

est  but  in  Its  most  typical  form.  When  he  went  to  England 
he  made  this  impression  upon  the  best  judges  of  preaching. 
One  reason  for  his  popularity  in  England  was  his  power  to 
address  the  Anglican  mind,  more  forcibly  even  than  those 
who  had  never  left  the  English  soil. 

One  characteristic  of  Anglicanism  was  its  large  human 
inclusiveness,  the  importance  it  attached  to  nationalism  as  of 
more  value  than  ecclesiastical  distinctions.  The  Anglican 
church  had  a  long  national  history  behind  it,  and  honored 
all  its  children  who  had  contributed  in  whatever  way  to  the 
greatness  and  the  glory  of  the  nationality.  In  its  national 
sanctuaries  their  ashes  reposed,  —  great  warriors,  great  cap- 
tains on  sea  or  land,  scholars  and  thinkers,  and  poets  in 
whom  England  has  abounded  more  than  any  other  country, 
side  by  side  with  saints  and  ecclesiastics,  without  distinction 
or  discrimination  on  the  grounds  of  religious  experience. 
Shakespeare  and  Bacon  and  Walter  Raleigh  were  among  her 
honored  children  no  less  than  Hooker  or  George  Herbert  or 
Jeremy  Taylor.  In  the  hour  of  her  rebirth  in  the  Reforma- 
tion it  was  the  good  fortune  of  the  Anglican  church  to  secure 
the  alliance  of  humanism  in  its  purer  form,  which  Luther 
distrusted  and  Calvin  rejected.  She  became  a  thoroughly 
Protestant  church,  but  in  a  different  way  from  that  followed 
by  Knox  in  Scotland  or  Calvin  in  Geneva.  Through  Cran- 
mer,  who  was  a  humanist  as  well  as  a  scholar  and  theologian, 
there  passed  into  the  Prayer  Book  a  large  human  influence, 
a  humanizing  tendency,  which  could  embrace  all  tndy  human 
efforts,  and  was  only  at  war  with  doctrinaire  schemes  in  the 
interest  of  some  ecclesiastical  theory  or  religious  abstraction. 
It  was  on  this  ground  that  the  Anglican  church  had  rejected 
the  papacy  and  mediaeval  religion,  —  they  interfered  with  the 
growth  and  expansion  of  the  national  life.  There  were  other 
grounds  which  might  be  and  were  urged,  but  this  was  the 
dominant  motive  of  the  Anglican  church,  which  was  regarded 
as  the  religious  side  of  the  one  national  life.  Her  conflict 
with  the  Puritans  is  the  one  blot  on  her  history;  but  in  that 
fearful  struggle,  two  incompatible  forces  were  struggling  for 
the  mastery,  neither  of  which  could  coexist  with  the  other, 


5i6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

and  one  or  the  other  must  yield.  The  destiny  of  Puritanism 
was  a  great  one,  but  it  could  not  be  revealed  in  England, 
which  had  another  ideal,  and  Puritanism  was  forced  to  go 
out  and  look  for  a  home  elsewhere.  While  the  departure  or 
the  ejection  of  the  Puritans  was  a  loss  to  the  church  and  the 
nation,  yet  when  the  struggle  was  over,  the  Anglican  church 
was  once  more  free  to  pursue  her  mission  in  building  up  the 
English  nationality.  There  came  to  England,  in  conse- 
quence, her  expansion  in  the  eighteenth  century,  till  she 
covered  the  globe  with  her  colonies. 

This  was  the  church  and  this  was  the  tendency  to  which 
the  mother  of  Phillips  Brooks  entrusted  her  son  when  she 
made  the  change  from  her  ancestral  faith  to  the  Ejjiscopal 
Church.  The  boy  grew  up  under  the  influence  of  the  Evan- 
gelical party  in  the  church,  but  when  he  became  a  man  he 
entered  upon  his  Anglican  heritage.  For,  amidst  all  the 
changes  through  which  the  Anglican  church  has  passed, 
there  runs  one  common  principle,  which  gives  consistency 
and  coherency  to  her  life,  the  unwritten  law  or  constitution 
it  may  be  called,  of  genuine  Anglicanism,  that  the  pulpit 
shall  be  free,  and  that  the  Prayer  Book  as  it  is,  and  not  as 
it  might  be  or  ought  to  be,  shall  be  used  in  its  integrity. 
All  that  the  nation  asks  of  the  Church  of  England  is  com- 
pliance with  these  requisitions.  She  allows  reasonable  lib- 
erty in  the  use  of  the  Prayer  Book,  only  she  insists  that  the 
Church  of  England  shall  not  be  made  over  in  the  interest  of 
any  ecclesiastical  theory,  till  it  resembles  so  closely  the  na- 
tional churches  of  Italy  or  of  France  that  no  difference  be- 
tween them  can  be  discerned.  And,  as  to  preaching,  one 
cannot  easily  depart  very  far  from  the  spirit  of  the  Prayer 
Book,  or  if  he  do,  the  corrective  is  furnished  by  its  constant, 
invariable  use. 

To  these  principles  Phillips  Brooks  was  true  throughout 
his  ministry.  The  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  America 
has  difficulties  of  its  own  to  encounter,  in  domesticating  what 
seems  to  many  an  alien  church  in  a  land  where  Puritanism 
had  first  entered  in  and  taken  possession.  There  are  various 
ways  of  attempting  to  meet  these  difficulties,  as  shown  in  the 


^T.  33-S6']  THEOLOGY  517 

various  answers  given  in  tracts  with  the  familiar  title,  "  Why 
I  am  a  Churchman,"  or  an  "Episcopalian."  No  one  in  the 
history  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  America  ever  met  these 
difficulties  with  such  triumphant  success  as  did  Phillips 
Brooks.  As  he  impersonated  it,  it  seemed  like  a  native 
church,  with  its  roots  in  the  native  soil,  till  his  career  was 
taken  by  sanguine  souls  as  a  type  and  pledge  of  its  future. 

The  influence  of  his  own  church  must  then  be  recognized 
as  one  of  the  formative  elements  in  the  theology  of  Phillips 
Brooks.  Year  after  year,  during  his  long  ministry,  he  gave 
himself  to  the  study  of  the  life  of  Christ,  and  the  study  bred 
admiration  and  imitation.  In  the  fall  of  every  year  he  be- 
gan his  contemplation  of  the  coming  of  Christ,  and  its  larger 
aspects  for  the  world.  As  the  ecclesiastical  year  went  on, 
he  came  to  the  renewed  study  of  every  incident  in  the  life 
of  Christ,  and  in  every  Passion  Week  for  thirty  years  he 
took  up  day  by  day  the  events  which  culminated  in  the  Cross 
and  the  Resurrection.  Thus  the  conviction  of  the  Incarna- 
tion of  God  in  Christ  became  his  leading  motive,  and  the 
ground  principle  of  his  theology  and  of  his  life. 

The  Incarnation  meant  to  him  that  God  and  man  had  met 
together  in  the  person  of  Christ,  —  the  fulness  of  God  and 
the  complete  perfection  of  humanity.  But  not  only  his 
ecclesiastical  position,  his  whole  experience,  his  natural  con- 
stitution, his  ancestral  life,  prepared  the  way  for  this  con- 
summation. His  interest  in  the  human  race,  his  love  for 
humanity,  came  to  him  by  direct  inheritance  on  the  one  side 
of  his  family  descent.  In  an  age  when  the  trend  of  thought 
and  fashion  was  toward  the  love  and  the  study  of  nature,  he 
kept  his  hold  on  humanity  as  higher  and  richer,  more  impor- 
tant, than  the  love  of  nature.  He  loved  life  simply  as  living, 
and  his  interest  in  man  surpassed  his  interest  in  beautiful 
scenery.  He  loved  the  city  more  than  the  country,  and  did 
not  feel  that  he  was  really  living  to  advantage  when  away 
from  the  haunts  of  men.  He  loved  the  outer  world  as  the 
environment  of  his  race.  From  that  point  of  view  it  as- 
sumed its  significance,  not  in  itself  alone.  The  laws  of  na- 
ture were  inferior  to  the  laws  of  human  life.     No  study  of 


5i8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

nature's  handiwork,  however  marvellous  and  beautiful,  could 
for  a  moment  compete  in  interest  with  the  study  of  man. 
Once,  at  the  Brunswick  Hotel  in  Boston,  when  he  was  call- 
ing upon  friends,  some  one  spoke  of  the  green  fields  and 
beauties  of  nature.  He  rose  and  looked  out  of  the  window 
over  nothing  but  roofs  and  chimney  tops  and  said,  "Oh,  no! 
not  nature,  but  this  beautiful  view.  Give  me  this,  for  these 
chimney  tops  even,  stand  for  life,  for  humanity,  and  that  is 
what  attracts  me,  and  makes  life  worth  the  living."  He 
found  his  chief  repose  and  solace,  when  travelling,  in  the 
works  of  man,  in  all  the  forms  of  human  art.  Literature, 
as  the  revelation  of  man  and  of  human  life,  friends,  little 
children,  society  at  its  best,  the  communion  with  great  men 
in  biography,  where  the  range  of  his  reading  was  wide,  — 
these  were  the  sources  from  whence  he  drew  strength  and  in- 
spiration. Through  all  he  kept  his  deep  sense  of  the  family 
life,  and  the  freshness  of  the  great  child  nature  which  was 
in  him,  so  that  he  was  held  in  perpetual  joy  and  in  living 
wonder  and  admiration.  This  was  his  preparation  for  the 
religious  conviction  that  in  Christ  humanity  had  come  to  its 
perfection. 

Humanity,  and  all  that  contact  with  humanity  which  we  call 
life,  becomes  our  teacher  of  religion  —  life  as  the  manifold  inter- 
preter of  God,  as  the  first  awakener  of  those  powers  which  any 
specific  commandment  must  direct,  as  the  first  suggestion  of 
those  questions  to  which  any  particular  revelation  must  give  an- 
swer. Life,  personally  conceived  as  the  pressure  of  the  universal 
humanity  on  the  individual  human  nature,  must  always  have  its 
place  as  the  greatest  and  broadest  approach  of  God  to  man. 
This  found  its  perfection  in  the  Incarnation.  Through  the  di- 
vine humanity  of  Jesus,  God  was  manifest  in  the  flesh,  and  there- 
fore all  that  Jesus  taught  and  ever  teaches,  whether  by  word  or 
action,  is  the  consummation  and  fulfillment  of  that  presentation 
of  Himself  which  God  is  ever  making  through  humanity  to  man.^ 
.  .  .  And  the  great  teachers  of  religion  who  have  done  the  most 
Christlike  work  have  always  been  those  whose  personality  has 
been  most  complete,  and  who  have  been  in  truest  human  relation 
to  the  souls  they  taught.      Parents,   friends,  pastors,  have  been 

1  Cf.  JSssai/s  and  Addresses,  p.  210. 


^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  519 

the  truest  teachers  of  religion.     The  work  of  scientific  theolo- 
gians has  come  to  practical  effectiveness  thi'ough  them.^ 

This  was  one  side  of  his  inheritance.  On  the  other  there 
came  down  to  him,  what  was  even  deeper  and  stronger,  the 
God  consciousness,  with  which  this  love  o£  humanity  must 
be  conjoined  and  reconciled.  The  concentrated  force  of  the 
Puritanism  of  many  generations,  which  made  God  supreme, 
till  it  seemed  as  though  no  place  were  left  for  man,  —  that 
tendency  in  his  being  to  assert  the  priority  of  God  was  like 
fire  coursing  through  his  veins  with  an  ever-accumulating 
momentum.  He  found  the  solution  for  what  might  have 
been  a  dualism  which  would  have  paralyzed  his  energies,  in 
the  incarnation  of  God  in  Christ.  In  one  of  his  Philadel- 
phia sermons  (1864),  on  the  "Eternal  Humanity,"  he  gave 
to  this  conviction  a  theological  expression :  — 

I  hold,  then,  that  the  Incarnation  was  God's  commentary  on 
that  verse  in  Genesis,  "In  the  image  of  God  made  He  man." 
Yes,  from  the  beginning  there  had  been  a  second  person  in  the 
Trinity,  —  a  Christ  whose  nature  included  the  man-type.  In 
due  time  this  man-type  was  copied  and  incorporated  in  the  spe- 
cial exhibition  of  a  race.  There  it  degenerated  and  went  off 
into  sin.  And  then  the  Christ,  who  had  been  forever  what  He 
was,  came  and  brought  the  pattern  and  set  it  down  beside  the 
degenerate  copy,  and  wrought  men's  hearts  to  shame  and  peni- 
tence when  they  saw  the  everlasting  type  of  what  they  had  been 
meant  to  be  walking  among  the  miserable   shows  of  what  they 


Over  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation  Phillips  Brooks  was 
perpetually  brooding,  till  it  became  to  him  what  the  doctrine 
of  the  "Divine  Sovereignty  "  had  been  to  his  Puritan  ances- 
tors. He  struggled  with  all  the  forms  of  literary  art  in 
order  to  seize  an  expression  of  it  in  his  sermons,  adequate 
to  convey  the  fulness  of  the  reality,  as  he  grasped  it,  to  his 
hearers.  But  the  words  seemed  weak  and  powerless  in  com- 
parison with  what  he  saw.  "Oh,  to  preach  a  great  sermon 
on  the  Incarnation !  "  is  the  aspiration  recorded  in  one  of  his 
sermon  note-books.     No  one  can  do  for  him  what,  from  his 

1  Cf.  Essat/s  and  Addresses,  pp.  209,  210. 


520  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

own  high  standard,  he  felt  that  he  had  failed  to  do  for  him- 
self. If  we  turn  his  living  attitudes  of  faith  into  the  for- 
mulas of  theology,  we  only  lose  by  the  process.  But  some 
remarks  must  be  hazarded  on  the  subject  lest  a  worse  injus- 
tice be  done. 

He  looked  upon  Christ's  mission  to  the  world  as  intrinsi- 
cally different,  and  different  in  kind,  from  the  missions  of  all 
the  other  great  teachers  of  the  race.  He  held  that  the  dif- 
ference consisted  in  this,  that  other  teachers  had  manifested 
the  truth  of  God,  but  it  was  the  mission  of  Christ  to  man- 
ifest God  Himself.  Christ,  he  believed,  was  conscious  of 
this  difference,  and  had  expressed  it  most  emphatically  in 
the  parable  of  the  vineyard,  where  he  compared  those  who 
had  gone  before  him  to  servants  sent  by  God;  when  ser- 
vant after  servant  had  been  sent,  at  last  God  sent  His  Son.^ 
He  maintained  that  the  truth  of  the  divinity  of  Jesus  did 
not  hang  on  a  few  texts  of  Scripture,  but  that  it  shone 
through  all  His  thought  about  HimseK  and  broke  forth  in 
every  description  of  the  work  he  had  to  do.^  Here  is  an 
extract  from  a  manuscript  sermon,  written  in  1882,  and 
delivered  for  the  last  time  in  1892. 

Christ  is  the  Word  of  God.  It  is  not  in  certain  texts  written 
in  the  New  Testament,  valuable  as  they  are;  it  is  not  in  certain 
words  which  Jesus  spoke,  vast  as  is  their  preciousness ;  it  is  in 
the  Word  which  Jesus  is  that  the  great  manifestation  of  God  is 
made.  I  read  the  words  and  ponder  them,  hut  most  of  all  I 
look  at  Jesus  and  try  to  understand  His  life,  when  I  want  to 
know  the  fullest  truth  regarding  God.  And  when  thus  I  look 
at  Him,  what  do  I  learn?  First  of  all,  the  true  divinity  of 
Christ  Himself.  I  cannot  doubt  what  is  His  own  conception  of 
His  own  personality.  Through  everything  He  does,  through 
everything  He  says,  there  shines  the  quiet,  intense  radiance  of 
conscious  Godhood.  Again,  I  say,  it  is  not  a  word  or  two  which 
He  utters,  though  He  does  say  things  which  make  known  His  self- 
consciousness,  but  it  is  a  certain  sense  of  originalness,  of  being, 
as  it  were,  behind  the  processes  of  things,  and  one  with  the  real 
source  of  things,  —  this  is  what  has  impressed  mankind  in  Jesus, 
and  been  the  real  power  of  their  often  puzzled  but  never  aban- 

1  Cf .  St.  Matthew  xxi.  32  ff. 

2  Cf .  Sermons,  vol.  vii.  pp.  328,  329. 


JE.T-33-5^']  THEOLOGY  521 

doned  faith  in  His  Divinity,  He  has  appeared  to  men,  in  some 
way,  as  He  appears  to  us  to-day,  to  be  not  merely  the  channel 
but  the  fountain  of  Love  and  Wisdom  and  Power,  of  Pity  and 
Inspiration  and  Hope. 

There  is  one  aspect  of  the  Incarnation  upon  which  Phil- 
lips  Brooks  often  dwelt,  —  its  naturalness,  its  essential  har- 
mony with  the  ordering  of  human  life  in  this  world.  This 
was  the  message  to  his  soul  as  he  first  stood  in  the  sacred 
places  on  the  earth's  surface  where  Christ  had  lived.  It  was 
not  necessary  to  deny  His  divinity  in  order  to  give  him  the 
human  prerogatives,  nor  to  overlook  his  humanity  in  order 
to  see  and  feel  the  divine.  Upon  this  thought  he  enlarges 
in  the  following  extract  from  the  manuscript  sermon  above 
referred  to. 

The  wonderful  thing  about  this  sense  of  Divinity  as  it  appears 
in  Jesus  is  its  naturalness,  the  absence  of  surprise  or  of  any  feel- 
ing of  violence.  We  might  have  said  beforehand,  if  we  had  been 
told  that  God  was  coming  into  a  man's  life,  — we  might  have 
said,  "That  must  be  something  very  terrible  and  awful.  That 
certainly  must  rend  and  tear  the  life  to  which  God  comes.  At 
least  it  will  separate  it  and  make  it  unnatural  and  strange.  God 
fills  a  bush  with  His  glory,  and  it  burns.  God  enters  into  the 
great  mountain,  and  it  rocks  with  earthquake.  When  He  comes 
to  occupy  a  man.  He  must  distract  the  humanity  which  He  occu- 
pies into  some  unhuman  shape."  Instead  of  that,  this  new  life, 
into  which  God  comes,  seems  to  be  the  most  quietly,  naturally 
human  life  that  was  ever  seen  upon  the  earth.  It  glides  into  its 
place  like  sunlight.  It  seems  to  make  it  evident  that  God  and 
man  are  essentially  so  near  together,  that  the  meeting  of  their 
natures  in  the  life  of  a  God-man  is  not  strange.  So  always  does 
Christ  deal  with  His  own  nature,  accepting  His  Divinity  as  you 
and  I  accept  our  humanity,  and  letting  it  shine  out  through  the 
envelope  with  which  it  has  most  subtly  and  mysteriously  min- 
gled, as  the  soul  is  mingled  with  and  shines  out  through  the  body. 

It  was  said  of  the  late  Mr.  Gladstone  that  when  he  was 
asked  what  was  the  foundation  of  his  faith  and  hope,  he 
replied,  "The  doctrine  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ."  That 
would  not  have  been  quite  the  answer  of  Phillips  Brooks. 
With  him  it  was  not  a  doctrine  concerning  Christ,  but  Christ 
Himself :  — 


522  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

This  is  what  I  see  about  God  when  I  look  at  Clirist.  It  is 
God  that  I  see  there.  Not  a  doctrine  about  Him,  but  it  is  He, 
the  light  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Metaphysical  speculations  as  they  have  gone  on  in  the 
schools  about  the  person  of  Christ  had  no  interest  for  him. 
They  seemed  not  only  unprofitable  and  vain,  but  in  their  de- 
tachment from  reality  they  belittled  and  degraded  the  great 
theme.  Yet  there  was  one  of  these  questions  which  became 
to  him  a  living  and  fruitful  thought :  — 

I  cannot  read  the  story,  I  cannot  know  the  Person  of  the 
Divine  Christ  without  becoming  aware  of  two  things.  There  is  a 
Life  behind  Him,  and  a  Life  before  Him,  — a  life  on  which  He 
rests,  and  a  life  in  which  He  issues.  It  is  no  lonely  existence 
which  suggests  itself  as  He  walks  among  men.  At  any  moment 
He  turns  aside  upon  a  mountain  top  and  communes  with  a  Being 
which  is  like  Himself.  As  He  draws  near  the  end  of  His  peculiar 
work,  and  looks  forth  into  the  years  which  are  to  come,  He  sees  a 
divine  life,  like  His  life,  going  on,  finishing  his  work.  He  feels 
the  Father  from  whom  He  came,  the  Spirit  who  is  to  come  when 
He  is  gone. 

In  ways  like  this,  undogmatic  in  form,  did  Phillips  Brooks 
often  express  himself  in  regard  to  the  threefold  name  of 
God,  —  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  Its  prominence  in  An- 
glican theology  and  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  forced 
him  to  its  deeper  consideration.  He  loved  the  truth  for 
which  it  stood  with  what  he  himself  has  called  the  "love  of 
the  mind  for  God."  It  differed  from  other  truths,  in  that  it 
could  not  be  primarily  reached  by  the  action  of  the  individ- 
ual mind,  but  was  rather  a  heritage  from  the  past,  the 
result  of  the  thought  and  experience  of  the  ages,  of  many 
confluent  influences  convers-ing:  at  last  to  a  focus.  Because 
it  summed  up  the  convictions  of  what  seemed  to  him  hu- 
manity acting  at  its  best  and  highest,  he  received  it  and 
gloried  in  it.  As  Trinity  Sunday  came  round,  with  each 
revolution  of  the  Christian  Year,  it  found  him  ready  and 
eager  to  speak.  Trinity  Sunday  was  to  him  the  high  intel- 
lectual festival  of  the  Christian  church,  and,  as  on  Thanks- 
giving Day,  he  came  up  to  it  bringing  the  richest  tribute  he 
could  offer.     Others  complained  sometimes  that  they  found 


^'SS-S^l  THEOLOGY  *   s^3 

difficulty  in  writing  sermons  for  Trinity  Sunday,  but  he  an- 
swered that  he  did  not;  there  was  always  some  new  aspect  of 
the  subject,  which  he  had  not  yet  presented.  People  were 
constantly  coming  to  him  for  explanation  of  what  they  did 
not  understand,  and  out  of  these  conversations  were  the 
hints  often  derived,  which  proved  the  themes  for  sermons. 
These  Trinity  Sunday  sermons,  of  which  there  are  a  large 
number,  would  make  a  most  important  contribution  toward 
the  popular  elucidation  of  the  great  Christian  mystery.  He 
would  not  condescend,  he  often  said,  to  "defend  the  doctrine." 
He  made  it  clear  that  his  object  in  treating  the  subject  was 
to  explain  it.  He  gloried  in  the  doctrine  because  of  the  rich- 
ness of  the  idea  of  God  which  it  involved.  In  his  own  words 
it  "palpitated  with  life." 

If  a  man  does  believe  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  he  ought 
to  rejoice  and  glory  in  his  faith  as  the  enrichment  of  his  life. 
It  is  the  entrance  to  a  land  where  all  life  lives  at  its  fullest,  where 
Nature  opens  her  most  lavish  bounty.  ^ 

In  an  essay  which  he  wrote  on  the  "new  theism  "  in  1886, 
and  read  before  the  Clericus  Club,  he  criticized  two  recent 
books  in  theology,  Mr.  John  Fiske's  "Idea  of  God  as  af- 
fected by  Modern  Knowledge;  "  and  Mr.  Francis  EUingwood 
Abbott's  "Scientific  Theism."  This  essay  has  a  personal 
interest  of  its  own,  in  showing  his  capacity  for  subtle  theo- 
logical discrimination.  It  was  rare  for  him  to  turn  aside 
from  his  work  to  an  effort  like  this,  but  in  doing  so  he 
exhibits  the  hand  of  a  master,  while  yet  it  is  done  with 
such  ease  and  natural  grace  as  to  indicate  that  he  was  at 
home  in  the  field  of  theological  speculation.  That  he  had 
followed  the  course  of  theistic  thought  in  other  writers  is  ap- 
parent, but  he  chose  these  two  books  mentioned  because  they 
illustrated  what  he  wished  to  say.  He  remarks  on  them 
both,  that  while  they  proclaim  the  immanence  of  creative 
power,  "they  draw  back  from  an  assertion  of  the  personality 
of  God,  and  steady  themselves  by  vigorous  railings  against 
anthropomorphism. " 

»  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  i.  p.  228 ;  ii.  p.  380 ;  and  vii.  p.  318,  for  Trinity  Sunday 
sermons. 


524  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-92 

The  valuable  element  in  these  two  books,  as  he  points  out, 
is  that  they  come  bringing  with  them  the  fruits  of  a  long 
wandering  in  the  wilderness  of  agnosticism ;  they  have  gained 
the  sense  of  the  liveness  of  the  universe.  The  doctrine  of 
the  divine  personality  needs,  from  time  to  time,  to  be  bathed 
in  the  truth  of  universal  life,  lest  it  become  too  hard  and  dry. 
This  is  the  significance  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  which 
both  these  writers  overlook  or  reject. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  a  protest  against  the  hard,  tight 
personalness  of  the  conception  of  God  which  thinks  of  Him  as  a 
big  individual,  with  definite  limits  to  His  nature,  and  ahnost  to 
a  visible  frame  in  which  He  lives.  The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
is  an  attempt  to  give  richness,  variety,  mystery,  internal  relation, 
abundance,  and  freedom  to  the  ideas  of  God.-^ 

Here  lies  the  significance  of  the  Incarnation,  in  the  history 
of  theistic  thought,  that  it  brings  the  divine  idea  out  of  its 
distance  into  our  human  life. 

The  Incarnation  brought  into  union  with  God's  supremacy  the 
sacredness  of  man.  There  may  be  a  yet  unreached  though  often 
anticipated  theism  which  shall  bring  into  union  with  God's  supre- 
macy the  liveness  of  the  world. 

He  fears  that  this  "new  theism,"  in  the  minds  of  many 
who  hold  it,  is  nothing  but  the  old  pantheism ;  yet  it  is  sig- 
nificant that  those  who  teach  it  are  eager  to  assert  that  it  is 
not  pantheism. 

Surely  we  Christians  ought  to  understand  how  one  feels  who 
sees  pantheism  close  at  hand  and  yet  draws  back  from  it  and 
will  not  be  a  pantheist.  For  the  New  Testament  is  always  just 
on  the  brink  of  pantheism,  and  is  only  saved  from  it  by  the  in- 
tense personality  of  Jesus  and  His  overwhelming  injunction  of 
responsibility.  Surely  He  gives  us  reason  to  believe  that  there 
is  a  real  possibility  of  holding  both  together,  the  personality  of 
God  and  the  divine  life  in  the  universe. 

The  representatives  of  the  "new  theism"  refuse  the  aid 
of  anthropomorphism,  because  it  has  often  been  false  and 
crude.     He  feels  the  force  of  the  protest,  but  the  remedy 

1  C£.  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  157. 


^T.  33-^6']  THEOLOGY  525 

lies  in  a  truer  conception  of  the  nature  of  man  from  whence 
to  rise  to  the  nature  of  God. 

The  man  which  is  made  in  the  image  of  God  is  manhood. 
Not  this  man  or  that  man,  save  as  he  is  an  utterance  of  the  uni- 
versal manhood.  Not  this  man  or  that  man,  with  his  partialness 
and  fixed  simplicity,  but  the  universal  manhood,  with  its  multitu- 
dinousness,  its  self-related  and  various  internal  life,  its  move- 
ment and  ever-opening  vitality,  its  oneness  yet  its  multitude,  its 
multitude  within  its  oneness  —  that  is  the  man  which  was  made 
in  God's  image  and  by  whose  study  the  image  of  God  may  dimly 
open  again  upon  the  soul.  We  create  first  an  artificial  simplicity 
for  our  individual  life,  and  we  assert  that  only  in  such  an  individ- 
uality as  that  is  there  a  real  personality.  The  first  enlargement 
of  such  a  narrow  conception  as  that  is  in  the  necessity  of  conceiv- 
ing of  the  personality  of  man.  The  next  is  in  the  even  deeper 
necessity  of  conceiving  of  the  personality  of  God.  The  new 
theism  finds  itself  face  to  face  with  that  necessity.  It  hesitates 
about  the  possibility  of  solving  the  difficulty  and  reaching  the 
conception  which  yet  it  sees  that  it  cannot  do  without.  The 
religion  of  the  New  Testament  stands  ready  with  its  clear  utter- 
ance of  that  divine  personality  long  known  and  realized.  As  it 
offers  to  the  new  theism  the  definiteness  and  positiveness  of  its 
Christ,  may  it  not  hope  to  receive  again  from  it  something  of  the 
largeness  and  breadth  which  the  very  definiteness  of  its  Christ- 
hood  is  always  in  danger  of  losing?  In  the  search  for  the  "Infi- 
nite Personality,"  may  not  the  old  theism  give  to  the  new  its 
vividness  of  personal  beliefs,  and  may  not  the  new  theism  give  to 
the  old  its  realization  of  Infinity  ?  ^ 

After  these  words  of  Phillips  Brooks,  the  charge  which 
has  been  made  against  his  teaching,  that  it  was  pantheistic 
in  its  tendency,  is  hardly  worth  mentioning.  When  a  man 
says  with  all  the  force  he  can  command  that  he  believes  in 
a  personal  God,  possessing  conscious  intelligence  and  will, 
that  such  a  deity  is  distinct  from  his  creation,  whether  of 
outward  nature  or  of  humanity,  however  He  may  indwell 
within  them,  it  would  seem  to  dispose  finally  of  such  an  ob- 
jection. It  should  be  remembered  that  the  accusation  of 
pantheism  was  the  ground  on  which  Jesus  was  condemned 
by  the  Jews,  —  to  their  minds  he  was  confusing  humanity 
with  God,  and  guilty,  therefore,  of  blasphemy,  in  calling 
1  Cf.  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  159. 


S26  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

himself  the  Son  of  God.  It  has  been  the  standing  objection 
against  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  that  it  was  pantheistic 
in  its  tendency.  The  cry  of  the  Arians  and  the  semi-Arians 
against  the  doctrine  of  Athanasius  and  the  Nicene  creed  was 
pantheism,  the  confusion  of  God  with  the  creation.  Pan- 
theism was  the  sin  of  the  Christian  church  in  the  mind  of 
Mohammed,  and  on  this  ground  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
was  rejected.  We  may  dismiss  the  charge  then,  as  unreal, 
as  indicative  of  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  those  who  make 
it  to  revert  to  pre-Christian  ideas  of  Deity,  uninfluenced  by 
the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation.  These  are  the  striking: 
words  with  which  Phillips  Brooks  concludes  his  essay  on 
Theism :  — 

The  thing  which  this  great  inflow  of  nature,  half  moralized  and 
half  personalized,  needs  is  to  attain  a  complete  morality  by  which 
alone  can  come  a  complete  personality.  That  the  religion  of  the 
ages  has  to  give.  Its  continual  assertion  of  God  as  the  source 
of  duty  must  give  substantial  clearness  to  this  universe,  which 
thus  far  seems  in  the  new  theism  almost  to  reel  and  tremble  with 
the  intoxication  of  its  immanent  Deity.  The  word  of  David 
must  be  the  story  of  what  is  to  come :  "  He  commanded,  and  it 
stood  fast."  When  that  has  come,  may  we  not  look  to  see  the 
great  idea  of  God  made  no  less  clear  and  yet  truly  infinite? 
May  we  not  look  to  see  a  Christ  in  whom  the  whole  need  of  all 
the  living  world  shall  find  its  satisfaction?  May  we  not  look 
to  see  a  Church  which  shall  truly  express  the  meeting  of  the 
whole  of  manhood  with  the  whole  of  God,  and  the  perfect  satis- 
faction of  the  human  and  the  divine? 

In  an  age  when  the  miracle  was  far  gone  in  discredit 
among  thoughtful  minds  which  had  come  under  the  influence 
of  science,  Phillips  Brooks  kept  his  faith  in  it  as  an  integral 
element  in  the  personality  of  Jesus.  While  others  were 
rejoicing  in  the  universal  "reign  of  law  "  revealed  by  science, 
he  was  rejoicing  in  the  prospect  of  the  higher  reign  of  human- 
ity, of  which  the  miracle  was  the  pledge.  It  was  natural,  he 
thought,  and  inevitable,  that  the  miracle  should  be  associated 
with  the  Incarnation,  wherein  the  highest  triumph  of  humanity 
was  exhibited.  Thus,  in  a  sermon  for  the  second  Sunday  in 
Advent,  he  says :  — 


^T.  33-5^1  THEOLOGY  527 

There  are  two  things  about  the  whole  history  of  the  Advent  of 
Christ  which  will  be  constantly  presented  to  our  thoughts  during 
the  next  few  weeks.  One  is  its  miraculousness,  and  the  other  is 
its  quietness.  He  came  girt  round  with  wonders,  and  He  came 
so  gently,  so  unnoticed  save  by  the  few  who  clustered  nearest 
to  His  life,  that  the  great  surface  of  the  world's  existence  was 
hardly  rippled  by  the  wonderful  touch  that  had  fallen  upon  it. 
Of  the  first  of  these  characteristics  of  the  Advent,  —  its  miracu- 
lousness, —  we  are  sure  that  the  credibility  will  be  more  clear  to 
us  if  we  have  really  felt  how  vast  was  the  importance  and  how 
great  was  the  necessity  of  the  event.  If  ever  miracle  might  be  let 
loose  out  of  the  rigid  hand  of  law,  when  should  it  be  but  now, 
when  the  King  of  all  the  laws  is  coming  in  His  personality  ?  If 
there  are  angels,  now  certainly  is  the  time  for  them  to  appear. 
If  the  stars  can  ever  have  a  message  and  lead  men,  now  is  the 
time  when  their  ministry  can  plead  its  strongest  warrant.  If 
ever  the  thin  veil  between  the  natural  and  the  supernatural  may 
break  asunder,  it  must  be  now,  when  the  supernatural  power 
enters  into  earthly  life  and  God  is  present  among  the  sons  of 
men.  To  any  one  who  believes  in  the  possibility  of  miracle  at 
all,  and  who  knows  what  the  meaning  of  the  Incarnation  is,  the 
wonder  would  be  if  it  had  no  miraculous  accompaniment.  The 
breakage  through  the  ordinary  laws  of  nature's  life  seems  natural 
and  fitting,  as  when  a  king  passes  through  a  city  we  expect  to 
hear  trumpets  and  cannon  replace  the  common  sounds  of  trade 
and  domestic  life,  which  are  all  that  its  streets  commonly  echo. 
But  then  along  with  the  miraculousness  comes  an  impressive 
quietness.  Quiet  even  to  homeliness  will  be  the  simple  scenery 
on  which  the  supernatural  light  is  thrown.  The  village  inn,  the 
carpenters'  household,  the  groups  of  peasants,  —  all  is  as  simple 
as  the  story  of  a  peasant's  childhood.  With  wonderful  power, 
but  with  wonderful  stillness,  —  no  noise,  no  tumult.  Surely 
such  a  description  falls  in  with  the  spiritual  intention  of  the 
event.  It  is  a  spiritual  miracle,  and  the  miracles  of  spiritual 
life  are  always  as  still  as  they  are  powerful,  as  powerful  as  they 
are  still.  So  the  whole  nature  of  the  Advent  was  written  in  the 
historical  circumstances  that  were  grouped  around  the  great  his- 
toric fact.^ 

To  this  view  of  the  miracle  he  adhered.  If  anything  could 
have  shaken  his  belief,  it  would  have  been  that  men  whom 
he  respected  should  differ  from  him.  But  he  saw  clearly 
enough  that  those  who  differed  came  to  the  subject  from  the 

^  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  vii.  p.  24. 


528  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1869-92 

point  of  view  of  nature  and  her  laws.  He  came  to  it  from 
the  study  and  the  preference  of  humanity.  He  differed  from 
Paley  and  the  whole  Paleyan  school  of  evidence-writers, 
in  maintaining  that  the  miracle  was  not  primarily  to  be 
regarded  as  an  evidence  of  divine  revelation,  but  as  the 
resultant  of  revelation.  When  thus  regarded,  it  came  in 
the  end  to  be  evidence  that  revelation  must  have  been  given. 
But  the  revelation  as  in  Christ  took  the  precedence.  In  his 
notes  for  his  Bible-class  studies  in  1887,  on  the  Creed,  he 
writes  direction  for  himseK  as  he  comes  to  the  miraculous 
incidents  in  the  life  of  Christ:  "Now  take  up  the  story  with 
the  miraculous  element  in  it  fully  accepted."  And  again, 
in  his  course  of  lectures  to  his  Bible  class  in  1889,  he  went 
more  thoroughly  into  the  subject,  analyzing  and  classifying 
the  miracles  with  criticism  interspersed  as  to  their  value. 
He  remarks  that  "there  is  a  difference  between  belief  in  the 
miraculous  and  belief  in  each  particular  miracle."  He  pro- 
tests against  the  modern  tendency  in  those  who  accept  the 
miracle  to  get  rid  of  seeming  difficulties  by  referring  to  it  as 
the  working  of  unknown  law :  "  But  we  must  not,  we  do  not 
want  to,  get  rid  of  personal  power  and  presence  which  is 
the  soul  of  the  whole." 

As  we  study  the  writings  of  Phillips  Brooks,  in  order  to 
fix  his  position  in  accordance  with  conventional  theological 
tests,  we  are  baffled  by  the  universality  of  his  mind.  His 
religious  inclusiveness  comprehended  other  ages  as  well  as 
his  own.  He  valued  the  dogmatic  utterances  of  synods  pro- 
testing against  errors,  and  yet  also  detected  the  affirmations 
of  truth  contained  in  half  utterances  by  those  condemned 
as  heretics.  He  was  in  sympathy  with  the  great  stream  of 
tendency  in  the  Christian  ages.  But  he  saw  more  clearly 
than  did  those  engaged  in  controversy  the  truth  involved  on 
either  side.  The  chief  value  of  his  work  is  in  giving  ex- 
pression to  the  vast  range  of  Christian  instincts,  those  which 
have,  and  those  which  have  not  found  expression  in  religious 
formulas.  The  religious  mind  and  heart  of  the  world  lay 
open  before  him.     If  he  proclaimed  the  sacredness  of  human 


^T.  sss^l  THEOLOGY  529 

nature  manifested  in  its  divine  possibilities,  he  did  not  lose 
sight  of  the  fact  of  human  sinfulness  and  its  power  to  frus- 
trate the  divine  purpose.  It  would  be  untrue  to  say  of  him 
that  he  dwelt  on  one  more  than  the  other.  They  were  so 
connected  in  his  mind  that  he  could  not  separate  them.  At 
times  he  so  presented  the  fact  of  sin  that  its  evil  and  wrong 
seemed  solely  to  consist  in  injury  done  to  the  sacredness  of 
the  human  soul :  — 

Only  when  men  have  dared  to  think  of  themselves  sublimely, 
as  possible  reflections  of  tbe  life  of  God  upon  earth,  only  then 
does  sin  become  essentially  and  forever  horrible. 

This  mode  of  appeal  was  effective  in  an  age  when  the 
thought  of  God  and  of  His  will  had  grown  weak  in  many 
minds.  But  on  the  other  hand,  and  with  increasing  fer- 
vency after  the  transition  had  set  in  which  was  turning  the 
world  again  toward  God,  did  he  urge  obedience  to  the  will 
of  God  as  the  highest  ideal  of  man,  and  in  disobedience  point 
to  the  source  of  all  the  sin,  its  evil  and  its  degradation. 

The  fulfilment  of  the  good  involves  the  destruction  of  the  bad. 
Make  anything  in  the  world  complete  and  perfect  after  its  true 
nature,  and  you  must,  therefore,  drive  out  whatever  there  is  of 
falsehood  and  positive  corruption  in  it.  That  statement  does  not 
deny  the  fact  nor  change  the  character  of  sin.  God  forbid!  I 
have  no  patience  with  the  foolish  talk  which  would  make  sin 
nothing  but  imperfection,  and  would  preach  that  man  needs 
nothing  but  to  have  his  deficiencies  supplied,  to  have  his  native 
goodness  educated  and  brought  out,  in  order  to  be  all  that  God 
would  have  him  be.  The  horrible  incompetency  of  that  doctrine 
must  be  manifest  enough  to  any  man  who  knows  his  own  heart, 
or  who  listens  to  the  tumult  of  wickedness  which  rises  up  from 
all  the  dark  places  of  the  earth. 

Sin  is  a  dreadful,  positive,  malignant  thing.  What  the  world 
in  its  worst  part  needs  is  not  to  be  developed,  but  to  be  de- 
stroyed. Any  other  talk  about  it  is  shallow  and  mischievous 
folly.  The  only  question  is  about  the  best  method  and  means 
of  destruction.  Let  the  sharp  surgeon's  knife  do  its  terrible 
work,  let  it  cut  deep  and  separate  as  well  and  thoroughly  as  it 
can,  the  false  from  the  true,  the  corrupt  from  the  uncorrupt;  it 
can  never  dissect  away  the  very  principle  of  corruption  which  is 
in  the  substance  of  the  blood  itself.     Nothing  but  a  new  rein- 

VOL.  n 


530  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

forcement  of  health  can  accomplish  that.  There  is  the  whole 
story.  Tear  your  sins  away.  Starve  your  tumultuous  passions. 
Resist  temptations.  Aye,  if  you  will,  punish  yourself  with 
stripes  for  your  iniquities.  Cry  out  to  yourself  and  to  your 
brethren,  with  every  voice  that  you  can  raise,  "  Cease  to  do  evil ;  " 
but  all  the  time,  down  below,  as  the  deepest  cry  of  your  life,  let 
there  be  this  other,  "Learn  to  do  well."  If  you  can  indeed 
grow  vigorously  brave  and  true  and  pure,  then  cowardice  and 
falsehood  and  licentiousness  must  perish  in  you.  O  wondrous 
silent  slaughter  of  our  enemies!  0  wondrous  casting  out  of  fear 
as  love  grows  perfect !  O  death  to  sin,  which  comes  by  the  new 
birth  to  righteousness !  O  destruction,  which  is  but  the  utterance 
of  fulfilment  on  the  other  side!  O  everlasting  assurance,  that 
evil  has  of  right  no  place  in  the  world ;  and  that  if  good  would 
only  lift  itself  up  to  its  completeness,  it  might  claim  the  whole 
world  and  all  of  manhood  for  itself !  ^ 

To  the  theological  question  of  endless  punishment,  Phil- 
lips Brooks  had  given  earnest  thought  since  the  time  when 
he  read  Maurice's  "Theological  Essays,"  in  the  Virginia 
Seminary.  He  followed  the  revolution  of  opinion  as  it  went 
on  before  his  eyes,  and  the  argument  which  accompanied  it. 
He  felt  that  the  neglect  of  the  doctrine  of  God's  fatherhood 
underlay  the  issue  involved  in  punishment  for  sin.  But 
on  the  whole  it  must  be  said  that  he  refused  to  dogmatize 
on  the  subject.  He  was  chiefly  concerned  with  implanting 
"the  conviction  of  the  essentialness  of  punishment,  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  arbitrariness  of  punishment ;  that  is,  the  mis- 
ery which  follows  and  accompanies  sin  is  bound  up  in  the 
very  nature  of  the  sin  itself."  If  one  had  gained  that  con- 
viction there  was  no  further  difficulty  with  the  question. 
He  wrote  an  essay  in  1884,  after  his  return  from  India, 
begun  while  he  was  in  India,  where  he  takes  up  this  subject 
in  order  to  illustrate  his  theme,  "  The  healthy  conditions  for  a 
change  of  faith :  "  ^  — 

Many  people  find  fault  with  changes  of  opinion  because  they 
go  too  far.  Is  it  not  quite  as  often  the  trouble  with  them  that 
they  do  not  go  far  enough?     They  stop  in  the  criticism  or  denial 

^  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  iv.  p.  217. 
*  Essays  and  Addresses,  pp.  218  flE. 


^'^'33-S^']  THEOLOGY  531 

of  some  special  doctrine.  They  do  not  go  on  to  some  height 
where  they  can  see  more  of  God,  where  they  can  see  God  anew. 
To  take  again  the  same  illustration  which  we  have  been  using, 
the  thinker  who  has  come  to  believe  that  no  man  shall  necessarily 
suffer  everlasting  punishment  has  altered  one  view  of  one  doc- 
trine. But  he  who  has  come  to  the  sight  of  the  essentialness  of 
all  God's  working,  so  that  thereafter,  like  a  new  sunlight,  it 
saturates  all  his  thoughts,  has  come  to  a  new  and  fuller  faith. 
And  it  is  only  in  seeking  and  reaching  a  new  and  fuller  faith 
that  the  alteration  of  one  view  of  one  doctrine  is  healthily  made. 

It  became  him  to  speak  much  and  often  on  the  subject  of 
the  forgiveness  of  sin.  He  eschewed  the  whole  business  of 
priestly  intervention  and  penitential  systems.  Nor  did  he 
speak  the  Evangelical  shibboleths.  Here  are  two  of  his  most 
characteristic  utterances :  — 

The  true  sign  of  forgiveness  is  not  some  mysterious  signal 
waved  from  the  sky.  .  .  .  The  soul  full  of  responsive  love  to 
Christ,  and  ready,  longing,  hungry  to  serve  Him,  is  its  own  sign 
of  forgiveness. 

In  all  the  places  that  are  before  us  we  shall  either  be  delivered 
by  Christ  or  be  conquerors  in  Christ.  .  .  .  What  does  it  matter 
which  ?     Nay,  is  not  the  last  way  the  best  way  ? 

His  tendency  was  to  dwell  on  the  active  side  of  the  Chris- 
tian life,  the  positive  overcoming  of  sin  and  evil,  rather  than 
on  the  attainment  of  an  assurance  of  forgiveness,  which 
might  end  in  the  assurance  and  yield  no  fruit  and  inspire  no 
future.  But  lie  never  did  despite  to  the  Evangelical  mood 
or  to  its  deeper  utterance.  He  believed  that  the  death  of 
Christ  upon  the  cross  was  In  some  mysterious  organic  way 
connected  with  the  forgiveness  of  sin. 

The  death  of  Christ  has  saved  the  world.  The  death  of 
Christ !  Not  merely  His  character  and  teaching ;  for  historically, 
from  the  very  first,  the  violent  death  of  Jesus  has  had  a  promi- 
nence in  religious  influence  which  will  not  allow  us,  even  as  faith- 
ful students  of  history,  to  leave  it  out  of  view  when  we  speak  of 
the  great  formative  power  of  modern  human  life.  Always  and 
everywhere  the  Christ  whom  Christianity  has  followed  has  been 
a  Christ  who  died.  The  picture  it  has  always  held  up  has  been 
the  picture  of  a  cross.  The  creed  it  has  always  held,  however 
it  might  vary  as  to  the  precise  effect  of  His  death,  has  always 


S32  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

made  the  fact  of  His  death  vital  and  cardinal.  The  Jesus  who 
has  drawn  all  men  unto  Him  has  been  one  who  based  His  power 
upon  this  condition,    "I,  if  I  be  lifted  up."  ^ 

In  referring  to  that  theory  of  the  Atonement  which  makes 
Its  efficacy  consist  in  appeasing  the  wrath  of  God,  he  is  cau- 
tious lest  he  should  go  beyond  what  is  written :  — 

You  say  that  it  appeased  God's  wrath.  I  am  not  sure  but 
that  there  may  be  some  meaning  of  those  words  which  does  in- 
clude the  truth  which  they  try  to  express;  but  in  the  natural 
sense  which  men  gather  from  out  of  their  ordinary  human  uses, 
I  do  not  believe  that  they  are  true.  Nay,  I  believe  that  they 
are  dreadfully  untrue.  I  think  all  such  words  try  to  tell  what 
no  man  knows. ^ 

Elsewhere,  speaking  on  this  same  subject  he  remarks: 
"There  is  no  principle  involved  in  the  Atonement  that  is  not 
included  in  its  essence  in  the  most  sacred  relations  between 
man  and  man."^  Here  is  one  out  of  many  illustrations  of 
his  power  so  to  penetrate  the  heart  of  a  dogma  as  to  make 
it  seem  like  living  truth  to  which  assent  is  instinctive :  — 

Wherein  lay  the  power  of  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus  ?  What 
was  the  atonement  He  accomplished?  Did  the  change  which  He 
wrought  come  in  God  or  man?  But  we  have  seen  how  man's 
disobedience  inevitably  made  a  change  in  God,  —  not  to  destroy 
His  love,  but  to  set  His  loving  nature  into  hostility  to  the  soul 
that  would  not  do  His  will.  And  if  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus 
breaks  down  in  penitence,  as  we  know  it  does,  the  self-will  of 
man,  and  makes  him  once  more  gratefully,  loyally  obedient,  what 
then?  The  change  in  God  must  follow.  Not  the  restoration  of 
a  love  that  was  withheld,  but  the  free  utterance  for  help  and 
culture  of  a  love  that  has  never  been  held  back,  but  which  has, 
by  the  man's  false  position,  been  compelled  to  work  against  him. 
The  wind  is  blowing  all  the  time.  The  man  is  walking  against 
it,  and  it  buffets  him  and  is  his  enemy.  You  turn  the  man  round 
and  set  him  walking  with  the  wind.  The  wind  blows  on  just  as 
before.  But  now  it  is  the  man's  friend.  The  wind  has  not 
changed,  and  yet,  with  the  man's  change,  how  completely  the 
wind  has  changed  for  him.* 

1  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  vii.  p.  256.     (1867.) 

3  Ibid.,  vol.  vii.  p.  258. 

8  Ibid.,  vol.  iii.  p.  40.     (1881.) 

*  Ibid.,  vol.  iv.  p.  312.     (1886.) 


^T.  33-56]  THEOLOGY  S33 

It  must  be  said  further  of  Phillips  Brooks  that  in  his 
presentation  of  the  Atonement  he  reflected  the  attitude  and 
spirit  of  the  Anglican  Church,  with  whose  formularies  he 
was  in  full  sympathy.  The  charge  made  against  him  in  his 
lifetime  and  after  his  death  that  he  neglected  or  denied  the 
sacrificial  aspect  of  the  work  of  Christ  came  from  those  who 
identify  the  fact  of  an  Atonement  with  some  theory  of  Atone- 
ment, Anselmic,  or  Grotian,  or  other,  where  the  identifica- 
tion is  so  tense  and  rooted  that  it  is  found  imj^ossible  to 
make  the  distinction.  The  same  objection  is  raised  from 
the  same  source  against  the  Apostles'  or  Nicene  creeds  that 
they  pass  over  in  silence  the  Atonement.  It  would  be  truer 
to  say  that  they  offer  no  speculative  theory  of  the  significance 
of  the  death  of  Christ,  while  yet  they  give  the  fact  of  the  death 
the  most  prominent  position.  This  was  Phillips  Brooks's 
attitude.  He  would  not  narrow  or  pervert  the  mysterious 
and  infinite  significance  of  the  fact  of  an  atonement  by  any 
theory.  He  wrote  no  sermon  or  treatise,  there  is  no  sermon 
in  his  printed  volumes,  whose  object  is  to  maintain  some 
new  theory  or  defend  an  old  one.  But  those  who  listened 
to  hif^  preaching  from  Sunday  to  Sunday  never  missed  any- 
thing so  vital  in  Christian  experience  as  this,  —  the  omission 
of  the  Atonement  of  Christ  in  reconciling  the  world  to  God 
and  God  to  the  world.  An  eminent  theologian  said  of  him 
that  the  doctrine  was  implied  in  every  sermon.  The  subject 
is  an  important  one,  and  will  be  alluded  to  again  in  a  later 
chapter.  1 

III 

Those  who  compared  the  preaching  of  Phillips  Brooks  in 
the  earlier  and  the  later  periods  of  his  life  were  aware  of 

^  Phillips  Brooks  came  as  near  perhaps  to  offering  a  theory  of  the  Atone- 
ment as  was  possible  for  one  with  his  conception  of  it,  in  the  third  lecture  of 
his  book  on  the  Influence  of  Jesus,  where  he  maintains  that  not  in  the  physical 
suffering  in  and  of  itself,  but  in  the  submission  of  Christ  to  the  will  of  God,  of 
which  the  suffering  was  an  inevitable  accompaniment,  lay  the  mysterious  po- 
tency of  the  sacrifice  of  Christ.  But  this  is  only  one  of  the  aspects  of  a  sub- 
ject, concerning  which  there  are  many  hints  of  other  aspects  scattered  through- 
out his  sermons.     Cf.  ante,  pp.  230,  231. 


534  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

some  change  which  it  was  not  easy  to  define.  His  powers 
seemed  to  have  expanded,  the  effect  produced  was  greater; 
he  was  listened  to  with  a  feeling  of  added  solemnity  and  even 
of  awe  as  he  roused  the  slumbering  spiritual  faculties  into 
the  consciousness  of  a  divine  capacity,  into  enthusiasm  for 
the  highest  things.  Every  limitation  to  his  freedom,  if  there 
had  been  such,  was  removed.  He  went  here  and  there  on 
innumerable  errands,  and  of  every  sort  and  description,  from 
mothers'  meetings  to  the  gatherings  of  little  children,  the 
various  associations  of  young  men,  the  universities  and  col- 
leges within  his  reach,  denominational  meetings  of  every 
name,  anniversaries  of  institutions,  ordinations  and  solemni- 
ties of  every  kind.  Wherever  he  went  he  seemed  to  carry  the 
same  message,  yet  adapted  to  times  and  seasons,  till  it  became 
the  special  message  of  God  for  the  moment..  He  lifted  all 
smaller  occasions  into  the  universal  relationship,  and  the 
greatest  he  reduced  to  the  simplest  motives.  He  had  attained 
the  consummation  of  that  freedom  and  simplicity  which  had 
been  the  ideal  of  his  youth. 

To  account  for  the  change  in  his  attitude  which  all  who 
heard  him  felt,  yet  could  not  describe,  will  not  be  attempted 
here.  Many  forces  conspired  to  produce  a  mysterious  in- 
ward revolution,  or,  to  use  again  his  own  prophetic  words  of 
himself  as  he  contemplated  his  year's  absence  from  his  work, 
"The  gap  is  to  be  so  great  that  the  future  will  certainly  be 
something  different  from  the  past."  But  while  we  may  not 
attempt  to  explain  the  transition  in  his  life,  yet  there  are  cir- 
cumstances in  his  development  important  to  note,  and  about 
which  there  can  be  no  uncertainty. 

We  have  seen  from  his  correspondence  how  Phillips 
Brooks,  when  in  Germany,  had  been  reading  Lotze  with  a 
feeling  of  grateful  surprise.  What  "Ecce  Homo  "  had  been 
to  him  in  earlier  years  Lotze  was  to  his  later  years.  To 
both  he  came  prepared  by  his  own  previous  work.  In  his 
philosophy  of  life  and  of  religion  he  had  been  anticipating 
what  Lotze  could  teach  him.  He  had  felt  deep  dissatisfac- 
tion with  the  abstract  theories  of  prevailing  systems  of  phi- 
losophy, a  certain  scorn  for  the  one-sided  intellectualism  of 


^'^'33-S^']  THEOLOGY  S3S 

his  age,  whether  in  philosophy  or  theology.  The  speculative 
reason  had  seemed  to  him  inadequate  for  the  expression  of 
the  rich  fulness  of  the  contents  of  the  soul  or  for  the  deduc- 
tions from  human  history.  In  these  convictions  his  study 
of  Lotze  confirmed  him,  giving  him  the  strength  and  confi- 
dence which  a  man  standing  alone  must  eagerly  welcome. 
There  was  no  break  in  his  experience,  only  the  continuation 
in  bolder  fashion  of  the  principles  which  had  hitherto  given 
him  freedom  and  power  of  utterance. 

These  principles  may  be  read  in  his  sermons  or  occasional 
essays  or  addresses.  He  affirms  with  unhesitating  confidence 
as  the  axiom  of  his  procedure  that  the  reality  is  larger  than 
philosophy  can  represent  it,  and  the  Christian  life  than  any 
system  of  theology.  Convinced  of  the  emptiness  of  terms 
and  of  abstract  notions,  he  turns  away  from  them  to  the  ful- 
ness of  the  individual  life,  or  the  life  of  the  race  recorded 
in  history,  with  renewed  and  ever  increasing  interest  in  the 
examples  of  life  to  be  found  about  him.  There  is  another 
organ  of  knowledge  than  the  dry  light  of  the  pure  intellect; 
and  the  truth  attainable  by  this  other  organ  of  knowledge  is 
objective  and  real,  even  though  no  appeal  can  be  made  to 
the  theoretical  reason  in  its  defence.  In  this  means  of  know- 
ledge the  intellect  is  not  inactive,  but  is  fused  in  organic 
unity  with  the  conscience  and  the  affections  of  the  believing 
soul.  In  order  to  know  the  things  of  Christ  there  must  be 
purity  of  heart,  the  submission  of  the  will,  and  what  is  known 
as  the  illumination  given  by  the  Holy  Spirit. 

Hence  he  discarded  theological  gymnastics  as  having  no 
value,  but  as  illustrated  in  the  experience  of  the  New  Eng- 
land people  injurious  to  the  interests  of  the  spiritual  life. 
He  rejected  the  distinction  between  the  theology  of  the  in- 
tellect and  the  theology  of  the  feelings  as  having  no  basis  in 
actuality;  or  if  one  must  choose  between  them  the  prefer- 
ence should  be  given  to  the  theology  of  the  heart.  Religion 
must  be  simplified  by  bringing  into  prominence  its  funda- 
mental truths,  —  that  all  men  are  the  children  of  God  in 
virtue  of  creation ;  that  the  moral  life  is  the  expression  of  the 
divine  will;  that  the  phenomena   of  the  world's  order  are 


S36  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

incidents  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  appeal  for  the  defence 
of  these  primary  convictions  must  be  taken  to  an  immediate 
inner  experience,  attesting  the  truths  of  religion  directly, 
independently  of  logic,  so  that  faith  becomes  the  organ  of 
spiritual  knowledge,  as  the  eyes  of  the  body  receive  impres- 
sions from  the  visible  world.  In  both  cases  alike  the  result 
is  an  objective  actuality,  valid  and  real. 

With  these  convictions  came  the  freedom  to  disregard  the 
materialism  of  science,  the  skepticism  of  shallow  culture,  the 
disquieting  results  of  philosophical  and  historical  criticism. 
No  exact  science  can  penetrate  the  value  of  realities  in  the 
spiritual  world.  The  aspirations  of  the  human  heart,  the 
contents  of  the  feelings  and  desires,  the  aims  of  art  and 
poetry,  must  be  studied  in  order  to  give  religious  tenets  any 
meaning  of  value.  The  "watchwords  of  easy  currency"  in 
theology  are  of  little  avail  without  the  devoted  search  in  that 
experience  of  life,  from  whence  they  had  drawn  whatever 
value  they  had  once  or  might  still  express. 

But  in  this  process  we  must  note  the  absence  of  anything 
like  a  negative  tendency  which  led  him  to  pick  and  choose, 
or  to  reject  as  unworthy,  any  of  the  contributions  of  past  ages 
in  the  church  to  the  sum  of  religious  knowledge.  Beneath 
theological  formulas,  he  assumed  that  originally  heart  and 
conscience  had  been  at  work  in  organic  fusion  with  the  think- 
ing mind.  Even  though  the  results  might  not  be  final,  in 
the  sense  of  attaining  the  ultimate  absolute  expression  of 
the  content  of  life,  yet  they  were  approximately  true  and 
constituted  lines  of  advance  which  must  not  be  withdrawn. 
In  some  cases,  notably  in  the  doctrines  of  the  Incarnation 
and  of  the  Triune  distinctions  in  the  nature  of  Godhead,  he 
rested  with  a  sense  of  security  that  no  future  progress  in 
religious  thought  could  possibly  shake  or  destroy. 

Such  were  the  deeper  presuppositions,  the  underlying  mo- 
tives, of  the  preaching  of  Phillips  Brooks.  He  attempted  no 
exposition  or  defence  of  his  method  in  the  pulpit,  but  simply 
applied  it  with  triumphant  success.  It  might  have  been 
feared  that  this  application  of  religion  in  its  simplicity  would 
have  proved  jejune  and  monotonous  in  the  pulpit.     But,  on 


^T.  33-S6']  THEOLOGY  537 

the  contrary,  life  seemed  to  grow  richer  and  its  contents 
more  varied  and  full  of  meaning  as  he  carried  the  conviction 
into  every  department  of  human  thought  and  experience 
that  every  man  was  actually  the  child  of  God.  Under  the 
influence  of  this  conviction  he  was  stimulated  into  deeper 
interest  and  solicitude  as  he  brooded  in  contemplation  over 
the  stupendous  drama  of  life.  His  natural  endowment  in 
the  imaginative  faculty,  seen  from  his  earliest  years,  which 
gave  him  the  capacity  for  entering  into  all  human  interests, 
continued  to  grow  in  range  and  intensity,  finding  its  oj^por- 
tunity  in  the  wide  reading  of  the  experience  of  other  ages 
no  less  than  in  the  remarks  of  casual  conversation.  He  sub- 
jected himself  to  the  best  minds,  but  with  no  undue  subjec- 
tion, enriching  himself  also  by  the  best  examples,  finding 
inspiration  everywhere  in  life,  but  above  all  in  the  life  of 
Christ  as  the  Son  of  God,  and  therefore  the  revelation  of  the 
Father's  will. 

The  evidence  of  a  change  in  the  later  attitude  of  Phillips 
Brooks  may  be  seen  by  comparing  some  of  his  later  with 
the  earlier  writings.  The  change,  it  is  apparent,  is  mainly 
one  of  emphasis,  and  yet  it  is  accompanied  with  a  certain 
modification  of  statement.  We  take,  for  example,  his  lec- 
tures on  the  Teaching  of  Religion,  delivered  at  Yale  in 
1879.  He  had  then  given  the  initiative  to  the  intellect, 
which,  in  turn,  acts  upon  the  feelings  or  emotions,  and  the 
feelings,  when  thus  aroused,  act  upon  the  will.  The  intel- 
lectual aspects  of  truth  are  compared  to  "a  clear  glass  held 
squarely  between  God  and  man; "  and  the  function  of  "feel- 
ing is  to  furnish  the  middle  term  "  between  the  knowing  in- 
tellect and  the  conscience.  While  he  admits  that  this  is  not 
the  highest  or  most  direct  way  of  attaining  the  religious  life, 
yet  he  recognizes  it  as  legitimate  and  practical,  and  seeks 
to  illustrate  and  enforce  it.  But  in  one  of  his  latest  essays, 
with  a  similar  title,  "The  Teachableness  of  Religion,"  writ- 
ten in  1892,  he  discards  this  concession  to  the  lower  method, 
and  boldly  proclaims  what  he  then  considered  impossible  for 
many,  the  approach  to  religion  by  the  unified  totality  of  all 
the  human  powers. 


538  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

Religion  must  be  imparted  to  the  total  man.  The  total  man 
is  something  more  than  the  sum  of  his  parts.  No  definition  of 
religion  satisfies  us  except  that  which  declares  that  it  is  the  com- 
pleteness of  the  life  of  man.  We  are  always  taking  man  apart 
and  treating  him  in  fragments.  Every  highest  consideration  of 
him  insists  upon  the  restoration  of  his  unity.  He  has  a  quality 
in  his  entire  life  which  no  examination  of  his  partial  qualities 
can  account  for.  This  is  the  first  fact  concerning  the  nature  of 
religion,  which  must  always  dominate  the  method  of  its  teaching. 
It  belongs  to  the  whole  man  in  his  unity.  It  is  a  possession,  a 
condition,  a  quality  of  the  total  undivided  human  life. 

The  invitation,  "Come  to  Jesus,"  is  the  exact  utterance  of 
the  great  Teacher  of  religion  describing  what  the  disciple  is  to 
do.  It  describes  a  complete  experience,  in  which  ai'e  enfolded 
the  communication  of  knowledge,  the  imposition  of  command- 
ments, the  awakening  of  affections,  but  which  is  greater  than  the 
sum  of  all  these,  as  the  whole  is  always  greater  than  the  sum  of 
its  parts. 

Let  us  sum  up,  then,  what  we  have  said  about  the  general 
method  of  the  teaching  of  religion.  It  comes  directly  from  the 
soul  of  God  laid  immediately  upon  and  pressing  itself  into  the 
soul  of  every  one  of  His  children.  It  is  the  gift  of  the  total 
nature  of  God  to  the  total  nature  of  man.  Therefore  it  can  utter 
itself  only  through  the  total  human  life,  which  is  personal  life. 
And  it  is  by  the  primary  personal  relationship,  and  by  the  great 
universal  personality  of  man,  and  by  the  Son  of  God  who  is  also 
the  son  of  man,  and  by  the  Church  which  is  the  anticipated  ful- 
filment of  humanity,  by  these,  as  media,  that  the  Eternal  Father, 
who  at  the  same  time  is  always  giving  Himself  most  of  all  im- 
mediately, bestows  Himself  on  man.^ 

But  there  is  another  tendency  to  be  noted  in  his  later 
representative  utterances.  He  inclines  to  identify  the  total 
man  in  his  unity  with  the  wiU.  He  places  the  stress  upon 
the  will,  as  if  in  itself  it  carried  the  harmony  of  all  the 
powers.  He  had  always  magnified  obedience  as  the  highest 
virtue,  but  he  speaks  at  last  as  though  the  will  were  the 
essence  of  life  whether  in  God  or  man.  It  begins  to  be  more 
evident  that  he  had  himself  been  going  through  an  inward 
revolution,  and  must  therefore  be  ranked  with  those  who 
had  uttered  their  protest  in  history  against  the  tendency  to 
give  too  exalted  prominence  to  the  human  intellect.  He  was 
1  Cf.  Essaj/s  and  Addresses,  p.  215 ;  also  ibid.  pp.  2-6 ;  34-60. 


^T.  SSS^I  THEOLOGY  539 

in  sympathy  with  Duns  Scotus,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  who 
made  assault  on  the  intellectualism  of  Thomas  Aquinas,  and 
prepared  the  way  for  the  decline  of  scholasticism  in  theology. 
In  his  own  age  he  was  in  sympathy  with  Schopenhauer,  who 
had  renounced  with  scorn  the  Hegelian  principle  which 
makes  the  absolute  idea  or  reason  the  basis  of  the  universe. 
He,  too,  was  inclined  to  regard  the  world  as  the  manifesta- 
tion of  will.  But  he  reversed  the  interpretation  of  the  "will 
to  live,"  and  gave  it  a  positive  purpose,  till  the  "will  to 
live  "  becomes  the  expression  for  the  highest  j^hilosophy  of 
human  life,  which  is  true  alike  for  God  and  for  man.  In 
all  this  he  was  translating  and  interpreting  his  own  history, 
—  a  hungry,  voracious  will  ranging  the  world  for  the  bread 
of  life.  In  a  sermon  preached  at  Harvard  University  before 
the  graduating  class  of  1884,  when  he  was  urging  the  im- 
portance of  "character  in  transmitting  truth  and  turning  it 
into  power,"  he  thus  spoke:  — 

The  first  secret  of  all  effective  and  happy  living  is  in  a  true 
reverence  for  the  mystery  and  greatness  of  your  human  nature, 
for  the  things  which  you  and  your  brethren  are,  in  simply  being 
men.  But  surely  among  all  the  faculties  which  this  mysterious 
human  nature  has,  none  is  more  interesting,  none  more  thoroughly 
deserves  our  study  and  our  admiration,  than  this,  that  it  is  able 
to  carry  over  learning  into  life  and  to  be  a  mediator  between 
thought  and  action. 

If  we  ask  what  it  is  in  human  character  that  constitutes  this 
faculty,  we  cannot  hesitate  to  give  the  answer.  It  is  the  Will, 
that  central  constituent  of  character  always.  There  can  be  no 
character  without  will.  Fill  a  man  with  every  kind  of  know- 
ledge, let  him  understand  the  sky  and  the  earth  and  the  sea,  let 
him  know  all  that  history  and  all  that  metaphysics  can  tell  him, 
that  does  not  make  him  character.  Those  things  may  all  lie  in 
his  mind  as  the  apples  lie  in  the  basket.  Not  till  a  will,  a 
choice,  a  distinct  preference  for  one  thing  over  another,  a  distinct 
approval  of  this  and  disapproval  of  that  comes  in,  not  until  then 
has  the  man  any  true  character;  not  until  then  do  the  know- 
ledges become  faculties  and  unite  into  a  man.  Character  having 
its  virtue  and  its  value  in  will,  this  is  the  critical  power  which 
stands  between  learning  and  life,  and  sends  the  one  through  in 
power  on  to  the  other. 

Hence  it  is  that  the  really  powerful  thing,  the  only  really  pow- 


540  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

erful  thing  in  the  world  of  man,  is  and  always  lias  been  felt  to  be 
character.  Men  of  little  character,  men  of  little  will,  may  ac- 
cumulate material.  It  lies  in  great  dead  mass  until  the  man  of 
character  comes  and  turns  it  into  force.  Everywhere  Truth  has 
lain  helpless  till  character  has  come  to  concentrate  it  and  hurl  it 
as  power  upon  life. 

The  characteristic  word  with  Phillips  Brooks  henceforth 
was  "obedience"  as  the  correlative  of  "will."  He  defined 
the  essence  of  God  as  will.  He  complained  of  the  "new 
theism"  that  it  overlooked  the  will  in  God,  and  he  an- 
nounced as  the  word  for  the  future,  "  He  commanded  and  it 
stood  fast."  In  a  sermon  entitled  the  "Knowledge  of  God," 
preached  in  1886,^  he  went  so  far  as  almost  to  identify  know- 
ledge with  will,  till  all  life  seems  to  resolve  itself  into  will. 
In  the  last  sermon  that  he  wrote,  written  not  for  his  own 
parish  immediately,  but  for  the  students  of  Harvard  Univer- 
sity, he  took  up  the  word  "obedience"  and  glorified  it  as  the 
word  of  life  :  — 

He  [Christ]  seems  to  gather  up  his  fullest  declaration  of  this 
vital  connection  of  man  with  God  and  call  it  in  one  mighty  word 
obedience.  You  must  obey  God,  and  so  live  by  Him.  How 
words  degrade  themselves!  .  .  .  This  great  word  "obedience" 
has  grown  base  and  hard  and-eervile.  Men  dread  the  thought  of 
it  as  a  disgrace.  They  refuse  to  obey,  as  if  they  were  thereby 
asserting  their  dignity.  In  reality  they  are  asserting  their  own 
weakness.  He  who  obeys  nothing  receives  nothing.  Rather  let 
us  glorify  obedience.  It  is  not  slavery  but  mastery.  He  who 
obeys  is  master  of  the  master  whom  he  serves.  He  has  his  hands 
in  the  very  depth  of  his  Lord's  treasures.  When  God  says  to 
His  people.  Do  this  and  live,  He  is  not  making  a  bargain ;  He 
is  declaring  a  necessary  truth.  He  is  pronouncing  a  necessity. 
He  who  does  my  will  possesses  Me.  For  my  will  is  the  broad 
avenue  to  the  deepest  chambers  of  my  life.  .  .  .  "Son,  thou  art 
ever  with  me,  and  all  that  I  have  is  thine."  So  speaks  the  infi- 
nite God  to  the  obedient  Child.  .  .  .  Obedience  means  mastery 
and  wealth.  Therefore  let  us  glorify  obedience,  which  is  light 
and  life,  and  dread  disobedience,  which  is  darkness  and  death. '^ 

1  Cf .  Sermons,  vol.  iv.  pp.  280  ff. 

2  Cf.  The  William  Belden  Noble  Lectures,  1898,  p.  21,  where  this  passage 
is  cited. 


^T.  33-56']  THEOLOGY  541 

This  was  the  root  difficulty  with  Agnosticism,  that  it  sep- 
arated the  intellectual  faculty  from  the  will  which  is  the 
essence  of  character,  and  as  mere  intellect  went  sounding 
on  its  dim  and  perilous  way. 

When  Christ  says,  "  The  Father  knoweth  me, "  that  means 
God  has  a  ivill  for  every  act  of  mine.  What,  then,  can  "  I  know 
the  Father  "  mean  except,  "  In  every  act  of  mine,  I  do  the  Fa- 
ther's ivill "  ?  Obedience  becomes  the  organ  and  utterance,  nay 
becomes  the  substance  and  reality  of  knowledge  on  the  side  of  Him 
who  is  aware  that  in  this  more  special  sense  God  knows  Him. 
.  .  .  God  cannot  know  anything  in  pure  passivity.  He  always 
wants  something  to  be  done  about  the  thing  He  knows.  Every 
knowledge  of  God  involves  and  issues  in  a  will.  .  .  .  Oh,  how  we 
separate  our  knowing  and  our  obeying  powers,  our  mental  and 
our  moral  natures,  as  if  they  could  be  separated,  as  if  either  of 
them  could  live  without  the  other. ^ 

It  is  difficult  to  classify  Phillips  Brooks  in  his  theological 
attitude  because  he  is  unlike  any  theologian  with  whom  we  ' 
may  compare  him.  In  giving  the  prominence  to  the  will  in 
Deity  and  in  humanity  he  resembles  Calvin  and  Augustine, 
—  a  possible  inheritance,  also,  from  his  Puritan  descent. 
But  on  the  other  hand  he  was  emancipated  from  every  V 
trace  of  the  doctrine  of  election,  whether  ecclesiastical  or 
individual,  whether  through  the  church  by  baptism,  or  by 
the  action  of  special  grace  in  conversion.  In  the  prominence  / 
which  he  gave  in  his  preaching  to  the  conviction  that  all 
men  are  the  children  of  God,  by  creation  and  by  redemption, 
he  departs  from  the  teaching  of  Calvin  and  Augustine; 
going  back  to  the  earlier  theology,  which  in  its  comprehen- 
siveness regarded  all  humanity  as  the  body  of  Christ;  re- 
fusing to  reduce  the  body  of  Christ  to  the  "Catholic" 
Church,  however  defined,  as  involving  a  limitation  which 
neutralized  the  power  of  the  Incarnation.  But  again,  he  was 
not  in  sympathy  with  what  seemed  to  him  the  exaggerated 
intellectualism  of  the  age  of  creeds  and  councils  in  the  an- 
cient church,  while  yet  he  accepted  the  results  which  had 
been  reached.  He  dwelt  more  upon  the  obedience  of  Christ 
as  the  evidence  of  His  divine  nature.  It  had  been  the 
1  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  iv.  pp.  290,  295. 


542  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

objection  to  the  divinity  of  Christ,  the  standing  objection  in 
every  age  of  the  church,  that  He  professed  obedience  to  the 
Father's  will;  and  obedience,  it  was  assumed  as  an  axiom, 
implied  inferiority,  —  he  who  obeys  is  inferior  to  him  who  is 
obeyed.  For  this  reason,  certain  passages  of  Scripture  speak- 
ing of  Christ's  obedience  to  the  Father  had  been  greatly 
neglected,  if  not  discredited,  by  those  maintaining  the  co- 
equality  of  the  Son  with  the  Father.  But  these  were  the 
favorite  texts  with  Phillips  Brooks.  He  reversed  the  argu- 
ment and  rested  upon  the  presupposition  that  perfect  obedi- 
ence means  perfect  equality.  Had  he  cared  to  formulate  his 
theology  into  a  system  this  would  have  been  one  of  his  leading 
motives  in  maintaining  the  divinity  of  Christ.  The  point 
cannot  be  expanded  here,  but  it  has  a  profound  significance. 

God's  will  and  Christ's  obedience.  Here  there  is  the  perfect 
mutualness,  the  absolute  understanding  and  harmony,  of  the  Fa- 
ther and  the  Son.  ...  In  the  words  of  completed  obedience  the 
mutual  knowledge  of  Father  and  Son  is  perfect,  and  being  blends 
with  being.  .  .  .  Father  and  Son  have  come  close  to  one  an- 
other. In  mutual  knowledge,  in  harmony  of  will  and  obedience, 
they  are  absolutely  one.  Of  no  act  that  the  strong,  gentle  hands 
can  do  can  we  say  anything  but  this,  that  Father  and  Son  to- 
gether do  it,  making  one  power,  working  one  result.  ...  It  is 
the  Father  and  the  Son.  It  is  God  in  Christ.  It  is  Christ  filled 
with  God.^ 

This  importance  attached  to  the  will,  as  if  it  held  the  in- 
tellect in  solution,  explains  some  characteristics  of  Phillips 
Brooks  otherwise  unintelligible  to  an  age  which  gave  the 
supremacy  to  the  intellect.  Thus  he  admitted  the  existence 
of  the  devil,  treating  the  subject  with  seriousness,  not  merely 
for  rhetorical  purposes,  when  others  amused  themselves  with 
writing  the  autobiography  of  a  being  who  was  defunct.  It 
gave  urgency  and  point  in  the  resistance  to  evil  to  regard 
temptation  as  not  wholly  a  subjective  mood  or  passing  senti- 
ment, but  as  instigated  by  a  being  who  was  personal,  who 
could  be  fought  and  overcome.  It  made  the  battle  of  life 
more  real  and  tangible  to  regard  it  as  a  conflict  of  wills. ^ 

1  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  iv.  p.  291.     (1886.) 

^  Cf.  Ibid.  vol.  vi.  for  a  sermon  on  the  Mystery  of  Iniquity :  also,  The  Spiritual 


^T.  33-56']  THEOLOGY  543 

This  same  tendency  to  magnify  life  as  will  showed  itself 
in  another  form.  He  did  not  like  to  think  of  an  empty 
space  in  which  the  world  was  swinging;  his  nature  abhorred 
a  vacuum,  and  to  people  space  with  life,  with  spirits  good  or 
evil,  did  not  seem  to  him  irrational.  In  one  of  his  sermons, 
on  the  Battle  of  Life,  preached  in  1885,  he  laments  that  the 
belief  has  faded  away  "in  a  universe  all  full  of  unseen  forces." 
It  has  not  faded  away  because  of  its  unreasonableness,  but 
because  men  have  made  this  unseen  world  a  field  for  witch- 
craft and  magic  obnoxious  to  the  moral  sense. 

When  men  can  get  rid  of  the  paraphernalia  of  ghost  stories 
and  the  false  supernatural  which  brings  its  double  harm,  degrad- 
ing the  souls  that  believe  in  it  and  hardening  into  blank  material- 
ism the  souls  whom  its  absurdities  or  enormities  drive  into  dis- 
belief ...  I  do  believe  that  we  shall  see  a  great  restoral  of 
healthy  belief  in  spiritual  presences.^ 

In  the  last  experience  of  Phillips  Brooks  there  emerges  »/ 
a  peculiar  type  of  mysticism,  springing  out  of  the  conscious- 
ness of  oneness  between  the  divine  and  the  human  will.  It 
is  a  mysticism  wherein  there  is  no  sensuousness  of  emotion, 
no  luxury  of  sentimental  feeling,  as  in  forms  arising  from 
other  sources,  whose  tendency  is  to  degenerate  into  empti- 
ness. And  yet  there  is  no  sense  of  union  so  close  as  that 
springing  from  the  harmony  of  will  with  will.  In  compari- 
son with  it  intellectual  sympathy  is  weak,  or  the  sentiment 
of  a  common  emotion.  In  this  consciousness  of  oneness  of 
will,  there  is,  also,  the  possibility  of  infinite  tenderness,  of 
an  adoring  love  surpassing  human  comprehension.  Here  are 
some  of  the  passages  where  Phillips  Brooks  describes  the 
experience  of  his  later  years :  — 

Many  of  the  noblest  souls  have  always  felt,  what  they  could  '^ 
not  entirely  describe  even  to  themselves,  such  a  mysterious  union 
between  their  personal  life  and  the  deep  spirit  which  works  in  all 
things,  that  they  have  known  that  the  unit  of  their  existence  and 

Man,  an  English  volume  of  his  sermons,  for  a  sermon  on  the  Temptation  of 
Christ. 

1  Cf .  Sermons,  vol.  vi.  p.  79.  See,  also,  vol.  viii.  for  a  sermon  on  Unseen 
Spiritual  Helpers,  in  which  the  same  thought  is  presented  from  a  different 
point  of  view. 


/ 


544  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1869-92 

their  action  was  not  the  simple  personality  which  in  the  tightest 
and  most  literal  sense  they  called  themselves,  but  was  something 
more  and  greater.  Just  as  the  Body  is  not  the  Man,  but  the 
Body  with  the  Soul  flowing  through  it  and  filling  it,  so  —  such 
has  been  the  thought  of  many  of  the  greatest  natures,  the 
thought  of  which  we  have  all  caught  sight  in  some  moment  of 
our  lives  —  I  am  not  merely  this  compact  and  single  group  of 
powers,  pervaded  with  this  consciousness  of  personality;  I  am  all 
this,  kept  in  communion  with  the  heart  of  all  things,  fed  by  the 
spirit  of  the  universal  life. 

Translate  this  floating,  mystical  persuasion  into  the  terms  of 
Religion,  and  it  becomes  the  conviction  that  God  and  man  are  so 
near  together,  so  belong  to  one  another,  that  not  a  man  by  him- 
self, but  a  man  and  God,  is  the  true  unit  of  being  and  power. 
The  human  will  in  such  sympathetic  submission  to  the  divine  will 
that  the  divine  will  may  flow  into  it  and  fill  it,  yet  never  de- 
stroying its  individuality;  I  so  working  under  God,  so  working 
with  God,  that  when  the  result  stands  forth  I  dare  not  claim  it 
for  my  personal  achievement ;  my  thought  filled  with  the  thought 
of  One  who  I  know  is  different  from  me  while  He  is  unspeakably 
close  to  me,  as  the  western  sky  to-night  will  be  filled  with  the 
sunset.  Are  not  these  consciousnesses  of  which  all  souls  that 
have  ever  been  truly  religious  have  sometimes  been  aware?  "It 
seemed  good  to  the  Holy  Ghost  and  to  us, "  wrote  the  Apostles 
to  the  brethren  at  Antioch.  "I  live,  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth 
in  me, "  wrote  Paul  to  the  Galatians.  Who  has  not  felt  it  ?  It 
was  God  and  I,  making  one  unit  of  power,  that  conquered  my 
great  temptation,  that  did  my  hard  work,  that  solved  my  pro- 
blem, that  bore  my  disappointment.  Let  me  not  say  that  it  was 
God  alone.  That  makes  me  a  machine,  and  responsibility  floats 
off  like  a  cloud.  Let  me  not  say  that  it  was  I  alone.  That  robs 
the  work  of  depth  and  breadth  and  height,  and  limits  it  to  what 
I  know  of  my  poor  faculty.  No !  It  was  this  active  unity  of 
God  and  me,  His  nature  filling  my  nature  with  its  power  through 
my  submissive  will.  It  is  not  something  unnatural.  It  is  most 
natural.  I  do  not  truly  realize  myself  mitil  I  become  joined 
with,  filled  with  Him. 

Tliis  is  the  religious  thought  of  character.  I  could  not  preach 
to  you  of  character,  of  human  selfhood  and  its  great  function,  as 
I  have  preached  to  you  to-day,  and  not  carry  it  as  high  and  deep 
as  this.  Men  call  it  mystical  and  transcendental;  they  say  it 
all  sounds  dreamlike  to  the  great  majority  of  men.  I  confess 
that  objection  weighs  with  me  less  and  less.  A  thousand  things 
seem  dreamlike  to  the  great  majority  of  men  which  by  and  by 


^T.  33-56}  THEOLOGY  545 

are    going    to    be    known    as    the    great   moving   powers   of    the 
world.  ^ 

The  work  of  Phillips  Brooks  as  a  theologian  was  to  render 
the  formula  in  terms  of  life.  To  apply  the  reverse  method, 
and  reduce  again  his  thought  and  its  expression  to  the  cate- 
gories of  traditional  opinion,  does  injustice  to  his  attitude. 
Yet  the  foregoing  study  of  his  theology  will  not  have  been  in 
vain  if  it  serves  to  make  his  position  more  intelligible  when 
judged  by  conventional  standards.  Let  one  final  word  from 
him  close  the  discussion.  He  is  speaking  of  the  supreme 
test  to  which  all  changes  in  religious  thought  must  come :  — 

Every  change  of  religious  thought  ought  to  justify  itself  by  a 
deepened  and  extended  morality.  .  .  .  The  manifestations  of 
devoutness  are  variable  and  mistakable.  The  manifestations  of 
moral  life  are  in  comparison  with  them  invariable  and  clear. 
About  my  being  humble  and  full  of  faith  any  man  may  be  mis- 
taken. About  my  being  honest  and  pure  it  is  far  less  possible 
to  err.  Therefore  it  is  a  blessed  thing  for  all  religions  that  the 
standards  of  morality  stand  clearly  facing  it  and  saying,  "Can 
you  do  this  ?  Can  you  make  men  brave  instead  of  cowardly,  kind 
instead  of  cruel,  true  instead  of  false  ?  "  For  every  new  form  of 
religious  thinking  it  is  a  blessed  thing  that,  full  of  its  first  fresh 
enthusiasm,  it  is  compelled  to  pass  along  the  road  where  the  old 
solemn  judges  sit  who  have  judged  all  the  ages,  the  judges  before 
whose  searching  gaze  many  an  ardent  young  opinion  has  withered 
away  and  known  its  worthlessness,  the  judges  who  ask  of  every 
comer  the  same  unchanging  question,  "Can  you  make  men  better 
men  ?  "  No  conceit  of  spirituality  or  wisdom  must  make  any  new 
opinion  think  it  can  escape  that  test.  He  who  leaves  the  plain 
road  where  the  great  judges  sit,  and  thinks  that  he  can  get  around 
behind  them  and  come  into  the  road  again  beyond  where  they  are 
sitting,  is  sure  to  fall  into  some  slough  of  subtlety  and  to  be  seen 
of  men  no  more.'' 

^  From  Baccalaureate  Sermon,  Class  of  1884,  Harvard  University.     For  sim- 
ilar utterances,  cf.  Essays  and  Addresses,  pp.  208,  378. 

2  Cf.  in  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  230.  See,  also,  the  Theology  of  Phillips 
Brooks,  by  Leighton  Parks,  Rector  of  Emmanuel  Church,  Boston  (1894),  for  a 
valuable  discussion  of  Dr.  Brooks's  theology,  with  references  and  citations ; 
and  "  Phillips  Brooks  as  a  Theologian,"  by  Rev.  John  Fox,  in  the  Presbyterian 
and  Reformed  Review,  July,  1895. 
VOL.  n 


CHAPTER  XVII 

1884-1885 

EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS.  VISIT  TO  WASHINGTON.  THE 
OLD  HOUSE  AT  NORTH  ANDOVER.  THEATRE  GOING. 
SISTERHOODS.  THE  NEWTON  CONTROVERSY.  MISSIONS. 
LATIN  SCHOOL  ADDRESS.  VISIT  TO  ENGLAND.  DEGREE 
OF  D.  D.  CONFERRED  BY  OXFORD  UNIVERSITY.  SERMON 
AT  CAMBRIDGE  UNIVERSITY.      EXTRACTS  FROM  NOTE-BOOK 

In  the  robing-room  of  Trinity  Church  is  a  window  given 
by  Phillips  Brooks  in  1884,  a  thank  offering  to  his  people 
for  their  generous  kindness,  and  representing  also  an  epoch 
in  his  career.  The  window  has  a  further  interest  in  being 
his  own  conception,  worked  out  under  his  supervision.  This 
is  a  description  which  reveals  something  of  its  significance :  — 

E$<I>A0A. 
[Be  opened.] 

The  picture  is  that  of  Jesus  and  the  man  of  Galilee  "that 
was  deaf  and  had  an  impediment  in  his  speech."  At  the  left 
stands  Jesus,  his  arm  stretched  out  that  his  fingers  may  touch 
the  lips  of  the  man  who  has  been  brought  to  him.  Around  stand 
the  Apostles  and  friends  of  the  afflicted  man,  while  in  the  back- 
ground one  sees  the  sail  of  a  ship  upon  the  Sea  of  Galilee. 

Above  are  representations  of  three  angels  holding  a  scroll  with 
the  words 

€15  a  i7n6vixov(riv  ayyeXoi  TrapaKvij/ai, 
["  Which  things  the  angels  desire  to  look  into."] 

At  the  bottom  of  the  window  two  small  pictures  represent  the 
Baptism  and  the  Supper  of  our  Lord:  on  the  left  the  Baptism, 
—  John  upon  the  bank  pouring  the  water  upon  the  head  of  his 
Master,  who  stands  in  the  stream;  while  above,  the  dove  is  de- 
scending from  the  heavens;  on  the  right,  The  Lord's  Supper,  — 
Jesus  breaking  bread  at  the  table  with  His  disciples,  and  St. 
John  leaning  upon  His  shoulder.^ 

^  Cf.  An  Historical  and  Descriptive  Account  of  Trinity  Church,  with  a  Guide 
to  its  Windows  and  Paintings.     By  A.  H.  Chester,  Cambridge.     1888. 


iET.  48]        EXTRACTS  FROM   LETTERS    547 

Of  this  window,  which  meant  vastly  more  to  him  than  he 
ever  confessed  in  words,  he  wrote  to  a  friend  who  admired 
it:  — 

I  am  glad  you  like  the  little  window  in  the  robing-room,  be- 
cause it  was  my  own  thought  entirely  and  one  in  which  I  took 
the  deepest  interest.  The  makers  did  their  work  just  as  I 
wanted  them  to,  and  the  result  has  already  given  me  great  satis- 
faction and  inspiration.  I  hope  that  it  will  help  a  long  line  of 
the  future  Rectors  of  Trinity  to  speak  with  free  and  wise  tongues. 

The  Coopers  and  the  McVickars  spent  the  last  week  in 
January  at  the  Rectory;  after  the  happy  days  were  over  Mr. 
Brooks  wrote  Mr.  Cooper,  sending  him  a  gift :  — 

February  12,  1884. 

May  it  remind  you  of  him  who  tenderly  remembers  your  visit 
as  one  of  the  bright  spots  in  his  dark  pilgrimage.  I  missed  you 
awfully  after  you  had  gone.  The  house  seemed  empty,  and  I 
wandered  up  and  down  the  stairs  looking  behind  all  the  doors  to 
find  my  jovial  friends.  But  by  and  by  I  found  they  were  not 
there,  and  so  I  dried  my  tears  and  went  to  work.  I  had  a  plea- 
sant visit  with  John  at  Springfield.  Then  I  went  up  to  Willie 
Newton's,  and  he  sleigh-rided  me  and  talked  to  me  about  the 
Inter-ecclesiastical  Church  Congress,  and  showed  off  his  children, 
and  was  as  nice  and  sentimental  as  possible.  Then  I  went  over 
to  Williamstown  in  the  snow,  and  saw  Mark  Hopkins,  and 
preached  to  the  boys,  and  wished  I  could  stay  longer,  and  came 
home. 

Since  then  we  have  lost  Wendell  Phillips,  and  all  the  town 
has  been  debating  whether  he  was  the  noblest  or  the  basest  man 
that  ever  lived,  and  we  discriminating  souls  have  decided  that  he 
was  a  mixture  of  the  two. 

On  the  appearance,  after  a  long  delay,  of  the  "Life  of 
Frederick  Denison  Maurice,"  he  writes  to  his  brother  Ar- 
thur :  — 

March  21,  1884. 

I  have  got  the  advance  sheets  of  Maurice's  Life,  which  Scrib- 
ners  sent  me,  and  am  enjoying  them  immensely.  He  was  the 
strangest,  moodiest  creature,  but  with  such  a  genuine  intellect 
and  such  a  true  love  for  his  race  and  time.  .  .  .  Isn't  it  sad 
that  we  shan't  see  dear  little  Clarkson  [late  Bishop  of  Nebraska] 
any  more  in  this  world  ? 

To  a  letter  from  Rev.  C.  A.  L.  Richards,  asking  in  re- 


548  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1884 

gard  to  a  current  report  that  Mr.  Brooks  had  surrendered 
his  faith  in  the  miracle,  he  wrote :  — 

Boston,  March  22, 1884. 
What  a  curious  question!  No,  I  have  not  "surrendered  the 
miraculous  element  in  the  New  Testament, "  nor  do  I  "  believe 
Jesus  the  natural  son  of  Joseph  and  Mary,"  nor  do  I  "think 
Stopford  Brooke  needlessly  withdrew  from  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, "  and  points  like  these.  Who  on  earth  can  be  the  man  who 
cares  to  know  what  I  think  about  these  things  ? 

He  is  recalled  at  this  time  as  once  entering  his  study, 
where  friends  were  waiting  for  him,  throwing  his  hat  across 
the  room  indignantly,  and  refusing  to  talk.  It  appeared 
that  he  had  just  come  from  a  conversation  on  the  street  with 
a  clergyman  of  another  denomination,  who  quietly  assumed 
that  he  did  not  believe  the  creeds  he  was  in  the  habit  of  re- 
citing. He  had  broken  out  in  moral  wrath  against  the  man 
and  against  his  assumption,  asking  him  if  he  realized  the 
meaning  of  what  he  was  saying.  To  a  clergyman  who  had 
published  a  statement  to  the  effect  that  Mr.  Brooks  no  longer 
believed  in  the  tenets  of  his  creed,  he  wrote  an  emphatic 
letter,  saying  plainly  that  the  statement  was  untrue.  This 
difficulty  which  he  encountered  might  afford  opportunity  for 
a  curious  psychological  study.  People  wanted  him  to  be- 
lieve as  they  did.  It  shook  their  faith  in  their  own  posi- 
tion if  it  were  shown  that  he  did  not.  Hence  they  assumed 
the  agreement.  They  were  unwilling  to  accept  his  denials. 
They  apologized  for  him  on  the  ground  that  he  could  not 
know  himself  on  such  points.  If  he  were  a  consistent  logi- 
cal thinker,  he  would  see  that  he  did  not  believe  what  he 
thought  he  did. 

When  Easter  had  been  kept,  he  went  to  New  York  for 

the  visit  previously  arranged  with  his  brother  and  thence  to 

Washington.     Just  as  he  was  leaving  New  York,  he  wrote 

to  Boston,  commending  to  his  assistant  at  Trinity  a  case  of 

need :  — 

New  Yobk,  Aprn  19, 1884. 

Will  you  go  and  see  a  colored  man  named who  is  in  the 

City  Hospital,  Boston?     It  is  a  bad  case.      The  man  shot  him- 
self some  six  weeks  ago,  in  consequence  of  some  fraudulent  pro- 


^T.  48]     EXTRACTS   FROM   LETTERS       549 

ceedings  in  which  he  had  been  caught,  and  now  he  is  in  a 
wretched  state.  He  will  probably  die,  —  or,  if  he  lives,  will 
be  a  helpless  creature.  He  is  half  paralyzed,  and  at  times  he  is 
more  or  less  out  of  his  head.  I  wish  that  you  would  see  him, 
for  when  I  left  him  he  was  very  desolate.  Do  comfort  the  poor 
soul,  and  set  him  right  if  you  can. 

A  round  of  festivities  awaited  him  in  Washington. 
Lunches  and  dinners,  at  which  distinguished  men  were  in- 
vited to  meet  him,  filled  up  the  days.  Among  his  hosts 
were  Senator  Bayard  and  the  historian  Bancroft.  He  met 
Senators  Hoar,  Dawes,  Pendleton,  Tucker,  and  Wade 
Hampton ;  Judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  Gray,  Field,  Har- 
lan and  Matthews.  At  a  dinner  given  in  his  honor  by  Mr. 
Bancroft,  he  met,  among  others,  General  Sheridan  and  Presi- 
dent Arthur.  He  called  upon  the  President  at  the  White 
House,  and  the  President  returned  his  call.  He  took  the 
occasion  while  in  Washington  to  revisit  the  Theological 
Seminary  at  Alexandria,  and  "grew  very  sentimental  about 
old  times."  Leaving  Washington,  he  returned  to  New 
York;  from  there  he  went  to  a  missionary  meeting  at  Troy, 
where  he  spoke,  returning  to  Boston  by  way  of  Springfield, 
where  a  reception  was  given  him  by  his  brother. 

In  Pennsylvania  the  name  of  Phillips  Brooks  had  been 
mentioned  as  a  candidate  for  the  bishopric  in  case  Bishop 
Stevens  should  ask  for  assistance.  He  writes  on  the  subject 
to  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  May  18,  1884. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  I  thank  you  for  your  kind  note,  on  which 
I  have  been  pondering  since  it  came.  It  is  a  funny  feeling  to 
be  brought  face  to  face  with  the  question  whether  one  would  be 
a  Bishop  if  he  were  elected.  But  when  I  ask  myself  the  ques- 
tion, I  become  quite  sure  that  I  would  not.  First,  I  feel  confi- 
dent that  I  do  not  want  it,  and  second,  I  am  sure  that  I  am  not 
made  for  it.  And  in  the  case  of  Pennsylvania,  if  there  should 
come  an  election  there,  they  have  so  good  a  man  in  McVickar 
that  there  is  no  need  of  looking  farther,  and  it  would  be  wrong 
to  distract  attention  from  him  to  anybody  else.  .  .  .  Let  him 
be  Bishop,  and  if  anybody  asks  anything  about  me,  tell  them  you 
believe  —  as  I  now  assure  you  is  the  case  —  I  would  not  accept 
it  if  I  were  chosen. 


550  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1884 

An  incident  occurred  in  the  spring  which  gave  him  great 
pleasure,  —  the  invitation  to  stand  as  sponsor  for  the  oldest 
son  of  the  Kev.  H.  H.  Montgomery,  then  Vicar  of  Kensing- 
ton, afterward  Bishop  of  Tasmania.  Mr.  Montgomery's 
wife  was  a  daughter  of  Archdeacon  Farrar.  To  his  infant 
godson,  Harold  Robert  Montgomery,  he  writes  this  letter :  — 

Boston,  June  9,  1884. 

My  dear  little  Godson,  —  I  sent  you  by  exjjress  to-day  a 
little  package,  which,  when  it  arrives,  I  beg  you  to  open  and  to 
keep  its  contents  as  a  token  of  the  love  and  remembrance  of  your 
far-away  Godfather.  I  hope  that  you  will  find  it  useful  for  a 
while,  and  by  and  by  when  you  outgrow  it,  I  shall  be  very  glad 
if  it  still  serves  to  remind  you  that  there  is  Somebody  away  ofB 
here  whom  you  belong  to,  and  who  cares  about  you  very  much 
indeed.  Your  Father  and  Mother  have  shown  me  the  great  con- 
fidence and  kindness  of  asking  me  to  be  your  Sponsor.  They 
will  tell  you  one  of  these  days  how  they  and  I  first  met.  But  I 
am  afraid  that  I  myself  will  have  to  tell  you  the  whole  story  of 
how  good  they  were  to  a  wanderer  who  had  strayed  across  the 
ocean.  I  should  have  been  very  deeply  interested  in  their  child 
even  if  they  had  not  made  such  a  sacred  tie  between  us.  As  it 
is,  nothing  can  happen  to  you  for  which  I  shall  not  deeply  care. 
May  you  grow  very  strong  at  once,  and  after  a  while  very  wise, 
and  never  fail  to  be  very  happy,  and  be  always  very  good.  Next 
year  I  shall  be  a  few  days  in  England,  and  then  we  will  see  each 
other's  face.  And  some  day  I  shall  have  the  chance  to  show  you 
this  country,  which  I  want  you  to  grow  up  liking  very  much,  and 
thinking  only  next  best  to  your  own.  I  am  so  glad  that  you  are 
born  now,  for  I  think  that  you  are  going  to  have  the  best  and 
most  interesting  time  to  live  in  that  anybody  has  ever  had. 
You  must  be  very  good  to  be  worthy  of  it.  But  just  at  present 
you  "must  give  your  whole  mind  and  time  to  growing  very  big  and 
strong. 

May  God  give  you  His  best  blessings  alway. 

Affectionately  your  Godfather,  Phillips  Brooks. 

He  had  an  attack  of  lameness  in  May,  which  shut  him  up 
in  the  house  as  a  cripple  for  several  days.  Otherwise  his 
health  seemed  to  be  good.  He  went  out  to  Commencement 
at  Harvard  as  usual,  "going  faithfully  through  the  whole 
programme,"  and  pleased  with  the  $  B  K  oration  by  Profes- 
sor Jebb,  of  Oxford. 


^T.  48]     EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS        551 

We  all  went  out  to  Class  Day  evening,  and  the  yard  was  ex- 
ceedingly beautiful.  Then  Bishop  Harris  was  here  and  preached 
the  Ordination  Sermon  at  Cambridge,  and  preached  for  me  at 
Trinity  yesterday  morning.      He  's  a  fine  fellow.    .    .    . 

Had  he  gone  to  England  in  the  summer,  he  would  have 
acted  as  representative  of  Harvard  University  at  the  three 
hundredth  year  celebration  at  Emmanuel  College,  Cam- 
bridge. But  the  summer  was  spent  at  home,  part  of  it  at 
Sharon  Springs,  N.  Y. ,  of  which  he  writes :  — 

What  a  pretty,  quiet  place  it  is,  —  a  place  for  children  to  run 

wild,  and  for  old  folks  to  sleep.      Even  Dr.  S was  not  half 

so  ugly  last  night  as  I  expected  him  to  be  about and  Father 

X did  not  stand  to  his  ritualistic  colors  worth  a  cent. 

He  speaks  of  attending  the  services  in  the  Episcopal 
Church,  but  they  were  not  wholly  to  his  taste :  "  I  sat  in  a 
pew  at  both  services  and  enjoyed  my  mind."  Here  is  a 
specimen  of  his  analysis  of  character,  in  which  his  letters 

abound : — 

Sharon  Springs,  N.  Y.,  July  9, 1884. 

Thank  you  for  letting  me  see  the  remarkable  epistle  in  which 
our  friend  pours  forth  his  soul.  It  is  a  strange  being.  I  doubt 
if  he  himself  has  any  idea  where  sincerity  ends  and  insincerity 
begins.  And  with  this  fulsome  and  unreal  part  of  him  there  are 
mixed  up  such  good  qualities,  so  much  energy  and  kindliness  and 
desire  to  be  useful,  that  it  seems  a  perpetual  pity  that  he  should 
not  be  a  great  deal  better  than  he  is.  He  is  a  curious  study  of 
the  way  in  which  one's  weakest  and  strongest  qualities  not  merely 
lie  side  by  side,  but  also  are  twisted  in  with  one  another,  and 
get  each  other's  strength  and  weakness. 

Altogether  the  summer  rather  dragged.  "  What  a  dread- 
ful time  summer  is!  I  long  for  Lent  and  its  labor,  or 
Christmas  and  its  carolling,  in  contrast  with  this  loungy, 
hot,  dissipated  life."  One  event,  however,  did  interest  him 
deeply;  he  had  come  into  possession  of  the  old  homestead  at 
North  Andover.  He  felt  for  the  first  time  the  sensation  of 
being  an  owner  of  land,  and  was  impressed  with  the  circum- 
stance that  he  should  have  fallen  heir  to  the  home  of  his  an- 
cestors. It  gave  him  a  new  sense  of  dignity  to  walk  over 
his  lands  and  contemplate  them  as  his  own.     He  magnified 


5S^  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1884 

to  its  full  importance  this  consciousness  of  possession,  and 
yet  played  with  it  as  if  he  had  been  presented  with  a  new 
toy.  It  was  his  pleasure,  from  this  time,  to  represent  him- 
self as  spending  his  summers  at  North  Andover,  and  car- 
rying on  there  extensive  farming  operations.  Many  im- 
provements within  and  without  the  house  made  things  more 
comfortable  and  attractive.  A  study  was  fitted  up  with  its 
large  fireplace,  where  he  was  surrounded  by  the  portraits  of 
his  ancestors,  —  a  so-called  study,  for  he  spent  but  little  time 
there;  he  could  not  get  accustomed  to  living  in  a  country 
town,  and  when  he  was  there  he  sighed  for  the  city  and  the 
ways  of  men.  But  he  did  his  best  to  win  himself  to  the  en- 
joyment of  his  property.  The  old  corn  barn  he  made  over 
into  a  playhouse  for  the  children  of  his  older  brother.  A 
stove  was  put  into  it  where  the  children  could  play  at  cook- 
ing, and  where  he  was  to  go  and  take  tea  with  them.  A 
study  table  was  also  provided,  for  it  was  assumed  that  he 
would  spend  there  much  of  his  time.  With  his  own  hands 
he  lined  almost  every  inch  of  the  wall  surfaces  with  pictures 
in  both  its  stories,  for  anything  in  the  shape  of  a  picture 
pleased  him,  and  even  cheap  woodcuts  were  better  than  no- 
thing. In  the  midst  of  the  changes  and  improvements  he 
writes,  "How  I  wish  we  had  taken  hold  of  it  and  made  these 
changes  ten  years  ago,  while  Father  and  Mother  and  the 
Aunts  could  have  got  the  enjoyment  of  them." 

With  the  exception  of  a  few  weeks  at  Sharon  Springs  he 
was  in  his  place  at  Trinity  Church  for  the  summer,  preach- 
ing on  Sundays,  visiting  the  sick  and  the  poor  during  the 
week,  anxious  that  they  should  not  feel  forsaken.  The  care 
of  the  mission  chapel  of  Trinity,  then  situated  on  Charles 
Street,  had  for  a  time  been  assumed  by  him.  It  was  one  of 
the  anecdotes  told  of  Mr.  Brooks  that  in  urging  upon  Rev. 
Reuben  Kidner  to  come  to  Boston  and  take  up  this  work, 
he  mentioned  as  an  inducement  the  crowded  congregations 
which  awaited  him  in  this  wayside  chapel ;  this  had  been  his 
own  experience  on  the  Sunday  evenings  when  he  had  preached 
there.  Plans  were  now  talked  of  for  enlarging  the  work 
under   Mr.   Kidner's   direction,   and   of   building   a   larger 


^T.  48]     EXTRACTS   FROM   LETTERS        S53 

chapel  in  some  better  situation.  He  speaks  of  his  interest 
in  the  mission  in  a  letter  to  Miss  Derby :  — 

Boston,  July  26,  1884. 

I  am  very  glad  indeed  to  hear  you  speak  as  you  do  of  the  new 
chapel  work.  I  have  great  hopes  of  it,  and  that  first  evening 
seemed  to  me  to  be  full  of  promise.  I  mean  to  try  to  be  of  more 
use  there  next  winter  than  I  have  been  of  late  years. 

Along  with  your  note  came  that  of  Mr.  N ,  suggesting  so 

kindly  that  some  overworked  clergyman  should  come  and  enjoy 
Campobello  for  a  while  at  his  house.  It  is  very  good  of  him 
indeed.  I  am  not  able  to  claim  that  I  am  overworked,  and  yet 
I  was  much  tempted  to  suggest  myself.  But  I  must  look  about 
and  see  if  there  is  not  somebody  that  needs  it  more.  If  you  see 
me  arriving  in  the  character  of  an  exhausted  and  destitute  minis- 
ter, you  must  not  expose  me.  But  I  am  afraid  that  I  must  stay 
at  home  and  look  after  Trinity,  for  we  have  just  met  with  a  sad 
mishap.  Our  suit  with  reference  to  the  small  triangle  in  front 
of  Trinity  Church  has  gone  against  us,  and  either  a  very  large 
amount  of  money  must  be  raised  to  purchase  it  or  it  must  be  built 
upon,  and  a  big  tenement  house  must  stand  right  up  before  our 
front  door.  But  this  will  all  come  out  right  somehow  and  the 
new  West-End  chapel  also  will  get  built  some  day. 

In  the  fall,  political  issues  were  causing  great  excitement 
throughout  the  country.  The  nomination  of  Mr.  Blaine  for 
the  presidency  caused  widespread  dissatisfaction  in  the  Re- 
publican party,  giving  rise  to  what  was  known  as  the  "Mug- 
wump "  movement,  by  whose  aid  the  Democratic  candidate, 
Mr.  Cleveland,  was  elected,  —  the  first  Democratic  President 
in  a  period  of  twenty-five  years.  While  Mr.  Brooks  did  not 
vote  for  Mr.  Blaine,  yet  he  positively  refused  to  join  in  the 
revolt  from  the  Republican  party. 

The  Church  Congress  met  at  Detroit  in  October,  where 
he  read  his  paper  on  "Authority  and  Conscience."^  He 
accepted  an  invitation  to  deliver  lectures  in  the  following 
year  at  the  General  Theological  Seminary  in  New  York,  and 
fastened  at  once  on  the  subject  of  Tolerance,  which  had  long 
been  in  his  mind,  as  needing  some  new  and  stronger  exposi- 
tion: "I  propose  to  give  its  history,  and  discriminate  it 
from  its  counterfeits  and  anticipate  its  future." 

^  Cf .  Essays  and  Addresses ;  see,  also,  ante,  p.  488. 


554  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1884 

The  proposed  visit  of  Archdeacon  Farrar  to  this  country 
was  hailed  by  Mr.  Brooks  with  delight.  He  charged  him- 
self in  advance  with  the  duty  of  making  preparation  for  it, 
offering  suggestions  as  to  how  the  time  shall  be  most  prof- 
itably employed :  — 

233  Clarendon  Stkbbt,  Boston,  December  3,  1884. 

My  dear  Dr.  Farrar,  —  This  is  a  joy  indeed !  Henceforth 
I  will  not  cease  to  hope  for  any  good  thing  which  I  want  very 
much,  for  I  shall  be  sure  that  some  changing  year  will  bring  it 
in  some  most  unexpected  way,  as  it  has  brought  your  promise  of 
a  visit  to  America.  Already  I  look  at  our  Boston  streets  with 
jealous  eyes,  and  hope  that  you  will  like  them ;  and  last  night, 
when  I  went  to  hear  your  countryman,  Dr.  Gosse,  lecture  at  the 
Lowell  Institute,  I  was  thinking  all  the  time  how  much  I  wished 
that  it  was  you  already  in  possession  of  the  platform,  where  we 
shall  see  you  by  and  by. 

I  care  little  what  you  do  in  New  York.  Boston  is  the  centre 
and  the  Hub.  First,  you  and  your  friend  who  comes  with  you 
will  make  my  bachelor  house  your  home  when  you  are  here,  won't 
you?  It  is  only  a  wayside  hut,  where  I  live  quite  alone,  but 
there  shall  be  the  heartiest  of  welcomes  and  liberty  to  do  the 
thing  which  you  like  best.  Will  you  not  tell  your  companion 
what  pleasure  it  will  give  me  if  he  with  you  will  come  to  me  for 
all  your  Boston  visit  ?  And  then  when  you  are  here,  would  it 
be  pleasant  to  you  if  an  audience  should  gather  for  your  Bamp- 
ton  Lectures  made  up  of  the  students  of  all  the  Divinity  schools 
of  various  churches,  —  Episcopal,  Congregationalist,  Methodist, 
Baptist,  Unitarian,  and  Universalist,  —  together  with  the  clergy 
of  all  of  those  denominations?  Such  an  audience  would  delight 
to  hear  you,  and  you  could  do  them  vast  good.  There  would 
certainly  be  the  wish  to  make  an  acknowledgment  of  several  hun- 
dred dollars  for  the  trouble  you  would  take. 

As  to  the  Lowell  Institute,  Mr.  Lowell  would,  I  know,  be 
overjoyed  to  know  that  you  would  lecture  for  him,  if  —  and 
that  brings  me  to  the  one  point  of  difficulty  about  it  all  —  you 
can  make  your  visit  late  enough  to  let  him  give  you  an  audience. 
The  trouble  is  that  everything  is  dead  here  almost  until  the  first 
of  November.  September  is  an  almost  useless  month  to  be  here. 
Society,  schools,  lectures,  are  almost  hopeless.  Our  Divinity 
schools  and  colleges  begin  about  the  first  of  October.  The  nearer 
a  course  of  lectures  can  be  brought  to  the  first  of  December  the 
better  it  succeeds.  I  am  anxious,  therefore,  that  your  visit  here 
shall  be  as  late  as  possible.     If  you  can  write  to  me  at  what 


^T.  48]     EXTRACTS   FROM  LETTERS        SSS 

time  you  can  come,  making  it  as  late  as  you  can  manage  it,  and 
will  let  me  know  that  some  such  arrangement  as  I  have  suggested 
would  be  agreeable  to  you,  I  will  see  at  once  that  the  arrange- 
ments of  it  are  set  in  train.  I  am  so  glad  that  you  are  coming! 
You  do  not  know  how  true  and  deep  is  the  regard  which  hosts  of 
people  here  have  for  you,  or  how  much  good  your  visit  will  do 
to  us  all,  or  how  much  I  want  to  see  you  in  this  dear  old  town! 
You  are  to  preach  your  first  sermon  in  my  church.  I  wish  with 
all  my  heart  that  Mr.  Montgomery  would  also  come  with  you. 
Is  it  impossible?  I  thank  you  for  your  kind  words  about  my 
little  visit  for  next  summer.  I  am  afraid  it  will  be  very  short, 
and  I  am  to  be  so  much  in  the  power  of  my  friends  with  whom 
I  travel,  a  whole  family  of  them,  that  I  must  not  hope  to  accept 
your  kind  invitation  to  be  your  guest  in  London.  I  must  call 
a  hotel  my  home,  but  you  will  let  me  come  in  upon  you  as  I  used 
to  do,  and  sit  sometimes  among  your  children  at  your  table.  I 
have  promised  to  preach  at  Cambridge  on  the  first  Sunday  in 
June,  and  when  Jowett  wrote  to  me  about  Oxford  I  told  him  of 
this  plan  and  said  that  if  there  were  no  impropriety  in  accepting 
both  invitations,  I  would  come  there  on  the  last  Sunday  in  May. 
What  sort  of  sermons  ought  these  to  be?  I  have  heard  nothing 
further  from  Dr.  Jowett. 

I  wish  that  you  were  here  to-night!  But  it  is  very  much  to 
know  that  you  are  coming.  With  the  kindest  regard  to  Mrs. 
Farrar  and  to  all  your  family, 

I  am  ever  faithfully  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

To  Dr.  "Weir  Mitchell  he  writes,  speaking  of  his  recent 
book,  "In  War  Time:"  — 

233  Clakendon  Street,  Boston,  December  20,  1884. 

My  dear  Weir,  — Just  after  I  had  finished  "In  War  Time  " 
there  came  in  the  copy  of  it  which  you,  in  your  kind  thoughtful- 
ness,  had  sent  to  me.  I  should  have  sent  a  line  anyway  to  say 
how  much  I  had  enjoyed  the  story,  but  now  I  must  also  tell  you 
how  very  much  I  value  the  copy  of  it  which  you  have  given  me 
yourself.  I  have  not  had  enough  to  do  with  great  people  to  have 
ceased  to  feel  a  thrill  at  an  author's  gift  of  his  own  book.  An 
author,  the  man  who  can  wave  his  wand  and  summon  all  these 
people  and  make  them  behave  themselves  like  folks  for  four  hun- 
dred pages,  is  a  mystery  and  a  marvel  to  me.  And  to  have  him 
open  the  door  to  me  with  his  own  wonderful  hands  is  a  surprise 
and  delight. 

And  then  the  book  comes  from  a  dear  old  friend,  which  is  far 
more.     It  is  full  of  the  dear  old  times.      The  very  smell  of  Ger- 


556  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1884 

mantown  is  delightful,  and  I  cannot  be  mistaken  in  thinking  that 
here  and  there  I  have  a  reminiscence  of  people  I  have  known  with 
you.  And  the  people  whom  I  have  not  known  you  have,  and  I 
feel  as  if  I  knew  them  through  you. 

I  thank  you,  my  dear  Weir,  for  writing  it  and  for  sending  it 
to  me.  I  take  it  for  a  Christmas  present,  and  send  back  swarms 
of  Christmas  wishes  for  you  and  yours.  God  bless  you,  merry 
gentleman!  Ever  affectionately  yours, 

P.  B. 

To  Lady  Frances  Baillie  he  writes :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  December  25, 1884. 

Dear  Lady  Frances,  —  Before  I  go  to  church  this  Christmas 
morning  I  want  to  send  you  a  word  of  greeting,  which  I  wish 
that  you  could  get  to-day,  but  oh!  for  those  three  thousand  miles 
of  sea !  At  any  rate  you  will  know  that  I  thought  about  you  on 
this  best  morning  of  the  year,  and  sent  out  this  bit  of  a  letter 
from  the  midst  of  our  snowdrifts  to  tell  you  of  my  kind  and 
grateful  remembrance. 

I  should  not  be  ashamed  to  have  you  see  how  our  New  England 
Christmas  looks,  —  such  sunshine  and  such  spotless  snow,  fresh 
fallen  during  last  night;  and  a  tingling,  clear,  cold  air  which 
makes  everybody  who  goes  by  under  the  windows  go  springing,  as 
if  they  were  so  full  of  Christmas  joy  that  they  could  not  walk 
soberly. 

And  so  we  are  in  the  depths  of  another  winter,  full  of  work 
and  full  of  all  sorts  of  interesting  experiences.  It  must  be  a 
dreadful  thing  to  live  after  life  has  ceased  to  be  interesting,  and 
when  folks  have  become  tiresome.  Every  now  and  then  some- 
body comes  in  on  us  from  your  great  land  to  make  variety  for  us, 
and  to  remind  us  how  alike  and  how  unlike  the  mother  country 
and  the  daughter  country  are.  We  have  seen  many  pleasant 
Englishmen  and  Englishwomen  here  this  autumn.  Whenever 
they  come  I  feel  the  old  pleasure  rise  up  in  my  heart,  and  I  want 
to  be  among  you  for  a  while  in  June.  Well,  I  am  coming  in 
June. 

Now  I  must  go  to  church.  May  all  best  blessings  of  the 
Christmas  and  the  New  Year's  come  to  you  and  yours.  Ever, 
dear  Lady  Frances, 

Yours  most  sincerely,  Phillips  Brooks. 

It  was  not  often  that  Phillips  Brooks  had  the  opportunity 
to  go  to  church  as  one  of  the  congregation,  and  listen  to  the 
preaching  of  others.     Here  is  a  picture  of  him  in  the  old 


^T.  48]     EXTRACTS   FROM   LETTERS       557 

church  on  Tremont  Street,  sitting  in  the  familiar  pew  where 
he  had  grown  up  from  boyhood.     He  writes,  December  26, 

1884:  — 

The  Bishop  had  us  all  to  talk  to  the  other  day  in  old  St. 
Paul's,  and  I  sat  alone  in  Pew  No.  60,  and  heard  him,  and  used 
Mother's  old  Prayer  Book  in  the  service. 

1885. 

The  following  letters  were  written  to  a  lady  who  had 
thoughts  of  entering  a  sisterhood  in  order  that  her  life  might 
be  under  "rule"  and  subject  to  a  "spiritual  director."  The 
tone  of  the  remonstrance  is  urgent,  for  on  this  subject  the 
feeling  of  Phillips  Brooks  was  as  deep  as  Luther's  when  he 
broke  with  asceticism,  or  of  the  English  reformers  when 
they  sanctioned  the  abolition  of  the  monasteries :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  Janaary  3,  1885. 

My  dear  Miss ,   Is   there  not  very    great    danger    that, 

in  seeking  to  lose  the  worst  part  of  yourself,  its  anxiety  and 
oppression,  you  may  lose  the  best  which  God  has  given  you  in 
the  submission  of  your  life  to  rule  and  machinery?  I  cannot 
help  telling  you  once  more  how  sad  is  the  mistake  which  I  feel 
sure  that  you  would  make  if  you  gave  way  to  the  impulse  which 
has  taken  possession  of  your  mind. 

But  may  not  this  one  thing  have  weight  with  you,  the  duty 
which  you  owe  to  your  present  work?  Can  you  desert  the  souls 
which  look  to  you  for  help  ?  Can  you  give  up  your  school-teach- 
ing into  which  God  has  allowed  you  to  carry  so  much  of  life- 
giving  power?  Can  you  abandon  your  class  in  which  you  have 
gathered  so  many  young  hearts,  all  growing  earnest  under  your 
inspiration?  I  do  not  see  how  it  is  possible.  If  ever  God 
marked  out  one  of  his  servants  for  a  certain  kind  of  work  and 
showed  His  purpose  for  her  by  the  blessing  which  He  gave  to  her 
labors,  He  would  surely  seem  to  have  done  it  for  you.  Can  you 
disregard  all  this  .and  give  yourself  up  to  a  system  in  which  you 
certainly  do  not  thoroughly  believe,  and  by  your  embracing  of 
which  you  would  assuredly  seem  to  disown  the  method  of  the 
healthy,  human,  and  spontaneous  work  in  which  you  have  accom- 
plished so  much. 

I  need  not  tell  you  that  you  can  make  no  change  in  your  work 
which  will  change  in  the  least  degree  my  faith  in  your  singleness 
of  purpose  and  devotion  to  Christ.     But,   my  dear  friend,   for 


SS^  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1885 

your  own  sake,  and  the  Church's  sake,  and  the  sake  of  the  souls 
which  you  are  training,  may  I  not  beg  you  to  continue  the  work 
for  which  I  have  so  often  thanked  God  ? 
May  He  give  you  His  light  abundantly. 

Your  sincere  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  January  8,  1885. 

Mt  dear  Miss  ,  I  am  more  glad  than  I  can  tell  you. 

I  do  joyfully  and  solemnly  thank  God  for  your  decision.  Now 
may  your  whole  life  realize  more  and  more  in  ever  increasing 
usefulness  and  happiness  that  it  is  God  whom  you  have  followed, 
and  that  in  His  rich  world  is  the  place  where  He  will  give  Him- 
self to  you  most  richly. 

May  He  bless  you,  my  dear  friend,  always. 

Faithfully  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

It  may  have  been  partly  in  consequence  of  his  deep,  con- 
stitutional repugnance  for  anything  savoring  in  the  least 
degree  of  the  monastic  tendency  that  he  sympathized  with 
movements  whose  object  was  to  give  women  a  greater  oppor- 
tunity in  the  world  of  action.  He  felt  the  significance  of 
the  juncture  in  the  circumstances  of  the  time  begetting  the 
two  alternatives,  one  of  which  would  send  them  to  semi- 
monastic  seclusion,  as  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  other 
throw  open  to  them  spheres  of  influence  which  had  hitherto 
been  closed.  In  his  experience  of  evils  to  be  reformed  in 
municipal  life,  he  felt  that  women  could  take  an  important 
place  which  could  not  so  well  be  filled  by  men.  He  gave  his 
sympathy  to  those  who  were  laboring  to  this  end. 

Among  the  changes  in  clerical  life  which  Mr.  Brooks  de- 
plored as  reducing  the  richness  of  his  environment  was  the 
transfer  of  the  Bev.  William  R.  Huntington  from  his  long 
rectorship  of  All  Saints'  Church,  Worcester,  to  the  rector- 
ship of  Grace  Church,  New  York.  His  desire  to  keep  his 
friends  about  him  led  to  the  suspicion  that  he  even  put 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  their  removal,  when  there  was  danger 
of  their  getting  beyond  his  range.  While  there  was  no  truth 
in  the  suspicion,  yet  he  did  want  to  keep  his  friends  about 
him,  for  it  seemed  to  shake  the  stability  of  his  universe  to 
let  them  go.  He  writes  to  Dr.  Huntington  with  reference 
to  an  exchange :  — 


^T.  49]     EXTRACTS   FROM   LETTERS        559 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  February  3,  1885. 

My  dear  Huntington,  —  Thank  you  for  your  kind  note. 
Boston  is  expecting  you  for  Sunday,  and  I  will  do  the  best  I  can 
to  keep  New  York  from  grumbling.  I  shall  not  be  able  to  go 
on  until  Saturday  afternoon,  but  I  hope  to  get  a  good  part  of 
next  week  in  your  great  town.  My  brother  Arthur  will  expect 
me  to  be  his  guest,  so  that  I  must  not  accept  your  courteous  offer 
of  the  pleasant  hospitalities  of  the  rectory.  But  I  shall  pay  my 
respects  to  Miss  Reynolds  and  your  children,  and  perhaps  you 
will  be  back  before  I  leave. 

I  suppose  I  may  take  it  for  granted  that  you  have  a  surplice 
at  Grace  Church  which  I  can  wear,  and  if  you  will  tell  your 
sexton  to  have  the  pulpit  desk  four  feet  and  three  inches  from 
the  floor,  the  gospel  as  I  try  to  preach  it  will  be  more  effective. 

A  good  club  last  night,  at  which  we  should  have  rejoiced  to 
see  your  face.      Ever  yours  affectionately, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

He  writes  to  Eev.  R.  Heber  Newton  of  New  York :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  February  14,  1885. 

Mt  dear  Newton,  —  I  thank  you  very  much  indeed  for  your 
note,  and  I  am  glad  to  know  from  it  that  the  impression  which 
I  formed  this  week  in  New  York  is  correct,  that  the  Newspapers 
are  making  the  mischief,  and  that  we  are  not  to  see  your  real 
work  hindered  and  the  Church  disgraced  by  a  presentment  and  a 
trial.  I  am  sure  that  the  work  which  you  have  done  is  one  for 
which  you  may  well  be  thankful,  and  for  which  those  who  love 
our  Church  most  wisely  may  rejoice.  You  have  had  a  true  mes- 
sage to  many  whom  othei's'  messages  have  failed  to  reach.  You 
have  done  very  much  indeed  to  keep  the  mind  of  the  Church  open 
to  the  light.  Whatever  God  may  have  to  say  to  her,  you  have 
made  it  more  possible  for  her  to  hear. 

That  is  a  great  work  for  any  man  to  have  done.  In  that, 
more  than  in  the  impression  of  his  own  exact  ideas  upon  the 
Church's  mind,  any  progressive  man's  best  service  to  the  Church 
must  lie.  We  certainly  cannot  be  surprised  or  angry  that  such 
a  work  excites  anger  and  opposition.  I,  for  one,  believe  that  no 
opposition  will  exasperate  you,  and  that  you  will  be  kept  from 
any  word  which  can  hinder  the  best  result  of  what  you  have  seri- 
ously and  devoutly  undertaken. 

I  wish  you  would  rest  yourself  for  a  Sunday  by  coming  on  and 
staying  with  me  and  preaching  in  my  church.  Any  Sunday  that 
you  will  name  I  shall  be  delighted  to  see  you. 

Ever  yours  most  sincerely,  Phillips  Brooks. 


S6o  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

In  February  Mr.  Brooks  went  to  New  York  to  deliver  his 
lectures  on  Tolerance.  Of  this  event  he  speaks  in  a  letter 
dated  February  14,  1885 :  — 

I  have  been  at  New  York  lecturing  ...  at  the  General  The- 
ological Seminary.  ...  I  saw  Buell,  and  Eigenbrodt,  and  all 
those  others  who  have  been  vague  names  to  me  from  my  child- 
hood. .  .  .  They  were  civil,  and  the  fellows  sat  and  took  my 
lectures ;  and  when  the  last  was  over,  we  went  over  to  the  Eden 
Mus^e  and  saw  the  wax  works  and  the  chamber  of  horrors. 

To  his  brother  he  writes  in  the  capacity  of  an  officer  of 
the  Church  Congress  with  reference  to  the  appointments  of 
speakers :  — 

233  Claeendon  Street,  Boston,  March  12, 1885. 

My   dearest  Arthur,  —  The  man  who  can  say  what  side 

X will  take  on  any  imaginable  topic  is  a  dangerous  member 

of  society.  He  possesses  a  degree  of  insight  and  perspicacity 
which   it  is  not  safe  to  have  about !      On  the  whole,  I  think  that 

X does  n't  like  sestheticism   in  Christian  worship.      But   I 

dare  not  say  that  his  paper  will  not  be  a  furious  abuse  of  Puritan- 
ism and  an  assertion  that  only  by  altar  lights  and  superfrontals 
can  the  Church  be  saved!  Still,  do  put  him  on.  Better,  a  thou- 
sand times  better,  X in  the  wrong  than  Y in  the  right ! 

X will  be  interesting  at  any  rate,  which  Y never  was, 

nor  is,  nor  will  be  for  ever  and  ever,  Amen.  Honestly,  I  have 
no  serious  doubt  that  his  talk  would  all  be  on  the  side  of  simpli- 
city and  sense,  and  I  should  think  he  would  be  a  first-rate  man 
for  the  place. 

He  writes  on  the  subject  of  attending  the  theatre :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  24,  1885. 
Dear  Miss  Derby,  —  I  understand  and  appreciate  your  feel- 
ing perfectly,  but  I  think  that  it  is  better  not  to  go.  If  I  could 
tell  people  frankly  about  it,  I  would  not  hesitate  to  do  so.  But 
the  trouble  with  the  Theatre  is  its  dreadful  indiscriminateness. 
The  same  House  which  gives  good  Mrs.  Vincent  her  benefit  to-day 
may  have  almost  anything  to-morrow.  What  can  we  do  with  an 
institution  such  as  that  ?  When  you  come  home  I  will  tell  you 
more  fully  what  I  think  about  it  if  you  care  to  hear,  but  at  pre- 
sent I  know  that  I  may  beg  you  to  believe  that  I  have  not  de- 
cided without  thought  this  question  which  you  have  asked  me. 
I  am  sure  that  Mrs.  Vincent  will  not  doubt  my  respect  for  her 
because  I  do  not  go  to  her  benefit,  and  you  will  not  imagine  that 
I  do  not  value  your  judgment  on  the  subject. 


^T.  49]     EXTRACTS   FROM   LETTERS        561 

I  send  my  kind  remembrances  to  your  mother  and  to  Carrie, 
and  I  am, 

Ever  yours  sincerely,  Phillips  Brooks. 

In  giving  his  impressions  of  Phillips  Brooks,  Mr.  Edward 
W.  Hooper  recalls  how  when  men  complained  of  the  churches 
as  incompetent  to  distribute  the  bread  of  life,  or  as  "trying 
to  dam  up  the  water  of  life  that  it  might  be  distributed  only 
to  regular  subscribers,"  — a  familiar  complaint  at  the  time, 
Mr.  Brooks  would  reply  that  he  had  no  sympathy  with  such 
remarks :  — 

Such  speeches  have  just  enough  truth  in  them  to  make  them 
pungent,  but  they  are  not  really  true.  The  churches  to-day  are 
honestly  trying  to  bring  the  Water  of  Life  to  all  men.  They 
blunder  and  they  fail,  but  they  do  try.  And  I  do  not  know,  for 
myself,  any  other  agency  with  which  I  can  combine  such  poor 
effort  as  I  can  make  in  that  direction,  except  with  them.^ 

In  this,  as  in  other  cases,  Mr.  Brooks  strove  to  recognize 
the  situation  as  it  actually  was,  —  there  were  men  outside  of 
the  churches  whose  aim  was  to  be  good  and  to  be  useful, 
but  who  no  longer  went  to  church  or  cared  to  do  so.  He 
alluded  to  the  relation  of  the  church  and  the  clergy  to  these 
men,  whom  the  community  might  hold  in  the  highest  respect, 
in  a  sermon  preached  at  Appleton  Chapel  April  26,  when 
his  text  was  "  Watch  ye  therefore,  and  pray  always  that  ye 
may  be  accounted  worthy  to  escape  all  these  things  that  shall 
come  to  pass,  and  to  stand  before  the  Son  of  man  "  (Luke  xxi. 
36).  The  division  between  church-goers  and  non-church- 
goers was  not  to  be  explained  by  the  operation  of  a  "special " 
and  a  "common  grace,"  as  the  earlier  Puritan  divines  had 
taught.  There  was  fault  upon  both  sides  to  be  removed,  but 
a  common  ideal  held  both  classes  in  the  same  responsibility, 
—  worthiness  to  stand  before  the  Son  of  man. 

The  attention  of  Mr.  Brooks  was  called,  in  a  direct  and 
practical  way,  it  would  seem  for  the  first  time,  to  what  are 
known  as  "Missions,"  by  a  request  from  his  brother  that  he 
would  "hold  a  mission"  in  the  Church  of  the  Incarnation. 
He  dismissed  the  request,  saying  he  had  not  the  special  gift 

1  Quoted  from  The  Harvard  Monthly,  February,  1893,  p.  206. 
VOL.  n 


562  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

required,  but  the  subject  lingered  in  his  mind  and  took 
shape  in  after  years  in  efforts  of  a  similar  kind  which  will 
be  described  in  their  place. 

233  CiiABENDON  Street,  Boston,  March  28,  1885. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  Your  letter  talking  about  things  to  happen 
after  Lent  is  over  sounds  delightful,  but  very  far  away  and  mys- 
tical, very  like  the  most  glorious  and  mysterious  passages  of  the 
Revelation.  But  it  will  all  come  to  pass  in  good  time.  Indeed, 
it  is  nearer  now  than  it  seems.  Confirmation  is  over,  and  there 
is  only  one  more  Bible  class  after  to-night.  I  wonder  if  those 
innocent  boys  have  any  idea  how  much  I  dread  the  meetings,  and 
how  awfully  I  am  afraid  of  them.  I  am  startled  at  the  idea  of 
holding  a  "mission."  I  don't  know  how,  and,  so  far  as  I  do 
understand  it,  I  don't  think  that  I  have  the  right  sort  of  power. 
I  have  an  idea  that  there  are  mysterious  methods  of  which  I  am 
profoundly  ignorant,  and,  besides,  I  have  made  tremendous  reso- 
lutions about  staying  at  home  next  winter  and  working  up  my 
parish,  which  is  running  down. 

But  we  will  talk  about  it  all  in  that  blessed  week  when  we 
shall  be  together.   .    .    . 

Easter  Day  fell  on  the  5th  of  April,  and  from  that  time 
he  gave  himself  to  the  preparation  of  his  address  before 
the  Boston  Latin  School.  What  the  prayer  he  made  at 
Harvard  on  Commemoration  Day  in  1865  was  to  the  Uni- 
versity, that  his  oration  was  to  the  Boston  Latin  School, 
revealing  his  genius  in  a  new  light,  his  sympathetic  insight 
into  the  meaning  of  events  in  history,  his  subtle  power  of 
characterizing  historic  personages,  the  large  atmosphere 
wherein  he  environed  the  institution  with  his  loving  heart, 
the  exquisite  sentences,  the  humor  and  the  gentle  satire,  the 
directness,  the  simplicity,  the  naturalness  of  it  all,  —  these 
characteristics  of  Phillips  Brooks  were  here  seen  in  their 
conjunction  and  at  their  best.  The  address  was  given  on 
April  23,  1885.  The  enthusiasm  it  elicited  from  a  con- 
stituency representing  old  Boston  may  be  inferred  from  these 

tributes :  — 

Apra  24,  1885. 

My  dear  Sir,  — The  Latin  School  Association  are  under 
great  obligations  to  you  for  your  admirable  oration.  All  are 
enthusiastic  in  praise  of  it,  and  well  they  may  be. 


^T.  49]     LATIN   SCHOOL  ADDRESS  s^3 

As  a  literary,  historical,  and  eloquent  production,  it  was  the 
best  I  ever  listened  to,  and  my  experience  has  been  a  large  one. 

The  committee  have  been  commended  for  their  sagacity  in 
selecting  you  as  the  fittest  of  all  the  host  of  graduates  for  such 
a  service. 

Believe  me,  ever  with  the  highest  esteem, 

Your  friend,  C.  H.  Dillaway. 

I  cannot  refrain  [says  Mr.  Merrill,  the  head  master]  from 
giving  you  the  assurance  again  of  my  unbounded  satisfaction  and 
pleasure  in  your  memorial  address.  After  a  day's  retrospection 
and  hearing  so  many  words  of  commendation,  with  not  a  shadow 
of  adverse  criticism,  it  is  evident  that  the  committee  were  most 
fortunate  in  their  unanimity,  frbm  the  very  beginning,  in  the 
selection  of  an  orator.  The  spirit  of  your  address,  its  sentiments 
and  eloquence,  were  just  what  I  expected  from  you,  and  I  thank 
you  with  all  my  heart  for  it. 

Nothing  could  have  been  better  [writes  the  late  Mr.  Robert 
C.  Winthrop]  than  your  account  of  our  old  school,  —  nothing 
certainly  more  brilliant.  My  little  gold  medal  has  increased 
tenfold  in  value  since  it  found  a  mention  among  the  prizes  of 
1824  in  your  admirable  oration. 

Rev.  Dr.  Pynchon,  President  of  Trinity  College,  Hart- 
ford, writes  in  the  same  strain,  and  gives  interesting  remi- 
niscences of  the  old  days :  — 

Trinity  College,  Hartford,  April  27,  1885. 
Dear  Dr.  Brooks,  — I  was  very  sorry  not  to  find  you  at 
home  on  Saturday.  I  wanted  particularly  to  express  to  you  my 
very  high  appreciation  of  your  Latin  School  Address.  To  say 
that  it  was  a  masterly  oration,  powerful  and  interesting  and  full 
of  humor,  and  worthy  of  the  most  famous  of  the  old  school  of 
Boston  orators,  would  be  but  small  praise,  because  I  think  its 
greatest  merit  consisted  in  wise  lessons  and  in  its  certainty  of 
being  very  useful.  I  hope  a  very  large  edition  will  be  printed, 
and  that  a  copy  will  be  placed  in  every  family  of  young  children 
in  the  entire  city,  and  especially  in  the  hands  of  the  rich  and 
well-to-do  people.  It  is  a  very  great  misfortune  to  them  as  well 
as  to  the  public  that  they  no  longer  send  their  children  to  the 
city  schools,  and  particularly  to  the  Latin  School.  The  reason 
they  give  for  not  sending  them  there  is  the  very  reason  for  send- 
ing them,  viz.,  that  they  may  come  into  contact  with  the  sons  of 
the  people,  and  grow  up  with  them  as  part  of  them.     It  would 


564  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

be  of  the  greatest  benefit  to  them  all  their  lives.  For  myself,  I 
feel  under  a  debt  to  the  city  of  Boston  which  I  can  never  repay. 
Not  a  native  of  the  city,  or  even  of  Massachusetts,  I  was  sent 
there  after  my  father's  death,  when  about  eight  years  of  age,  to 
live  with  my  guardian,  and  as  soon  as  possible  was  placed  at  the 
Latin  School,  where  I  got  the  very  best  education  that  America 
afforded  for  nothing.  The  school  was  then  on  School  Street,  in 
the  heart  of  historic  Boston.  King's  Chapel,  Sir  H.  Vane's 
house,  Governor  Bowdoin's  mansion,  Hancock's  house,  Faneuil 
Hall,  the  Provence  House,  the  Old  South,  were  close  at  hand. 
Frances  Anne  Kemble  was  playing  in  the  Tremont  Theatre. 
Bishop  Wainwright  was  the  pastor  of  Trinity.  Daniel  Webster, 
Edward  Everett,  A.  H.  Garrett,  Theodore  Lyman,  Martin  Brim- 
mer, walked  the  streets,  and  often  visited  the  school.  All  those 
surroundings  were  calculated  to  make  a  deep  impression  upon 
a  boy;  they  did  on  me,  and  I  have  never  lost  it.  I  have  had  all 
my  life  a  consciousness  of  dignity,  as  having  been  educated  by 
the  city  of  Boston,  and  have  nourished  a  strong  desire  to  be  able 
to  do  something,  some  day,  in  return.  It  was  this  feeling  that 
drew  me  to  Boston  the  other  day.  Mr.  Dillaway  was  then 
Master,  assisted  by  Sebastian  F.  Streeter,  Gardner,  and  H.  W. 
Terry.  Dillaway  I  loved,  Gardner  I  feared,  Terry  I  enjoyed, 
Streeter  I  admired.  Your  delineation  of  Mr.  Gardner  was  to 
the  life.  It  was  truly  a  masterly  portraiture.  The  last  time 
I  saw  him  was  in  Essex  Street,  as  I  was  going  from  the  B.  &  A. 
Station.  "Are  you  still  engaged  in  teaching  the  young  idea?  " 
"Yes,"  I  said.  "Ah,  it  is  a  wearying  life.  We  deserve  some- 
thing better." 

This  was  not  long  before  his  death.  No  old  scholar  can  ever 
forget  him  and  his  appearance  in  the  schoolroom  as  he  walked 
over  the  floor,  —  his  hair,  his  hands,  and  his  legs.  Yet  he  was 
exceedingly  kind,  and  it  was  only  upon  the  dull,  the  lazy,  and 
the  wicked  that  he  poured  out  his  wrath. 

I  was  delighted  to  hear  everybody  in  Boston,  from  President 
Eliot  down,  say  that  this  was  positively  the  finest  thing  you  have 
ever  done.  If  so,  it  was  simply  because  it  was  the  offspring  of 
filial  devotion  to  the  old  school  and  its  master.  May  the  oration 
of  the  five  hundredth  anniversary  be  equal  to  it ! 

Believe  me  to  be  always, 

Most  cordially  yours,  Thos.  R.  Pynchon. 

A  letter  came  to  Mr.  Brooks  from  the  late  Bishop  Vail 
of  Kansas,  which  is  valuable  for  the  light  it  throws  on  the 
relationship  between  the  two,  and  for  its  references  to  the 
friendships  which  they  held  in  common :  — 


^T.  49]  VISIT   TO   ENGLAND  s^S 

AprU  25,  1885. 
.  .  .  Your  words  in  your  previous  letter  touched  my  heart. 
The  very  mention  of  Cooper's  study  down  there  on  the  east  side 
of  Franklin  Square  brings  up  so  many  tender  thoughts,  —  Cooper, 
Vinton,  Bishop  H.  W.  Lee,  Strong,  Yocom,  et  id  omne  genus, 
—  what  days  those  were!  Dear  Vinton!  I  used  to  call  him 
the  "noblest  Roman  of  them  all,"  and  I  shall  pass  the  title  over 
to  you  by  right  of  inheritance.  What  times  by  and  by,  when  in 
the  blessed  home  we  shall  all  meet  and  talk  over  the  past,  when 
our  work  here  is  done,  and  we  come  home  from  our  work  there, 
from  time  to  time,  and  chat  over  the  past  of  our  work  here,  in 
those  abiding  mansions.  May  God  pity  our  imperfections,  and 
pardon  our  sins,  and  admit  us  to  see  the  King  in  His  beauty  and 
glory,  and  evermore  to  work  for  Him! 

Among  the  papers  of  Mr.  Brooks,  this  following  receipt 

finds  its  place  here :  — 

Boston,  April  29,  1885. 

Received  of  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks  ten  dollars  for  drawing  his 
will.  F.  E.  Parker. 

On  Saturday,  May  8,  Mr.  Brooks  sailed  for  England  by 
the  Cunard  steamer  Etruria,  arriving  at  Queenstown  the  fol- 
lowing Saturday,  after  a  passage  of  six  days,  twelve  hours, 
and  twenty-five  minutes,  regarded  at  the  time  as  the  best 
record  made  in  ocean  travelling.  He  writes  to  Mr.  Cooper, 
"I  feel  as  usual  when  about  to  start,  that  I  wish  I  were 
not  going."  But  in  reality  he  was  eager  to  go.  There 
were  many  friends  in  England  who  were  expecting  his  com- 
ing, homes  stood  open  to  him  there  as  here,  where  the 
warmest  welcome  awaited  him,  and  there  were  many  who 
looked  for  him,  as  for  a  messenger  sent  from  God.  He  had 
important  engagements  to  fulfil,  and  high  honors  were  to 
be  bestowed.  The  same  social  recognition  given  him  in 
1883  was  to  be  repeated  in  1885,  with  equal  if  not  greater 
cordiality.  The  English  appreciation  of  Phillips  Brooks 
seems  almost  to  surpass  the  devotion  of  his  own  country- 
men. He  was  inundated  with  letters,  which  began  to  pour 
in  upon  him  before  he  left  home,  asking  him  to  preach 
in  many  of  the  most  important  churches  in  London  and 
elsewhere  in  England.     When  his  arrival  in  England  was 


566  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

announced,  the  flow  of  letters  was  increased,  reminding  him 
of  conditional  promises  he  had  made  to  preach  here  or  there, 
on  his  previous  visit.  It  was  now  taken  for  granted  that  he 
would  come  to  England  every  other  year. 

On  reaching  London  he  betook  himself  immediately  to  the 
house  of  Archdeacon  Farrar,  where  he  saw  his  godson  Harold 
Montgomery.  His  first  sermon  was  preached  for  Dr.  Farrar 
at  St.  Margaret's,  Westminster.  At  the  Abbey,  where  he 
preached  on  June  7,  the  crowd  was  vaster  than  ever  that 
surged  into  the  church  before  the  service  began.  His  Grace, 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  Dr.  Benson,  was  not  among 
the  early  comers,  and  secured  but  a  poor  place,  where  it 
must  have  been  difficult  to  hear.  Mr.  Brooks  alludes  to  the 
occasion  briefly  in  one  of  his  home  letters:  "Preached  in 
Westminster  Abbey  to  a  host  of  people.  The  great  place 
looked  splendid,  and  it  was  fine  to  preach  there." 

Mr.  Brooks  had  preached  notable  sermons  in  the  Abbey, 
but  the  sermon  on  this  occasion,  on  the  Mother's  Wonder, 
from  the  text,  "Son,  why  hast  thou  thus  dealt  with  us?" 
enhanced  his  reputation  and  brought  to  him  many  letters  of 
gratitude.  On  June  11  he  went  to  Caterham  Valley  to 
preach  the  ordination  sermon  at  the  request  of  the  Bishop 
of  Rochester,  when  there  were  forty  candidates  to  be  pre- 
sented. At  the  Chapel  Royal,  Savoy,  whose  chaplain.  Rev. 
Henry  White,  was  another  friend,  he  preached,  on  June  21, 
from  the  text,  "As  free,  and  not  using  your  liberty  for  a 
cloak  of  maliciousness,  but  as  the  servants  of  God."  In  its 
issue  for  June  25,  the  London  "Truth"  refers  to  the  oc- 
casion :  — 

The  Chapel  Royal,  Savoy,  was  densely  crowded  on  Sunday  to 
hear  Dr.  Phillips  Brooks  preach  his  last  [sic]  sermon  in  London 
during  his  present  visit  to  England.  The  multitude  was  so  great 
that  Dr.  Brooks  might  well  have  imitated  the  practice  of  a  former 
chaplain  of  the  Savoy,  the  renowned  Thomas  Fuller,  and  redeliv- 
ered his  sermon  in  the  garden  which  surrounds  the  Chapel,  to  the 
disappointed  audience  outside. 

On  Thursday,  June  25,  he  preached  twice,  in  the  morning 
at  St.  Mark's,  Kennington,  and  in  the  evening  at  Lincoln 


^T.  49]  VISIT   TO   ENGLAND  567 

Cathedral,  where  he  was  entertained  by  his  friend  Precentor 
Venables.  On  Saturday  he  went  to  Salisbury  as  the  guest 
of  Dean  Boyle,  and  the  following  day  he  preached  in  Salis- 
bury Cathedral.  If  he  could  have  accepted  all  the  invita- 
tions which  came  to  him,  it  would  have  required  a  sojourn 
of  several  months.  But  he  found  time  to  go  again  to  Har- 
row, at  the  urgent  request  of  the  head  master.  Dr.  Mon- 
tagu Butler,  and  roused  the  boys  with  his  stirring  apjDcal. 
He  also  went  to  a  meeting  in  behalf  of  the  Mission  at  Delhi, 
where  he  spoke  out  of  a  full  heart  and  from  a  knowledge 
of  the  actual  situation.  He  was  asked  by  the  Bishop  of 
Winchester,  Dr.  Harold  Brown,  to  preach  the  sermon  at 
the  opening  of  the  Church  Congress,  but  was  unable  to  com- 
ply with  the  request ;  and  was  also  obliged  to  decline  a  re- 
quest from  the  Dean,  Dr.  J.  Stewart  Perowne,  to  preach  at 
Peterborough  Cathedral. 

Two  events  stand  out  in  this  visit  which  distinguish  it 
from  like  occasions  in  other  years,  —  his  reception  at  the 
two  universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  Dr.  Jowett,  the 
Master  of  Balliol,  Oxford,  and  Vice-Chancellor  of  the  Uni- 
versity, had  long  been  desirous  that  he  should  come  to  Oxford. 
On  Trinity  Sunday,  May  31,  he  preached  to  a  crowded  congre- 
gation in  St.  Mary's  Church,  from  the  text  Proverbs  viii. 
1,  22,  23  ;  the  sermon  was  published  in  part  in  the  Oxford 
"Magazine"  for  June  3,  and  in  full  in  the  Oxford  "Re- 
view." These  were  among  the  comments  on  the  sermon  and 
on  the  man :  — 

Those  who  were  wise  enough  to  go  to  hear  Mr.  Phillips  Brooks 
in  St.  Mary's  certainly  were  not  disappointed.  There  was  a 
large  crowd,  especially  of  senior  members  of  the  University. 
The  American  preacher  has  certainly  nothing  of  the  proverbial 
Yankee  about  him.  His  style  is  flowing  and  dignified,  and  an 
occasional  slip  in  his  delivery  only  made  its  force  and  vigor  seem 
more  natural.  It  is  a  rare  treat  to  hear  a  mean  between  the 
cultured  homily,  with  which  we  are  too  familiar  in  Oxford,  and 
the  ranting,  which  seems  to  be  the  only  prevailing  alternative. 
We  hope  this  is  not  the  last  time  that  Mr.  Brooks  will  rouse 
Oxford  from  St.  Mary's  pulpit. 

Mr.  Brooks  has  come  among  us  to  be  welcomed  as  the  author 


568  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

of  much  of  the  delicate  analysis  of  human  motive  and  aspiration 
which  in  American  literature  we  have  learned  to  love. 

He  was  long  enough  at  Oxford  to  become  a  "familiar 
figure"  to  the  students.  On  Monday  night,  June  1,  he 
was  a  guest  of  Trinity  College.  On  the  next  day  he  was 
present  at  a  congregation  in  Convocation  House.  On  June 
16  he  went  to  Oxford  for  a  second  visit,  to  receive  the  hon- 
orary degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity,  where  he  was  the  guest 
of  the  Vice-Chancellor,  and  of  Dr.  Hatch,  the  author  of 
the  Bampton  Lectures  on  the  "Organization  of  the  Early- 
Christian  Churches."  Dr.  Hatch  had  been  eager  to  know 
Mr.  Brooks  as  a  man  with  a  spirit  kindred  to  his  own.  In 
a  convocation  held  in  the  Sheldonian  Theatre,  on  Tuesday, 
for  the  conferment  of  honorary  degrees,  the  Vice-Chancellor 
presiding.  Dr.  Ince,  the  Begins  Professor  of  Divinity,  pre- 
sented Mr.  Brooks,  recounting  the  circumstances  of  his 
career,  how,  not  long  after  his  ordination,  he  had  gained 
recognition  in  America  for  keen  intellectual  power  and  re- 
markable eloquence ;  as  an  eloquent  expounder,  also,  of  the 
true  Catholic  faith.  Some  years  ago  his  fame  as  an  orator 
and  preacher  had  reached  England.  The  University  had 
now  been  given  an  opportunity  to  hear  him  preach,  and  he 
could,  therefore,  plead  his  own  claim  best  for  the  honor  of 
a  degree.^ 

1  The  address  of  Dr.  Ince  in  presenting  Mr.  Brooks  for  the  degree  is  here 
subjoined :  — 

"  Post  episcopos  nostrates  ad  honores  Academicos  admissos  non  incongruum 
cuiquara  videbitur  si  Theologum  quendam  gente  nobis  arctissimis  vinculis  con- 
juncta  oriundum  ad  eundem  honorem  aecipiendum  prsesentare  pergam.  Fama 
egregii  concionatoris  veritatem  Christianam  mira  eloquentia  edentis  ab  America 
ad  nostras  oras  pervenerat.  Intra  hunc  terminum  special!  universitatia  decreto 
data  est  nobis  Oxoniensibus  oceasio  ipsum  concionatorem  aecipiendi,  videndi,  et 
(quod  melius)  nostris  auribus  audiendi.  Non  eget  comraendatione  mea,  hie  vir 
reverendus,  Phillips  Brooks.  Si  gratiam  vestram,  Academici,  petere  necesse 
esset,  ipse  causam  suam  in  Ecclesia  S.  Marise  Virginis  voce  sua  jamdudum  egit. 
Haec  tantum  mihi  dieere  liceat.  Postquam  literas  humaniores  et  scientias  qua 
ad  disciplinam  cujusque  hominis  exculti  pertinent  in  Collegio  Harvardensi  didi- 
cisset,  orator  noster  ad  Theologiae  studium  se  contulit.  Turn  ad  sacros  ordinea 
Diaconatus  et  Presbyterii  admissus,  ingenio  subtili,  facundia,  copia  sententiarum 
et  verborum  uberrima,  annis  adhuc  juvenilibus  eminere  visus  est.  Nunc  regit 
Ecclesiam  S.  S.  Trinitatis  apud  Boston,  urbem  Transatianticam,  cujus  nomen 


^T.49]  HONORARY   DEGREE  569 

That  the  Eegius  Professor  of  Divinity  at  Oxford  should 
commend  Phillips  Brooks  as  a  defender  of  the  Catholic 
faith,  and  that,  too,  in  Oxford,  the  home  of  ecclesiastical 
conservatism,  shows  the  impression  he  had  made  by  his 
sermon  at  St.  Mary's.  He  had  taken  for  his  text  verses 
from  that  striking  chapter  in  the  book  of  Proverbs  which 
reveals  the  influence  of  Hellenic  thought  upon  the  Hebrew 
mind,  where  the  complex  life  of  Deity  is  suggested  by 
the  personification  of  Wisdom:  "The  Lord  possessed  me 
in  the  beginning  of  his  way,  before  his  works  of  old.  I 
was  set  up  from  everlasting,  from  the  beginning,  or  ever  the 
earth  was."  The  sermon  was  marked  by  the  richness  of 
imagination  which  had  characterized  his  earliest  preaching, 
when  he  was  still  fresh  with  the  dew  of  the  morning,  that 
had  brought  him  the  fuller  revelation  of  God.  He  must 
have  been  recalling,  as  he  wrote  the  sermon,  those  vigils  at 
the  Virginia  seminary,  when  for  the  first  time  he  was  read- 
ing the  works  of  Philo  and  Origen.  They  had  borne  fruit 
with  him,  as  in  the  ancient  church  they  had  prepared  the  way 
for  the  fuller  Christian  faith.  The  subject  of  his  sermon 
was  the  "Life  in  God." 

I  have  known  that  I  was  to  come  here  and  speak  to  you  to-day, 
while  the  whole  air  of  the  place  and  of  the  Church  in  which  I 

originem  Angllcam  et  migrationis  memorabilis  historiam  nunquam  obliviscen- 
dam  revocat.  Quo  in  loco  notus  est  Fidei  Christianae  et  vere  Catholicas  Vin- 
dex.  Cives  suos  inter  quos  inveniuntur  multi  Uteris  et  philosophise  dediti,  Christi 
Evangelii  doctrina  et  praceptis  instruit :  et  adolescentes  ingenues  in  academia 
vicina  Harvardensi  apud  Cantabrigiam  Americanam  allicit,  delectat,  ad  veram 
sapientiam  persuadet.  Kationem  praedicandi  et  Sacras  Scripturas  ad  vitae  hodi- 
ernae  usus  accommodandi  in  praelectionibus  coram  Collegio  Yalensi  habitis  et  a 
nostris  Theologis  avide  lectis  exposuit,  artis  suae  oratoriae  ipse  exemplar  idemque 
praeceptor. 

"  Hune  igitur  virum,  de  Theologia,  de  Religione,  de  Academica  republica 
ubicunque  gentium  posita,  optime  meritum  ad  vos  duco  ut  admittatur  ad 
gradum  Doctoris  in  Sancti  Theologia  honoris  causa." 

The  bishops  alluded  to,  upon  whom  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity  was 
conferred  at  the  same  time,  were  the  Rt.  Rev.  Edward  Harold,  Lord  Bishop 
of  Winchester,  Rt.  Rev.  Lord  Arthur  C.  Hervey,  Lord  Bishop  of  Bath  and 
Wells,  and  Rt.  Rev.  Charles  John  Ellicott,  Lord  Bishop  of  Gloucester  and 
Bristol  (the  Chairman  of  the  Committees  for  the  revision  of  the  Authorized  Ver- 
Bion  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments). 


570  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1885 

spoke  was  full  of  the  great  truth  to  which  this  day  belongs,  —  the 
ti'uth  of  the  Trinity;  and  I  have  thought  much  of  how  I  might 
best  make  what  I  desired  to  say  seem  fitted  to  the  spirit  of 
this  lofty  festival.  It  has  not  seemed  to  me  best,  even  if  it 
were  in  my  power,  to  enter  into  dogmatic  definition  of  the  doc- 
trine which  tries  to  sum  up  in  itself  the  Christian's  faith  in  God. 
Rather  I  have  chosen  to  preach  to  you  of  Life,  its  glories  and 
its  possibilities,  to  try  to  make  the  men  to  whom  I  was  to  speak 
feel  with  a  deep  enthusiasm  the  splendor  and  the  privilege  of  life 
as  the  mysterious  gift  of  God. 

It  has  appeared  to  me  that,  speaking  so,  I  should  not  be  speak- 
ing in  a  way  inappropriate  to  Trinity  Sunday.  For  what  is  the 
truth  of  the  Trinity?  It  is  the  truth  of  the  richness  of  the 
Divine  existence.  The  statement  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
is  the  attempt  to  tell  in  our  poor  human  language  how  manifold 
and  deep  and  various  is  the  life  of  God.  This  is  the  special 
meaning  of  the  Feast  of  the  Trinity.  Other  festivals  of  the 
Christian  year  remember  what  God  lias  done.  Christmas,  Epiph- 
any, declare  the  manifestations  of  His  love  and  power  in  the  ex- 
periences of  His  Son.  Good  Friday  makes  real  anew,  from  year 
to  year,  the  tragedy  in  which  mercy  and  righteousness  triumphed 
over  sin  and  death.  Whitsunday  bears  witness  to  His  perpetual 
presence  with  mankind.  Once  in  the  year,  on  Trinity  Sunday, 
the  Church  dares  to  lift  herself  up,  and  think  with  awe  and  loving 
fear  of  what  God  is.  That  is  the  sublimest  occujjation  of  the 
human  mind.  If  the  human  mind  dares  to  think  itself  equal  to 
that  occupation,  dares  to  believe  that  it  has  fathomed  God  or 
surrounded  God  with  its  adventurous  thought,  how  weak  it  grows 
in  its  audacity.  But  if,  as  it  thinks  of  Him,  it  finds  itself  filled 
with  this  one  truth  concerning  Him,  that  He  is  Life,  that  He  is 
infinite  and  endless  Life,  that  not  in  one  tight  compact  personality 
but  in  a  vastness  and  variety  of  being,  which  reaches  our  human 
nature  on  many  sides,  making  it  vital  on  them  all,  that  so  God 
the  Creator,  the  Redeemer,  the  Inspirer,  comes  with  His  mani- 
fold living  influence  to  man,  —  if  so  the  Church  of  God  can  think 
of  God  on  Trinity  Sunday,  then  what  a  blessed,  what  a  glorious 
festival  it  is.  How  all  of  human  living  and  thinking  becomes 
the  stronger  for  its  devout  observance.^ 

One  of  the  undergraduates  who  was  present  when  the 
degree  was  conferred  recalls  "the  hearty  applause  which 
the  appearance  of  Phillips  Brooks  commanded:  "  — 

1  Cf.  The  Oxford  Review,  June  3,  1885,  p.  354. 


^T.  49]         VISIT   TO   CAMBRIDGE  571 

More  than  any  man  I  have  ever  known,  Phillips  Brooks  pos- 
sessed that  which  commanded  instant  trust,  complete  confidence, 
—  a  power  not  only  the  outcome  of  a  splendid  physique,  eloquent 
of  strength  and  protection,  of  a  broad,  quick,  and  ever-sympa- 
thetic mind,  but  of  a  great  heart  filled  with  love  for  all  his  fel- 
low beings,  a  love  blind  to  all  differences  of  class  and  race,  and 
which,  shining  ever  from  his  kindly  eyes,  lit  up  his  face  with  a 
sunny  smile,  and  made  him  godlike.  I  was  an  undergraduate  at 
Christ  Church  when  Oxford  conferred  the  degree  of  D.  D.  upon 
him,  and  I  shall  never  forget  him  as  he  appeared  before  the  vice- 
chancellor  —  Jowett,  I  think  —  clad  in  his  gown  of  crimson  and 
scarlet,  nor  the  surprise  with  which  many  of  my  Oxford  friends 
regarded  his  splendid  athletic  proportions,  and  his  perfectly 
formed  head.  There  was  nothing  of  the  Jonathan  about  him, 
and  the  mass  of  even  educated  English  people  still  picture  an 
American  as  a  thin  man  with  a  long  nose  and  a  goatee.  ...  In 
applauding  Phillips  Brooks,  men  did  not  merely  applaud  a  famous 
preacher.  The  praise  was  not  that  of  the  scholar,  the  artist,  the 
athlete,  but  of  those  who  felt  instinctively  when  they  saw  him 
that  here  was  a  man  as  God  intended  a  man  to  be;  and  there 
were  no  hands  that  were  not  busy  clapping;  even  the  heads  of 
colleges  forgot  for  once  to  remain  unmoved. 

On  June  13  he  went  to  Cambridge,  to  fulfil  his  appoint- 
ment as  one  of  the  Select  Preachers  before  the  University. 
During  his  stay  he  was  the  guest  of  the  Vice-Chancellor, 
Dr.  Ferrar,  and  of  Professor  Jebb,  whose  acquaintance  he 
had  made  in  the  American  Cambridge.  He  had  the  plea- 
sure of  witnessing  a  boat  race  on  Saturday  afternoon.  Dis- 
tinguished men  were  invited  to  meet  him,  among  them  the 
late  Professor  Freeman,  and  Dr.  Westcott,  the  present 
Bishop  of  Durham,  On  Sunday  he  preached  in  Great  St. 
Mary's,  and  his  subject  was  chosen  well  for  the  place  and 
the  time,  —  in  substance  the  first  of  his  lectures  on  Tolerance, 
already  referred  to  in  a  previous  chapter.  The  occasion  has 
been  described  by  the  late  Dr.  Hort,  the  eminent  New  Tes- 
tament scholar,  in  a  letter  to  his  wife  dated  June  14, 
1885:  — 

St.  Mary's  was  a  strange  sight  to-day.  The  scaffolding  was 
prominent,  now  moved  into  the  middle  of  the  church.  The 
crowds  were  enormous,    at  least  downstairs.      I  do  not  think  I 


572  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

have  seen  so  many  M.  A.'s  for  many  years,  and  the  ladies 
swarmed  and  overflowed  everywhere.  The  undergraduates  alone 
put  in  a  comparatively  poor  appearance.  The  labors  of  the  week 
had  probably  been  too  much  for  them.  The  sermon  itself  did 
make  me  very  sorry  indeed  that  you  missed  it.  I  do  not  know 
how  to  describe  the  rather  peculiar  appearance  of  Mr.  Phillips 
Brooks.  He  is  very  tall,  with  a  marked  face  and  manner.  It 
is  a  shame  to  compare  him  to  so  very  unlike  a  man  as  Thackeray, 
but  there  was  a  real  likeness ;  something,  also,  of  Mr.  Hotham 
and  of  Sedgwick!  In  the  Bidding  Prayer  it  was  startling  to 
hear  him,  "as  in  private  duty  bound,"  speak  of  Harvard  College, 
in  Cambridge,  Massachusetts.  He  began,  as  Mr.  Litchfield  had 
described  after  hearing  his  Oxford  sermon,  with  quite  extraordi- 
nary rapidity.  It  was  a  great  effort  to  catch  what  was  said,  the 
voice  being  at  that  time  rather  low  and  by  no  means  emphatic, 
and  the  manner,  though  interesting  to  an  intelligent  hearer,  was 
not  impressive  to  any  one  who  needed  rousing.  But  in  all  these 
respects  he  improved  as  he  went  along,  though  almost  always  too 
fast.  But  the  simplicity,  reality,  and  earnestness  could  hardly 
have  been  surpassed,  and  I  should  imagine  that  few  ever  let  their 
attention  flag.  The  matter  was  admirable,  —  a  carefully  thought- 
out  exposition  of  Maurice's  doctrine  of  tolerance,  as  the  fruit 
of  strong  belief,  not  of  indifference.  There  was  no  rhetoric, 
but  abundance  of  vivid  illustrations,  never  irreverent,  and  never 
worked  up  for  effect,  but  full  of  point  and  humor.  Altogether 
it  was  one  of  the  sermons  that  it  is  a  permanent  blessing  to  have 
heard.  If  possible,  I  will  get  an  extra  cojiy  of  the  "  Review  " 
before  afternoon  post  on  Wednesday,  that  you  may  be  able  to 
read  it.^ 

The  sermon  excited  so  much  interest,  and  so  many  persons 
expressed  a  strong  desire  to  possess  it,  that  Mr.  Brooks  was 
requested  to  give  it  for  publication,  the  Cambridge  Mission 
offering  to  take  the  responsibility  of  an  edition.  But  the 
offer  was  declined,  as  the  sermon  only  represented  in  part 
what  he  had  in  him  to  say  on  the  subject  of  tolerance. 

There  was  a  continuous  round  of  lunches  and  dinners 
marking  each  day  of  the  month  that  he  remained  in  Eng- 
land. The  Earl  of  Aberdeen  gave  him  the  opportunity  of 
spending  a  Sunday  with  Mr.  Gladstone.  The  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  and  the  Bishop  of  London  were  among  his 

1  Life  and  Letters,  vol.  ii.  p.  317. 


^T.  49]  ENGLISH  FRIENDS  573 

hosts  at  dinner  parties,  Lady  Frances  Baillie  and  the  Bar- 
oness Burdett-Coutts,  Professor  Bryce,  author  of  the  "Amer- 
ican Commonwealth,"  Lord  Mount  Temple,  Rev.  Gerald 
Blunt,  Mrs.  Alice  Stopford  Greene,  the  widow  of  the  histo- 
rian, Dr.  Sewell,  Sir  H.  Adams,  Dr.  Thorold  the  Bishop  of 
Kochester,  Dr.  Russell  Reynolds,  and  many  others  were 
among  those  who  entertained  him.  He  met  Tyndall  and  Hux- 
ley, Miss  Ingelow,  William  Morris,  Browning  and  Matthew 
Arnold,  Mr.  Bosworth  Smith  and  Dr.  Boyd  (A.  H.  K.  B.). 
He  had  now  many  friends  among  the  English  clergy,  and 
he  made  many  calls,  which  must  have  been  a  serious  tax 
upon  his  time  and  strength.  The  artistic  side  of  his  nature 
was  kept  in  view  by  Mr.  Edward  Clifford  the  artist,  under 
whose  guidance  he  studied  the  work  of  Burne-Jones  and 
Rossetti.  He  speaks  of  his  pleasure  in  meeting  the  Tennyson 
children,  and  of  a  day  on  the  Thames  with  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Montgomery  and  Eric,  Sybil,  and  Lillian  Farrar.  He  re- 
newed his  relations  with  friends  of  former  days,  —  the  Bu- 
chanans, the  Messers,  and  others.  Among  the  names  recur- 
ring in  his  letters  are  Rev.  Stopford  Brooke,  Sir  George 
Grove,  Rev.  Llewelyn  Davies,  Canon  Duckworth,  Rev.  Harry 
Jones,  Canon  Spence,  Rev.  H.  R.  Haweis.  There  was  no 
reserve  among  the  English  people  when  it  was  a  question  of 
some  one  whom  it  was  desirable  to  know,  nor  did  they  stand 
upon  ceremony  in  the  matter. 

Very  touching  were  the  things  said  to  him  by  those  who 
knew  and  loved  him,  or  by  those,  and  they  were  many,  who 
had  gained  strength  and  life  from  his  words  or  writings. 
Dr.  Vaughan,  Dean  of  Llandaff,  and  formerly  Master  of 
the  Temple,  writes  to  him :  — 

June  30,  1885. 
It  was  a  refreshment  to  look  upon  you  in  the  church  and  pul- 
pit at  Kennington,  and  to  feel  assured  that  the  old  strength,  the 
old  grace,  the  old  love,  were  fresh  and  young  in  you  still.  May 
it  he  so  for  many  a  long  year  on  both  sides  of  the  great  deep ! 
To  have  known  you,  to  have  had  your  kind  thought  and  your 
kind  wish,  will  always  be  a  memory  and  a  hope  too,  to 
Your  respectful,  admiring,  and  loving  friend, 

C.  J.  Vaughan. 


574  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

Clergymen  and  laymen,  ladies  of  high  distinction  and 
cultivation,  told  him  what  he  had  done  for  them ;  and  chiefly 
it  was  that  he  had  brought  consolation  and  faith  and  hope  to 
many  who  were  walking  in  darkness.  He  had  extended  his 
pastoral  office  till  it  knew  no  limits  of  nationality.  In  all 
this  there  was  neither  rest  nor  leisure,  but  as  he  leaves  Ens:- 
land  he  writes :  "  Everything  here  has  been  delightful.  Peo- 
ple have  been  very  kind  and  invitations  flow  in  in  far  greater 
numbers  than  I  can  accept  them.  I  have  left  England  (July 
15)  after  a  most  delightful  visit.  It  was  full  of  interesting 
occurrences,  and  I  shall  look  back  upon  it  with  the  greatest 
pleasure."  In  another  letter  he  speaks  of  his  visits  to  Ox- 
ford and  Cambridge  and  contrasts  the  two  Universities :  — 

In  Oxford  I  have  had  two  delightful  visits ;  staying  first  with 
Jowett,  and  then  with  Hatch,  who  wrote  the  Bampton  Lectures 
about  the  organization  of  the  Church.  It  is  a  curious  world,  full 
now  of  the  freest  thought  running  in  the  channels  of  the  most 
venerable  medigevalism,  which  is  still  strong  and  vigorous  and 
controversial.  Almost  everybody  you  see  in  Oxford  believes 
either  too  much  or  too  little.  It  is  hard  to  find  that  balanced 
mind,  so  rational  yet  so  devout,  so  clear  and  yet  so  fair,  with 
which  we  are  familiar  in  the  Club.  Cambridge,  where  I  also  had 
a  pleasant  visit,  seemed  to  me  to  be  freer,  but  less  interesting. 
It  is  less  burdened  with  the  past,  and  also,  it  would  seem,  less 
picturesquely  illuminated  by  it. 

The  remainder  of  the  summer  was  spent  on  the  Continent 
in  the  company  of  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine  and  his  family, 
who  joined  him  as  he  was  leaving  England.  His  real  holi- 
day had  now  begun.  The  party  travelled  through  Germany, 
stopping  at  Bonn  and  then  going  through  the  Tyrol  to  Ven- 
ice. Venice  brought  refreshment  and  repose.  As  usual, 
during  his  summer  wanderings  in  Europe,  he  took  as  much, 
if  not  more,  delight  in  revisiting  places  with  which  he  was 
familiar  as  in  seeing  them  for  the  first  time.  It  fed  his  sense 
of  humor  to  think  of  himself  as  carrying  the  whole  world 
with  him,  and  then  to  feel  the  contrast  in  places  which  had 
lived  without  him.  Then,  too,  he  had  established  personal 
associations  with  such  places  in  the  company  of  friends  with 
whom   he   had   lingered   in  them.     In  writing  as   he  does 


^T.  49]    EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  575 

numerous  letters  In  this  reminiscent  mood,  to  McVickar, 
Cooper,  Franks,  and  Strong,  or  to  his  brothers,  he  never  fails 
to  remind  them  of  the  mutual  associations  they  have  with 
the  place  where  he  is  tarrying.  Indeed,  he  seems  to  have 
valued  the  return  because  it  brought  back  delightful  mem- 
ories in  which  there  was  no  alloy.  In  this  invisible  com- 
panionship of  his  friends,  he  looked  again  at  Bellini  and 
Titian,  Tintoretto  and  Carpaccio,  lounged  in  gondolas,  went 
from  Venice  to  Switzerland,  gazing  upon  old  scenes  with 
fresh  eyes,  recalling  his  first  visions.  He  wrote  in  these  idle 
days  some  of  his  charming  letters  to  children  where  he  in- 
dulged his  gift  for  arrant  nonsense,  and  yet  showing  a  psy- 
chological capacity  to  read  the  heart  of  a  genuine  child.  ^ 
To  Kev.  W.  N.  McVickar  he  writes:  — 

St.  Moritz,  AugTist  2,  1885. 
I  cannot  bear  to  let  the  whole  summer  pass  without  sending 
you  a  word  of  greeting,  and  so  —  how  are  you,  my  dear  boy  ? 
In  what  happy  fields  are  you  walking,  with  what  happy  girls? 
And  what  fragile  country  vehicles  are  you  overloading  with  your 
preposterous  weight  ?  For  myself,  I  was  informed  by  the  scales 
of  a  remote  but  entirely  trustworthy  Tyrolese  village  the  other 
day  that  I  had  lost  forty  pounds,  and  now  weigh  only  a  contempt- 
ible two  hundred  and  sixty.  Since  then  I  have  not  blushed  to 
look  the  meek  diligence  horses  in  the  face,  nor  trembled  as  I 
stepped  into  the  quivering  gondola.  I  was  there  last  week,  at 
Venice,  I  mean.  Antonio  and  Giovanni  still  haunt  the  quay  in 
front  of  Danieli's,  and  tempt  you  to  go  with  them  and  smoke 
Minghettis  on  the  Grand  Canal.  Not  only  there,  but  in  many 
places  which  I  have  touched  this  summer,  the  fragrance  of  your 
footsteps  lingers,  and  often,  when  I  have  fallen  asleep  in  the 
railroad  cars,  I  have  stirred  at  some  slight  noise  which  seemed 
to  me  to  be  Jimmy  feeling  for  his  roll. 

While  in  Venice  he  heard  of  the  death  of  General 
Grant :  — 

What  a  blessed  release,  after  his  brave  waiting,  and  what  a 
fine,  strong,  simple  figure  he  will  make  in  our  history!  There 
could  not  be  a  more  distinctively  American  life  and  character 
than  his. 

1  Cf.  Letters  of  Travel,  pp.  325  ff. 


576  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

To  Archdeacon  Farrar  he  sends  his  thanks  for  the  words 
he  had  spoken  in  Westminster  Abbey  on  the  national  loss :  — 

Lucerne,  August  8,  1885. 
My  dear  Dr.  Farrar,  —  May  I  thank  you  for  your  Address 
of  last  Tuesday,  a  part  of  which  I  have  just  had  the  opportunity 
of  reading  in  the  "Times."  You  cannot  know  how  deeply  it  will 
touch  the  hearts  of  our  people,  and  how  they  all  will  thank  you 
for  carefully  studying  and  valuing  one  to  whom  they  owe  so 
much,  and  whose  character  has  in  many  respects  appealed  to  them 
80  strongly.  You  have  done  very  much  to  bring  the  nations  very 
near  to  one  another  at  this  time  when  the  heart  of  America  is 
softened  to  receive  lasting  impressions. 

On  the  return  from  Switzerland  he  stopped  at  Paris,  where 
he  met  M.  Nyegaard,  and  he  also  listened  for  the  first  time 
to  M.  Bersier.  To  M.  Nyegaard,  after  he  had  reached 
home,  he  wrote  this  letter:  — 

233  Clakendon  Street,  Boston,  October  17,  1885. 

My  dear  Friend,  —  It  is  good  indeed  to  know  that  I  have 
seen  you,  and  that  I  have  held  the  hand  which  writes  this  plea- 
sant letter  that  I  received  the  other  day.  I  look  back  to  the 
hours  which  we  spent  together  in  Paris  with  sincere  delight.  Do 
you  remember  that  we  spoke  of  Emerson,  our  American  philoso- 
pher, whom  I  ventured  to  praise,  and  whom  you  said  that  you 
would  read.  I  took  the  liberty,  the  other  day,  of  sending  you 
a  copy  of  his  works,  which  I  trust  you  will  do  me  the  favor  to 
accept  as  a  token  of  my  affectionate  regard.  I  think  you  will 
find  much  in  him  to  like  as  well  as  much  with  which  you  will 
profoundly  disagree. 

I  saw  M.  Bersier  on  the  Saturday  after  we  were  together,  and 
spent  a  very  pleasant  hour  at  his  house.  I  was  delighted  with 
him.  There  is  a  vigorous  and  healthy  manliness  about  him, 
mind  and  body,  which  refreshes  and  inspires. 

The  next  day  I  heard  him  preach,  and  the  preacher  was  the 
man.  You  added  a  new  favor  to  the  many  for  which  I  already 
am  your  debtor  when  you  took  me  to  him. 

I  have  received  the  Dutch  translation  of  my  Lectures,  "Bood- 
schap  en  Getuigenis."  Ponderous  and  incomprehensible  name! 
With  it  there  came  a  courteous  note  from  M.  Valeton.  I  can- 
not read  the  book,  but  I  turn  its  pages  with  interest  and  awe. 
It  is  a  most  tantalizing  tongue.  It  always  seems  as  if  you 
ought  to  be  able  to  read  it,  and  you  never  can.  I  shall  dare 
to  hope  that  something  in  it  may  help  some  far-away  Holland 


^T.  49]    EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  577 

preachers  and  congregations  whom  I  shall  never  see.  Now,  I 
want  you  and  your  wife  to  come  to  America,  and  to  make  me  a 
visit  in  Boston.  Let  it  be  soon.  I  send  my  kind  regards  to 
her,  and  I  am  faithfully  yours, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

To  Mr.  Cooper,  who  sent  him  greetings  on  his  safe  return 
to  America,  he  wrote :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  September  17,  1885. 

Dear  Cooper,  —  Thanks  for  your  greeting.  Yes,  I  am  at 
home  again,  and  glad  to  be  on  the  same  side  of  the  pond  with 
you  again.  McVickar  was  here  to  receive  me,  and  I  only  needed 
you  to  make  the  thing  quite  perfect.  You  won't  fail  me  this 
winter,  will  you? 

Dr.  Tyng  has  gone.  That  breaks  another  link  with  the  old 
times.  I  hope  the  new  ones  are  better,  but  the  old  ones  had  a 
great  deal  of  a  sort  of  good  about  them  which  it  is  not  easy  to 
find  now. 

And  again  to  Mr.  Cooper  he  writes  a  humorous  letter, 

thanking  him  for  a  little  book  for  which  he  had  furnished  an 

introduction,  whose  object  was  to  improve  the  ways  of  life 

among  the  poorer  classes :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston, 
Sunday  evening,  October  4, 1885. 

Dear  Cooper,  —  I  thank  you  very  much  for  sending  me  the 
pretty  little  story  about  "Alice  Dean."  I  have  read  it  with  great 
interest,  and  shall  profit  by  it  all  I  can.  I  have  also  read  your 
introduction  to  it,  and  shall  put  it  in  practice  right  away.  I 
read  the  paragraphs  on  pages  four  and  five,  and  straightway  had 
my  study  carpet  swept,  and  put  a  dictionary  and  a  commentary 
on  the  table,  and  ordered  some  plaster  figures  of  a  boy  in  the 
street  for  the  mantelpiece,  and  hung  your  picture  and  Willie 
McVickar 's  in  a  good  light,  and  told  Katie  to  wash  the  table 
cloth,  and  set  the  table  for  supper;  but  there  I  came  to  a  stand- 
still. Whatever  shall  I  do  for  a  bright,  cheerful,  tidy  wife, 
with  clean  children !  These  I  cannot  beg,  borrow,  or  steal,  and 
it  is  too  late  now  to  come  by  them  in  the  regular  way.  So  this 
workingman's  heart  will  never  leap  with  joy,  or  at  least  only 
halfway.  But  there  are  plenty  of  other  workingmen  whom  your 
little  book  will  help,  and  it  was  a  capital  idea  to  have  it  printed. 

Aren't  you  coming  to  the  Congress?  We  shall  all  be  there, 
and  I,  for  one,  badly  want  to  see  your  blessed  face.  You  need 
not  go  to  all  the  meetings  if  you  don't  want  to,  and  you  shall 

VOL.  II 


578  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

smoke  all  the  pipes  you  will.     Do  come !     How  I  wish  I  were  in 
your  study,  and  not  here  this  Sunday  evening! 

One  of  Dr.  Brooks's  sermons,  written  in  the  fall,  was  on 
the  text,  "Luke,  the  Beloved  Physician."  Already  there 
were  in  the  air  symptoms  of  the  movement  known  as  Chris- 
tian Science.  In  this  sermon  he  touches  upon  the  organic 
relation  between  good  health  and  good  morals. 

The  duty  of  physical  health  and  the  duty  of  spiritual  purity 
and  loftiness  are  not  two  duties ;  they  are  two  parts  of  one  duty, 
—  which  is  living  the  completest  life  which  it  is  possible  for  man 
to  live.  And  the  two  parts  minister  to  one  another.  Be  good 
that  you  may  be  well;  be  well  that  you  may  be  good.  Both  of 
these  injunctions  are  reasonable,  and  both  are  binding  on  us  all. 
Sometimes  on  one  side  come  exceptions.  Sometimes  a  man  must 
give  up  being  well  in  order  to  be  good.  Never  does  an  exception 
come  on  the  other  side.  Never  is  a  man  under  the  necessity  of 
giving  up  being  good  in  order  to  be  well;  but  the  normal  life  of 
man  needs  to  be  lived  in  obedience  to  both  commands.* 

He  goes  on  to  compare  the  clerical  and  the  medical  profes- 
sions. Both  are  apt  to  make  the  same  mistakes,  to  lose  sight 
of  their  ends  in  their  means. 

Theology  has  driven  human  souls  into  exquisite  agony  with  its 
cold  dissection  of  the  most  sacred  feelings,  and  medicine  has 
tortured  sensitive  animals  in  a  recklessness  of  scientific  vivisec- 
tion, which  has  no  relation,  direct  or  indirect,  to  human  good. 

The  reference  to  vivisection  brought  to  him  a  protest  from 
a  physician  who  urged  that  the  real  correlative  to  the  cleri- 
cal sin  he  mentioned  was  the  very  common  medical  sin  of 
attending  to  the  disease  and  ignoring  the  patient's  personal 
needs.  "The  few  physicians  who  vivisect  in  this  country 
are  our  most  humane  men,  respected  and  loved  by  us  all." 
To  this  letter  and  to  its  protest  Dr.  Brooks  replied :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  October  22, 1885. 
Dear  Doctor,  —  Thank  you  for  letting  me  hear  from  you 
again.  We  are  not  likely  to  meet  often,  I  am  afraid.  It  is 
good  that  once  in  a  while  we  can  get  greeting  of  one  another, 
and  be  sure  that  we  are  caring  for  the  same  things,  and  working 
for  the  same  Master.      I  beg  you  let  me  see  you  when  you  can. 

1  Cf .  Sermons,  vol.  v.  p.  230. 


* 


^T.  49]     EXTRACTS   FROM   LETTERS        579 

I  have  not  forgotten  the  talks  which  we  had  years  ago,  nor  ceased 
to  be  thankful  to  the  God  who  led  and  is  leading  you. 

You  are  right  about  the  sermon.  The  true  correlative  of  the 
clerical  sin  in  medical  life  is  the  one  which  you  named  and  not 
the  one  which  I  named.  I  shall  make  the  change,  but  I  must 
still  somewhere  put  in  my  word  about  vivisection.  I  do  not 
know  how  much  of  cruelty  there  is.  I  know  that  there  is  some. 
God  bless  you  always.      Your  sincere  friend, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

During  the  fall  he  gave  up  much  of  his  time  to  the  prepa- 
ration of  a  chapter  for  the  "Memorial  History  of  Boston," 
entitled  "  A  Century  of  Church  Growth,"  ^  where  he  reviewed 
the  history  of  the  Episcopal  Church.  It  is  interesting  as 
showing  how  faithfully  he  devoted  himself  to  a  task  for 
which  he  might  not  have  been  thought  specially  fitted. 
He  had  already  shown,  however,  what  he  could  do  in  this 
line  of  historical  or  antiquarian  research,  by  his  address 
before  the  Boston  Latin  School,  where  he  had  not  only  been 
punctiliously  accurate  in  his  collection  of  facts,  but,  what 
was  more,  had  shown  that  he  could  make  history  as  real  and 
as  living  to  the  imagination  as  was  the  passing  event  of  the 
day.  He  made  thorough  preparation  for  what  was  to  be 
small  in  its  seeming  result.  He  wrote  down  every  name, 
and  in  connection  with  it  events  or  circumstances  reflect- 
ing any  light  on  the  personality.  He  studied  the  data  in 
the  history  of  each  parish,  scanning  its  reports  for  the  symp- 
toms of  life,  however  feeble  its  outward  existence.  Nothing 
seemed  small  or  unworthy  to  him.  But  he  kept  in  full  view 
the  larger  life  of  the  time  in  order  to  give  the  true  setting. 
As  we  follow  him  in  his  studies  for  the  work,  there  breaks 
forth,  now  and  then,  a  sense  of  humor  at  the  situation. 
After  going  through  the  records  of  the  episcopates  of  Bass, 
Parker,  Griswold,  and  Eastburn,  he  sighs,  "Oh,  for  a  touch 
of  genius !  "  But  these  humorous  touches  disappear  when  he 
comes  to  write,  and  every  word  is  serious  and  dignified. 

Mr.  Brooks  had  been  requested  by  his  brother  to  make 
some  Inquiries  while  in  England  in  regard  to  clergy  who 
were  said  to  have  accomplished  successful  results  in  holding 

^  Cf .  Essays  and  Addresses,  ■where  it  is  published  in  separate  form. 


SSo  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

Missions.  He  had  fulfilled  the  request,  and  in  so  doing  had 
become  interested  in  the  subject  for  himseK.  But  it  was 
with  hesitation,  and  only  after  misgivings  overcome,  that  he 
committed  himself  to  approving  the  idea  which  the  mission 
involved.  For  the  mission  seemed  to  imply  that  the  regular 
work  of  the  parish  minister  was  not  by  itself  sufficient  to 
awaken  an  interest  in  religion,  and  that  the  pastor  must  go 
outside  of  his  parish  for  aid.  All  the  evils  of  the  revival 
system,  with  wandering,  irresponsible  evangelists  who  caused 
ephemeral  excitement  by  drawing  crowds  to  whom  the  ordi- 
nary ministrations  of  the  churches  were  dull,  —  these  things 
were  before  his  mind.  It  was  an  effort  to  introduce  into  the 
Episcopal  Church  what  many  regarded  as  an  element  foreign 
to  its  ways.  In  several  letters  to  Kev.  Arthur  Brooks  he 
speaks  on  the  subject :  — 

Athen^um  Club,  Pall  Mall,  June  8,  1885. 

As  to  the  Mission,  I  asked  all  the  people  I  saw  who  the  best 
missioners  were,  and  the  Bishop  of  Rochester  specially  praised 
and  glorified  Rev.  R.  B.  Ransford,  of  St.  Jude's  Vicarage,  East 
Brixton,  London,  So  I  went  out  and  took  luncheon  with  him, 
and  we  talked  it  all  over.  He  is  a  fine  fellow,  broad  in  the- 
ology, earnest  in  spirit,  cheerful  in  temper,  and  thoroughly  sen- 
sible about  the  whole  matter  of  missions.  Does  not  believe  in 
the  minister  of  the  parish  giving  himself  over  into  the  missioner's 
hands.  Hates  the  name  of  missioner,  and  altogether  goes  fur- 
ther towards  making  the  whole  thing  seem  sensible  and  practi- 
cable than  I  supposed  was  possible.  I  have  not  the  least  idea 
whether  he  would  come  to  America,  but  if  I  were  going  to  have  a 
mission,  and  wanted  an  Englishman  to  run  it,  I  would  ask  him. 

Wengekn  Alp,  August  1,  1885. 

When  the  Congress  is  safely  over,  there  will  come  your  mis- 
sion. I  am  so  glad  that  you  have  got  a  good  man,  and  I  shall 
be  all  curiosity  to  know  how  It  goes  on.  On  the  whole,  I  am 
very  glad  it  is  to  take  place.  It  will  at  least  break  the  rigidity 
of  the  church's  ways,  and  strike  the  true  keynote  of  preaching. 
Boston  will  be  ready  when  New  York  has  proved  that  it  is  the 
true  thing  to  do. 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  Octobei'  9,  1885. 

I  am  glad  Ransford  is  coming,  but  it  almost  took  my  breath 
away  when  I  heard  it.  I  felt  for  an  instant  as  if  the  whole  re- 
sponsibility of  your  mission  was  on  my  shoulders.  But  you  know 
I  didn't  warrant  him,  — only  said  that  he  seemed  to  be  a  first- 


;et.  49]    EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  581 

rate  fellow,  with  real  sensible  ideas  regarding  what  a  mission 
ought  to  be,  and  that  I  should  certainly  engage  him  if  I  wanted 
a  missioner.  Awful  word!  That  is  all  I  said,  and  that,  you 
see,  isn't  much! 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  November  23,  1885. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  I  feel  as  if  I  were  taking  a  solemn  farewell 
of  you  when  I  see  you  plunging  into  this  mysterious  Mission.  I 
wonder  to  myself  whether  I  shall  know  you  as  you  come  out. 
All  looks  very  interesting  about  it,  and  I  am  sure  I  hope  and 
pray  that  it  may  do  great  good.  I  am  delighted  that  Ransford 
makes  so  good  an  impression.  I  hope  that  I  shall  see  him  before 
he  leaves  the  country.  Would  he  be  willing,  and  would  it  be 
a  good  thing  for  him,  to  come  on  here,  —  say,  on  the  second  or 
third  Sunday  in  December,  —  and  tell  my  people  about  the  mis- 
sion ?  I  will  write  to  him  about  such  a  plan  on  a  word  of  en- 
couragement from  you. 

The  usual  routine  of  work  in  the  fall  was  varied  by  the 
visit  to  this  country  of  Archdeacon  Farrar,  who  during  his 
stay  in  Boston  was  the  guest  of  Mr.  Brooks,  and  on  All 
Saints'  Day  preached  for  him  in  Trinity  Church.  Mr. 
Brooks  had  been  looking  forward  to  the  visit,  and  had  done 
all  in  his  power  to  bring  it  about  by  urging  it  upon  his  friend. 
He  was  anxious  that  Dr.  Farrar  should  see  the  country  to 
advantage.  He  felt  somewhat  like  a  boy  in  college  when  he 
takes  his  friend  home  with  him  for  the  vacation.  A  sense 
of  proprietorship,  as  it  were,  in  his  native  city  took  posses- 
sion of  him,  as  he  thought  of  its  people,  or  looked  at  its 
streets  and  its  buildings,  and  saw  them  in  a  new  light  as 
he  gazed  at  them  through  the  eyes  of  another.  Although  he 
loved  England,  he  was  proud  of  America,  and  of  the  oppor- 
tunity to  interpret  America  to  one  accustomed  to  English 
ways.  He  made  no  apology  for  the  homely  fashions  o^ 
social  usages  which  had  been  preserved  in  rural  New  Eng- 
land, but  gloried  in  them  as  evidencing  the  triumph  of  the 
democratic  principle  in  its  purity  and  strength,  and  among 
the  sources  of  American  greatness.  He  rejoiced  in  the  cor- 
dial welcome  everywhere  given  to  Dr.  Farrar,  in  helping  to 
bring  England  and  America  to  that  better  understanding  of 
each  other  which  should  lead  to  international  amity. 


582  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

On  Thanksgiving  Day,  he  chose  for  his  text  the  words 
describing  the  dream  of  Nebuchadnezzar:  "I  saw  a  dream 
which  made  me  afraid,  and  the  thoughts  upon  my  bed  and  the 
visions  of  my  head  troubled  me,"  —  words  where  "the  Baby- 
lonian king  had  summed  up  his  realm  in  his  feelings."  The 
subject  of  the  sermon  was  the  "Temper  of  a  Time,"  how  one 
ought  to  feel  in  the  days  which  were  passing.  For  our  own 
time  this  was  the  summary:  (1)  great  sense  of  danger;  (2) 
great  expectation ;  (3)  great  hope  in  man ;  (4)  great  trust  in 
God.  He  dwelt  on  the  function  of  wonder  as  indispensable 
to  any  man  or  age.  He  passed  in  review  the  current  feeling 
in  regard  to  social  changes,  mechanical  discoveries,  and  theo- 
logical disturbances.  It  was  indisj)ensable  for  a  man,  if  he 
would  help  his  age,  that  he  should  be  a  man  of  the  time.  A 
value  was  to  be  set  upon  every  movement  which  was  in  the 
right  direction,  however  slight  or  unconnected,  because  no 
man  could  say  how  or  where  it  would  ultimate.  There 
should  be  an  earnest  desire  to  get  at  the  heart  of  things 
under  their  form,  — yet  keeping  forms,  —  the  mixture  of  con- 
servatism and  radicalism.  He  saw  grounds  for  hope  in  the 
pursuit  of  mechanical  discoveries  and  pointed  out  their  true 
value.  Everything  should  be  valued  which  tended  to  in- 
crease true  faith  in  and  true  hope  for  man  in  the  reign  of  the 
coming  democracy.  Let  religion  grow  deeper  and  more 
simple.  Freedom  was  the  word  to  be  applied  as  a  test  in 
the  political  confusion  which  threatened  to  dissolve  political 
parties.  But  the  supreme  need  was  for  strong  moral  pur- 
pose, as  the  ground  and  basis  of  everything. 

Although  Phillips  Brooks  was  an  optimist,  cultivating 
hope  for  the  world  as  a  solemn  obligation  and  responsibility, 
yet  at  this  time,  as  in  previous  years,  he  was  wrestling  in 
secret  with  the  foes  of  hope,  as  Jacob  wrestled  through  the 
night  in  mortal  combat  with  his  mysterious  antagonist.  He 
could  not  assume  that  all  was  well  until  he  had  measured  the 
motives  which  begot  the  moods  of  pessimism.  In  the  search 
for  its  causes  he  found  them  in  the  theoretical  philosophy  of 
fatalism,  in  partial  views  of  life,  in  personal  disappointment, 
in  an  affectation  of  contempt.     "Pessimism,"  he  writes  it 


JET.  49]  OPTIMISM  583 

down  in  his  note-book,  "comes  from  and  tends  to  the  loss  of 
individuality."  While  he  was  engaged  in  working  up  a  ser- 
mon on  the  subject,  texts  of  Scripture  flashed  upon  his  mind : 
"In  the  daytime  he  led  them  with  a  cloud,  and  all  the  night 
through  with  a  light  of  fire."  Every  theist  must  be  an 
optimist,  but  before  one  could  say,  "The  Lord  is  good,"  he 
must  take  in  the  range  of  the  divine  activity :  "  See  now  that 
I,  even  I,  am  he,  and  there  is  no  God  with  me.  I  kill  and 
I  make  alive,  I  wound  and  I  heal;  neither  is  there  any  that 
can  deliver  out  of  my  hand."  He  saw  a  truth  in  pessimism, 
something  from  which  an  inspiration  for  higher  living  could 
be  obtained.  But  he  condemns  the  folly  of  vague  optimism 
as  of  vague  pessimism,  or  of  vagueness  anywhere.  "  Define 
yourself."  Schopenhauer  he  designates  as  a  "scared  pessi- 
mist." Christ's  view  of  man  must  be  the  true  one;  He  was 
no  pessimist;  "not  to  condemn  the  world,  but  that  the  world 
through  Him  might  be  saved;  "  and  yet  He  says,  "For  judg- 
ment have  I  come  into  this  world."  The  salvation  from 
pessimism  is  in  the  unselfish  service  of  men.  To  get  at  the 
facts  of  life  and  place  them  in  their  true  light  is  the  first 
duty.  Much  of  the  pain  in  the  world  comes  from  memory  and 
from  anticipation,  from  the  past  and  from  the  future,  not 
from  the  present.     He  repeats  the  lines  of  Victor  Hugo :  — 

C'est  le  bonheur  de  vivre 
Qui  fait  la  gloire  de  mourir. 

He  recalls,  in  a  picture  of  Domenichino's,  at  Bologna,  the 
little  angel  trying  the  point  of  one  of  the  thorns  in  the  Crown 
of  Thorns  with  his  finger.  He  notes  the  correspondence  of 
general  human  good  and  ill,  hope  and  despair,  with  the  same 
in  the  personal  life.  "Progress  must  be  seen  as  law,  as  well 
as  fact.  There  remains,  (1)  the  perpetual  faith  with  which 
men  trust  each  other;  (2)  the  hopefulness  with  which  they 
want  to  live ;  (3)  the  complacency  with  which  they  see  their 
children  start  out  in  life.  '  The  Lord  is  good. '  The  book 
Ecclesiastes  gives  the  picture,  —  enjoyment  with  a  back- 
ground of  judgment ;  neither  wanton  self-indulgence  nor  cyn- 
ical pleasure  and  hatred;  neither  idle  optimism  nor  wanton 
pessimism." 


584  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

Among  the  sermons  which  issued  from  the  inward  conflict, 
where  he  was  weighing  the  materials  of  his  own  life  as  well 
as  studying  the  world  around  him,  there  are  three,  written 
at  this  time  or  very  nearly,  which  may  be  mentioned  by  their 
titles:  the  "Battle  of  Life"  (1885),i  the  "Giant  with  the 
Wounded  Heel"  (1886),2  and  the  "Sword  bathed  in  Hea- 
ven" (1886).^  In  these  sermons,  which  are  the  types  of 
many  others,  there  is  felt  a  difference  of  tone  as  compared 
with  his  earlier  preaching,  —  the  tone  of  a  man  in  the  thick 
of  mortal  combat,  a  giant  in  the  toils,  and  yet  in  the  process 
of  escape,  who  discerns  light  and  victory.  The  essential 
characteristic  of  human  life,  which  the  age  is  in  danger  of 
overlooking,  is  perpetual  warfare,  —  of  all  life,  whether  in 
celestial  regions  or  in  earthly  places.  God  is  in  the  conflict 
as  well  as  every  man,  and  the  battle  is  of  Titanic  propor- 
tions. There  is  victory  for  every  man,  though  the  type  of 
human  life  at  its  best  must  be  the  giant  with  the  wounded 
heel.  There  is  victory  for  every  man,  but  on  one  condition, 
that  the  sword  with  which  he  fights  must  have  been  bathed 
in  heaven. 

To  the  Hon.  George  P.  Hoar,  United  States  Senator  from 
Massachusetts,  who  wrote  Mr.  Brooks,  asking  why  St.  Paul, 
in  the  midst  of  his  lofty  statement  of  the  great  doctrine 
of  immortality,  in  the  fifteenth  chapter  of  First  Corinthians, 
should  break  the  connection  by  the  thirty-third  verse,  — 
"Evil  communications  corrupt  good  manners,"  Mr.  Brooks 
sends  a  letter,  interesting  and  characteristic,  as  though  he 
read  the  Apostle  through  the  knowledge  of  himself :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  December  3,  1885. 

Mt  dear  Sir,  —  I  am  sure  that  we  must  all  have  been  struck, 
as  you  have  been,  by  the  curiously  incongruous  tone  of  the  thirty- 
third  verse  of  St.  Paul's  fifteenth  chapter  of  his  First  Epistle  to 
the  Corinthians. 

I  have  been  in  the  habit  of  finding  the  explanation,  first,  in 
the  fact  that  the  verse  is  a  quotation  (from  Menander),  and  one, 
no  doubt,  so  familiar  to  the  people  that  it  had  become  a  pro- 
verb; and,  second,  that  the  Greek  words  had  none  of  that  par- 
ticular tone  which  belongs  to  the  words  which  our  English  trans- 

1  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  vi.  '  Cf.  Ibid.  vol.  iv.  ^  Cf .  Ibid. 


JET.  49]     EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS         585 

lators  used;  particularly  the  word  "manners,"  which  surely  has 
not  either  the  dignity  or  the  range  of  the  Greek  '^^67]." 

At  the  same  time,  it  seems  to  me  to  be  altogether  characteris- 
tic of  St.  Paul  to  interrupt  a  glowing  and  lofty  argument  by  a 
few  words  of  special  and  homely  exhortation  and  warning  sug- 
gested by  what  he  is  saying,  then  resuming  his  argument  all  the 
more  loftily  beyond.  Such  passages  are  not,  I  think,  uncommon 
with  him.  Certainly  they  bring  out  very  forcibly  the  way  in 
which  the  two  impulses,  of  high  speculation  and  of  care  for 
men's  behavior  and  character,  were  both  always  present  with 
him ;  and  I  have  come  to  feel  that  in  this  particular  passage  the 
two  impulses  add  to  each  other's  vividness  and  force. 

There   are   a   few   words   on    these    verses   in   Dean   Stanley's 
"  Commentary  on  the  Epistles  to  the  Corinthians, "  which  seem  to 
me  to  be  suggestive.     I  am,  my  dear  sir, 
Yours  most  sincerely, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

On  the  13th  of  December,  1885,  Phillips  Brooks  crossed 
the  line,  the  approach  to  which  he  had  been  dreading,  as 
only  one  so  full  of  life  could  dread  it,  and  kept  his  fiftieth 
birthday.  All  his  life,  as  we  have  seen,  he  kept,  or  was 
forced  to  keep,  these  memorial  days,  and  he  made  far  too 
much  of  them  for  his  own  comfort  and  peace.  The  resem- 
blance to  his  mother  comes  out  in  the  common  tone  they 
assume  in  speaking  of  life  after  the  age  of  fifty.  In  a  letter 
to  Mr.  Cooper  he  seems  to  make  light  of  the  event,  saying, 
"I  reached  the  half  century,  and  shook  myself  as  I  started 
out  upon  another  half  century."  But  this  is  on  the  surface. 
In  reality  he  was  beginning  to  assume  that  youth  was  over. 
Though  he  had  written  it  and  said  it  many  times  before, 
now  he  felt  and  meant  it  when  he  said  it.  He  began  to 
speak  of  himself  as  old.  In  addressing  young  men  he  would 
assume  that  life  for  him  was  over,  or  that  he  was  a  spectator 
of  the  scene  in  which  they  were  the  actors.  When  he  was 
remonstrated  with  for  taking  such  a  tone,  which  only  pained 
those  who  listened  to  him  and  who  were  surprised  at  his 
saying  of  himself  what  they  did  not  believe  was  true,  he 
would  answer  that  he  supposed  he  felt  it  or  he  would  not 
say  it. 

To  Mrs.  Kobert  Treat  Paine  he  writes :  — 


586  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

233  Clakendon  Street,  Boston,  December  13, 1885. 

Dear  Mrs.  Palnte,  —  I  wish  you  could  know  how  very  bright 
your  kind  note  and  the  beautiful  gift  which  came  with  it  make 
this  semi-centennial  morning.  You  know  how  much  your  friend- 
ship has  been  to  me  —  the  friendship  of  you  all  —  for  a  good 
third  of  this  long  life  of  mine.  You  cannot  know  it  wholly,  but 
I  do  hope  that  you  know  it  in  part.  This  kindness  has  deepened 
and  assured  my  happiness  in  your  friendship,  and  my  gratitude 
to  all  of  you.  Now,  in  spite  of  blunders  and  defects  which  seem 
to  me  to  increase  in  me,  in  melancholy  fashion,  let  me  hope  that 
you  and  Bob  and  all  your  children  will  give  me  still  a  place  in 
your  affection  till  the  end. 

I  am  not  very  conceited  this  morning ;  the  past  looks  pretty 
poor  so  far  as  it  has  been  my  work.  But  I  am  very  grateful  to 
God  for  all  these  happy  years.  I  should  be  a  wretch  indeed  if 
I  were  not.  And  high  among  the  causes  of  my  gratitude  stands 
the  friendship  of  my  friends. 

This  kindness  was  good  indeed !     Thank  you  again  and  again. 
Ever  sincerely  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

233  Clakendon  Street,  Boston, 
Monday  morning,  December  21,  1885. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  How  good  you  and  L were  to  come  on 

here  for  the  semi-centennial  dinner.  I  cannot  thank  you  enough, 
and  I  shall  remember  it  forever  as  the  most  delightful  piece  of 
brotherly  and  sisterly  affection.  You  have  been  awfully  good 
to  me  many  and  many  a  time,  but  you  never  were  better  or  gave 
me  more  pleasure  than  when  you  took  those  two  long  journeys  to 
wish  me  a  happy  New  Year  and  start  me  off  on  my  second  half 
century.  It  was  so  good  to  be  all  together  once  again,  the  total 
family.  The  times  get  rarer,  and  one  small  consolation  in  being 
fifty  years  old  is  that  I  have  furnished  the  opportunity  of  such 
a  meeting,  and  that  you  were  good  enough  to  come.  I  felt  very 
guilty  at  first  when  I  saw  how  much  pleasure  you  had  taken  for 
me,    but  now  I  accept    it    all   without  a    qualm    and    am    very 

happy  about  it.      Do  let  L know  how  heartily  I  thank  you 

both.    .    .    . 

Forefathers'  Day!  Blessed  old  Puritans!  How  glad  I  am  they 
lived  and  that  they  don't  live  now! 

To  the  Kev.  G.  H.  Strong  he  writes:  — 

December  24,  1885. 
Dear  George,  — ...  I  was  fifty  a  week  ago  last  Sunday 
and  you  are  —  who  can  say  how  old  ?     Well,  no  doubt  it  is  all 
right,  but  there  is  getting  to  be  a  very  "John  Anderson  my  Jo 


^T.  50]    EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  587 

John  "  feeling  about  it  all  which  I  don't  like  nearly  so  well  as 

the  old  cheery,  hopeful  feeling  of  the  days  when and 

were  daily  and  hourly  visions.  I  send  you  still  with  my  own 
venerable  hand,  like  Paul  the  aged,  my  best  thanks  and  heartiest 
good  wishes.   .   .   . 

Ever  affectionately,  P.  B. 

Here  is  a  letter  written  to  his  two  little  nieces  in  Si3ring- 
field,  on  receiving  from  them  for  a  Christmas  present  the 
portrait  of  some  remote  ancestor :  — 

December  26,  1885. 

Dear  Dodo  and  Hattie,  —  It  was  very  good  of  you  to  think 
of  your  old  relative  and  send  him  the  picture  of  an  even  older 
relative  for  a  Christmas  present.  I  thank  you  very  much  indeed, 
and  I  shall  hang  him  up  and  love  to  think  of  how  kind  you  were 
and  of  how  good  he  was.  I  do  not  think  he  was  ever  as  kind  as 
you  are,  and  I  do  not  think  you  will  ever  be  as  good  as  he  was. 
I  hope  not ! 

You  never  knew  him.  He  died  before  you  were  born.  In- 
deed I  did  not  know  him  very  well  myself,  for  I  was  very  young 
the  last  time  he  was  here.  But  everybody  says  he  was  a  nice 
old  man  and  hated  Christmas  with  all  his  soul.  How  little  can 
he  have  ever  thought  that  he  himself  would  be  turned  into  a 
Christmas  present  some  day!  I  do  not  know  but  what  it  was 
wrong  in  you  to  play  such  a  joke  on  him,  but  I  am  sure  that  it 
was  very  funny.  I  cannot  think  how  you  ever  got  hold  of  him. 
I  thought  he  was  dead  up  in  Andover,  and  now  here  he  comes 
from  Springfield  in  a  box  just  as  if  he  had  been  alive  in  your 
town  all  these  years. 

You  must  tell  me  how  you  came  to  find  him,  and  if  he  has  a 
way  of  running  about,  because  if  he  has,  I  must  tie  a  string  to 
him,  for  I  should  be  very  sorry  to  lose  him,  partly  because  he 
is  so  good  and  pretty,  and  partly  because  you  are  so  kind.  I 
thank  you  for  him  a  million,  million  times.  And  I  hope  you 
had  a  merry  Christmas,  and  lots  of  presents,  and  a  nice  sermon, 
and  a  good  dinner,  and  pies  and  ice  cream,  and  nuts  and  raisins, 
and  gum-drops. 

Give  my  love  to  John  and  Hattie,  and  believe  me, 

Very  respectfully  your  affectionate  uncle,  P. 

The  following  extracts  are  from  his  note-book,  made  while 
travelling  during  the  summer  of  1885 :  — 

Sermon  on  the  impulse  every  now  and  then  to  every  one  to  get 


588  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

loose  from  the  despotic  course  of  life  and  break  things.     The 
Radical  in  everybody.      The  love  of  camping  out. 

Sermon  on  the  disciples'  dispute  which  should  be  greatest,  the 
humanness  of  it.  Show  how  ambition  may  be  nobly  turned  into 
which  shall  be  usefullest  and  meekest.  The  demon  of  compari- 
son. 

Sermon  on  "As  he  thinketh  in  his  heart,  so  is  he."  Cf.  Des- 
cartes, Cogito,  ergo  sum.     The  relation  of  thought  to  life. 

As  crossing  a  Paris  or  a  London  street,  when  we  are  halfway 
over,  we  cease  to  look  for  danger  on  the  one  side,  and  begin  to 
fear  it  only  on  the  other,  so  of  growing  old. 

Thanksgiving  sermon  on  the  whole  modern  relation  of  rich 
and  poor.  The  old  relation  was  between  distinctly  superior  and 
inferior  beings.  The  attempt  next  to  create  absolute  equality: 
Declaration  of  Independence.  The  solution  must  be  in  the  real 
valuing  of  things.  Apply  to  conceit  of  rich,  apply  to  jealousy 
of  poor.  This  with  free  power  to  change  conditions.  Does  this 
suit  Christianity?  Yes,  in  special  precepts,  but  still  more  in  the 
general  emphasis  of  character.  Do  not  be  carried  away  by  super- 
stition of  wealth  either  way. 

Strong  theistic  tendency  arising.  Socialism  struggling  for 
definition.  The  spread  of  representation,  with  strong  question- 
ings about  it.  Ours  a  transition  time,  —  all  times  so,  but  some 
peculiarly.  Real  meaning  of  the  struggle  for  honest  government. 
Civil  service  reform.  The  nation  realizing  itself  for  its  future, 
gathering  itself  together  for  advance.  Not  a  mere  economic 
question.  Death  of  McClellan  and  Grant;  final  end  of  the 
period ;  first  absolutely  non-war  President. 

Subjects  for  Wednesday  evening  lectures.  Certain  Bible 
words  and  their  meanings.  In  the  first  lecture  show  how  they 
came  to  be  misunderstood.  The  confusion  of  allegory  and  liter- 
alism. The  love  of  the  concrete  and  the  definite.  The  plain- 
ness and  distinctness  of  the  superficial  reason;  the  wish  to  make 
them  strictly  ostensible.  1.  God.  2.  Heaven.  3.  Hell.  4.  Re- 
demption. 5.  Salvation.  6.  Sacrifice.  7.  Eternity.  8.  Reward. 
9.   Atonement. 

Time,  that  aged  nurse,  rocked  me  to  patience. 

Some  men  make  themselves  God,  without  knowing  what  they 
are  doing.  The  deity  they  appeal  to  is  really  their  deeper, 
higher  self.  When  they  feel  God's  approval,  it  is  really  their 
own  self-praise.     When  God  reproaches   them,   it  is  their  own 


^T.  50]  EXTRACTS  FROM  JOURNAL   589 

self -rebuke.  When  they  go  apart  from  the  world  to  hold  com- 
munion with  Him,  it  really  is  an  entrance  into  their  own  self- 
consciousness.  To  other  men,  some  good  fellow  man,  more  or 
less  consciously  and  comijletely  enlarged  into  an  ideal  of  human- 
ity, answers  the  same  purpose,  and  is  in  reality  their  God.  To 
still  others,  a  vague  presence  of  a  high  purpose  and  tendency 
felt  in  everything.  Tennyson's  "one  increasing  pui'pose, "  and 
Arnold's  "something  not  ourselves  which  makes  for  righteous- 
ness." This  fulfils  the  end  and  makes  the  substitute  for  God. 
But  none  of  these  supply  the  place  of  a  true  personality  outside 
ourselves,  yet  infinitely  near  to  us. 

Clear  plea  for  search  after  truth  in  religion,  as  distinct  from 
search  for  pleasure  or  for  safety.  Protest  against  aesthetic  ritu- 
alism and  against  stubborn  orthodoxy. 

Text :  "  If  thine  eye  be  single,  thy  whole  body  shall  be  full  of 
light."  The  great  desirable  end,  Light.  How  Christ  and  the 
Bible  dread  and  hate  darkness.  That  their  glory.  The  enemies 
of  moral  light  are  Cowardice,  Contempt,  Cruelty,  and  Sloth, — 
these  the  powers  of  Darkness.  Selfishness  behind  all.  Our 
aim  is  to  show  how  clear,  simple,  unselfish  devotion  to  some 
great  practicable  purpose  clears  all  these  away.  Christ  the  illus- 
tration. Only  one  question  to  ask :  not,  Is  it  safe  ?  or.  Is  it  best 
for  me  f  nor,  Is  it  popular  ?  nor,  Is  it  easy  ?  but.  Is  it  right  ?  The 
danger  of  one-sided  men.  This  is  not  that.  Unselfish  devotion 
to  another  the  only  way  to  singlefy  the  life  of  devotion  to  Fam- 
ily, Country,  Science,  Humanity,  God.  Apply  to  political  mat- 
ters and  to  Theology.  The  general  love  for  complication,  univer- 
sal sympathy,  etc.  But  a  deeper  love  below  it  for  simplicity. 
The  real  solution  and  union  of  the  two  in  centrality.  The  lack 
of  this;  the  way  Christianity  supplies  it.  Christ  the  man  of 
men,  the  Lord  of  being. 

The  return  to  simplicity  in  religious  questions.  Is  there  a 
God?     The  new  departure  theories. 

Text:  "The  summer  is  ended."  For  most  of  us,  the  ship 
going  home.  A  period  of  relaxation  over.  A  touch  of  disap- 
pointment. It  must  be  so  wherever  there  is  no  real  ideality  and 
lofty  hope.  The  summer  a  ripening  of  spring  seed  into  autumn 
fruit.  True  value  of  foreign  travel  in  ripening  home  affections 
and  connections.  The  unity  of  a  life  is  in  God.  His  nearness. 
The  summer  and  the  whole  year  conception  of  life  make  it 
depend  on  God  as  tlie  sun. 

There   is  a  true  and  a  false  simplicity,    and  when  the  time 


590  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1885 

comes    that    simplicity  is    desired  it   makes    all    the    difference 
whether  we  choose  the  true. 

Such  a  time  does  come  —  hatred  of  all  complication,  in  all 
deeper  moods,  in  all  mature  life.  Then  shall  you  get  simplicity 
by  exorcism  or  by  centrality? 

1.  In  civilization.  Let  us  return  to  Barbarism,  let  us  cut  off 
elaborations?  Not  so!  But  let  us  get  sight  of  the  one  increas- 
ing purpose. 

2.  In  the  personal  nature.  Give  us  the  simple  man  ?  Nay, 
so  you  get  the  meagre  man.  Give  us  the  manifold  man,  with 
one  great  purpose. 

3.  In  thought.  Let  us  stop  this  ranging  of  thought  every- 
where ?     But  no,  let  us  think  devoutly. 

4.  In  action.  Let  us  stop  and  come  down  to  simple  life? 
No,  but  men  should  be  nobler  by  it  all. 

Text:  "Be  still,  and  know  that  I  am  God."  God's  great 
assertion  of  existence,  as  if  that  was  so  much.  "  Be  still, "  — 
the  hush  of  this  endless  talk.  A  great  reverse  or  accident,  break- 
ing the  special  methods  of  life  down ;   Z .      The  breakdown 

of  a  Faith  and  its  perception  of  Truth  behind  it. 

The  perplexities  of  life  (labor,  etc.),  ignoring  first  principles 
and  the  deeper  powers  at  work.  The  whole  return  to  what  seems 
pure  theism.  Battling  in  God.  The  ship  on  the  ice.  Ice 
melting  lets  it  down  into  the  sea.     Mystery  behind  all  life. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

1886 

PORTRAITS  OF  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  AT  THE  AGE  OF  FIFTY. 
MISAPPREHENSIONS  OP  HIS  POSITION.  ESSAY  ON  BIOGRA- 
PHY. ELECTION  AS  ASSISTANT  BISHOP  OF  PENNSYL- 
VANIA. VISIT  TO  CALIFORNIA.  VIEWS  ON  IMMIGRATION. 
ABOLITION  OF  COMPULSORY  ATTENDANCE  ON  RELIGIOUS 
SERVICES  AT  HARVARD.  NORTH  ANDOVER.  CHAUTAUQUA 
ADDRESS  ON  LITERATURE  AND  LIFE.  DEATH  OF  RICH- 
ARDSON. FOURTH  VOLUME  OF  SERMONS.  PROTEST 
AGAINST  CHANGING  THE  NAME  OF  THE  PROTESTANT  EPIS- 
COPAL  CHURCH 

Phillips  Brooks  was  now  walking  the  high  table-land 
of  human  renown,  followed  by  the  devotion  and  love  of  the 
people,  to  an  extent  beyond  conventional  bounds  in  its 
manifestation.  There  was  mingled  with  the  popular  devo- 
tion a  sense  of  reverence  which,  in  spite  of  his  will,  and 
strive  as  he  might  against  it,  kept  him  somewhat  separate 
and  apart,  as  though  he  were  made  in  a  different  mould,  no 
longer  to  be  ranked  with  ordinary  men,  but  something  phe- 
nomenal in  human  experience.  It  needed  no  effort  to  gain 
him  a  hearing,  the  final  conquest  had  been  assured  in  a 
sway  which  all  men  acknowledged.  There  had  been  strange 
and  unacknowledged  misgivings  about  him  when  he  passed 
out  of  sight  for  a  year,  in  what  seemed  to  be  an  inexplicable 
silence.  Misgivings,  however,  had  faded  away  when  he 
returned  in  the  fulness  of  his  power,  with  his  charm  un- 
abated, resuming  again  the  preaching  of  the  same  old  and 
familiar  gospel,  yet  with  a  certain  indescribable  tenderness 
and  pathos  in  his  appeal  which  exceeded  anything  in  his 
previous  years.  The  ablest  and  the  most  learned  bore  this 
testimony,  as  the  unlearned  and  the  poor  felt  it  and  gave  it 


592  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

recognition  in  their  own  way.  One  of  the  most  eminent  of 
American  scholars  said  only  what  others  felt,  that  Phillips 
Brooks  seemed  to  have  the  leverage  for  moving  the  world. 
A  highly  cultivated  lady,  a  Unitarian  in  her  religious  faith, 
said  that  when  she  heard  him  for  the  first  time  she  could 
have  gone  down  on  her  knees  and  kissed  the  hem  of  his  gar- 
ment. The  popular  faith  expressed  itself  in  strange  un- 
wonted ways.  One  case  will  suffice  for  many.  There  were 
two  poor  women  in  Salem,  belonging  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  who  had  never  seen  or  heard  him,  and  one  of  them 
tells  the  other,  bemoaning  her  boy  falling  into  evil  ways, 
that  the  thing  to  do  is  to  take  him  to  Phillips  Brooks.  Peo- 
ple from  far  or  near,  in  critical  moments  when  the  issues  of 
life  were  in  the  balances,  thought  of  Phillips  Brooks.  It 
made  no  difference  whether  they  knew  him  or  not,  whether 
they  were  connected  with  the  church  in  any  of  its  forms  or 
not,  his  name  carried  with  it  some  magical  appeal;  they 
called  for  his  aid ;  and  it  must  be  said  he  never  disappointed 
them.  He,  too,  had  learned  his  lesson,  as  well  as  they.  He 
remarked  that  there  were  many  living  the  gospel  while  he  was 
only  preaching  it.  The  time  had  gone  by,  at  last,  when  he 
could  look  forward  to  the  future,  as  bringing  him  the  leisure 
for  study  of  which  he  had  dreamed.  If  he  had  once  cher- 
ished ambitions  in  that  direction,  he  had  renounced  them 
now,  or  seen  their  futility.  The  work  that  remained  was 
to  keep  on  till  the  end,  giving  himself  to  every  claim.  He 
did  not  understand  it,  or  try  to  do  so.  But  he  knew  that  he 
possessed  the  gift,  in  his  presence  and  in  his  word,  and  he 
gave  himself,  reckless  of  health  or  any  other  consideration. 
There  was  a  new  pleasure  in  this  spendthrift  exercise  of  his 
power,  as  though  he  had  at  last  learned  the  secret  of  true 
living.  He  was  drinking  more  deeply  of  the  joy  of  life,  be- 
cause, as  the  years  went  on,  he  was  convinced  that  it  had  its 
roots  not  in  the  mere  exuberance  of  animal  spirits  belonging 
to  youth,  but  was  grounded  in  God.  He  believed  in  conver- 
sion, not  as  the  work  of  a  moment,  or  at  any  moment  com- 
plete, but  rather  a  lifelong  process,  with  ever  recurring 
stages  of  deeper  consecration  to  the  divine  will.      To  the 


^T.  50]  POPULAR  ESTIMATE  593 

world  his  life  seemed  like  one  constant  succession  of  con- 
quests and  victories,  a  triumphal  procession  in  the  broad 
sunlight,  without  reverses  or  failures.  His  inner  life  he  still 
kept  to  himself,  but  there  were  epochs  and  crises  in  his  ex- 
perience of  which,  indeed,  he  makes  no  formal  record,  but 
in  his  preaching  he  discloses  them  impersonally,  to  those 
who  had  the  ears  to  hear.  His  sermons  are  his  autobio- 
graphy. 

The  flowing  years  did  not  diminish  the  beauty  of  the  coun- 
tenance, or  the  dignity  and  symmetry  of  form,  but  lent 
rather  a  higher  beauty,  wherein  might  be  read  the  traces  of 
some  deep  inward  moods  purifying  and  enriching  the  whole 
nature;  depths  ever  deeper,  of  a  soul  that  had  fathomed, 
if  it  were  possible,  the  mystery  of  human  existence.  So  he 
appeared.  The  "royal  carriage,"  the  "kingly  majesty,"  the 
"exquisite  beauty,"  the  "spirit  of  childhood,"  but  combined 
with  "the  virile  strength  of  manhood,"  —  these  were  the 
phrases  applied  to  him.  A  fineness  and  delicacy  unsurpassed 
in  women,  but  utter  freedom  from  any  remotest  approach 
to  sentimentality  ;  the  powerful  rugged  will  that,  when 
roused,  was  like  the  whirlwind ;  scorn  for  whatever  was  base 
or  unworthy  written  all  over  him ;  the  love  of  the  beautiful, 
which  entered  into  his  religion  and  his  life,  making  it  an 
end  to  do  always  whatever  should  seem  beautiful  to  all, 
showing  itself  also  in  little  things,  the  minutiae  of  life  and 
manner;  what  was  rarest  of  all,  perfect  simplicity  and  nat- 
uralness, with  total  absence  of  anything  like  affectation  or 
hint  of  self-consciousness,  as  though  he  never  gave  himself 
a  thought ;  and  utter  transparency,  until  the  nature  within 
was  revealed  in  the  voice  and  look;  the  mastery  of  human 
speech,  so  that  he  could  say  the  things  which  were  important 
and  vital  with  a  grace  and  clearness  and  force  that  was  as 
admirable  as  it  was  rare,  yet  the  result  of  long  and  severe 
practice  and  of  constant  study,  —  such  were  some  of  the 
characteristics  of  Phillips  Brooks  as  he  now  stood  forth  in 
the  years  which  remain  to  be  reviewed.  In  any  company, 
however  distinguished,  he  carried  the  highest  distinction  in 
appearance;  even  when  foreign  visitors  were  present,  whom 

VOL.  n 


594  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

all  were  anxious  to  see,  it  was  Phillips  Brooks  upon  whom 
the  interest  centred  and  the  gaze  was  concentrated.  In  his 
stature  he  stood  head  and  shoulders  above  ordinary  men,  but 
so  perfect  was  the  symmetry  of  his  proportions  that,  as  was 
said  of  him  by  a  lady  with  a  fine  discrimination,  which  the 
common  judgment  of  the  time  would  approve,  it  was  not  he 
that  looked  large,  but  other  men  that  looked  small.  He 
seemed  to  stand  for  the  type  of  the  normal  man. 

But  what  was  most  remarkable  was  that,  when  any  one 
came  near  to  the  man,  as  near  as  he  ever  allowed  any  one 
to  come,  there  was  found  in  him  the  heart  of  a  simple  boy 
playing  with  life  as  it  went  on  around  him,  as  any  boy 
at  his  games;  or,  better  still,  it  was  the  veritable  life  of  a 
child,  with  childhood's  delight,  interest,  and  curiosity,  free- 
dom from  care,  freshness  of  outlook,  perpetual  wonder,  and 
all  this  with  such  rare  manhood  at  his  call,  such  intense 
earnestness,  such  intellectual  power  and  insight,  such  know- 
ledge of  men  and  of  the  world,  as  to  make  the  transition 
from  the  one  phase  to  the  other  a  constant  marvel.  He  gave 
his  capacious,  loving  heart  full  scope  for  its  exercise,  yet 
concentrated  his  energies  upon  one  supreme  purpose,  going 
forth  to  meet  every  soul  with  the  same  boundless  affection 
and  earnest,  impassioned  longing  for  its  salvation.  Behind 
it  all  lay  his  theology,  —  every  sermon  revealed  him,  but  let 
the  reader  turn  to  a  sermon  entitled  "  The  Priority  of  God,'* 
which  will  give,  as  well  as  any,  the  secret  of  the  hiding-place 
of  his  power. 

These,  then,  were  the  things  that  were  true  of  him,  or  that 
the  people  were  saying  and  thinking  of  him,  in  the  years  to 
which  we  are  now  to  turn.  He  wrote  many  letters  at  this 
time,  a  large  part  of  them  letters  of  friendship,  for  his 
friends  were  grown  to  a  multitude,  and  he  had  a  genius  for 
friendship;  but  most  of  his  letters  are  too  personal  to  be 
given  in  full,  and  the  extracts  will  seem  but  tame.  It  is  by 
putting  the  letters  and  the  sermons  together  that  we  get  the 
approximate  conception  of  the  man. 

In  this  year,  1886,  he  sat  for  his  photograph,  in  order, 
apparently,  to  give  his  sanction  to   the   picture  which  he 


JET,  50]  PORTRAITS  595 

henceforth  would  be  willing  to  distribute  to  friends  who 
called  for  it.  He  was  averse  to  allowing  his  photographs  to 
be  exposed  for  sale,  giving  the  strictest  injunctions  to  pre- 
vent it ;  and  not  until  the  last  years  of  his  life  was  this  em- 
bargo removed,  with  his  consent.  These  photographs,  taken 
in  1886,  are  the  best,  and,  indeed,  almost  the  only  ones, 
which  fairly  represent  him.  As  one  studies  them,  he  sees 
the  distance  travelled  since  the  portrait  was  made  at  the  age 
of  twenty-two,  given  as  the  frontispiece  of  the  first  volume. 
The  mouth  has  now  grown  to  express  the  firmness  of  the  dis- 
ciplined will.  The  look  of  intensity  and  wonder,  with  which 
he  was  taking  in  the  world  of  the  divine  revelation,  still 
lingers  in  the  background,  but  there  is  added  the  effect  o£ 
the  experience  of  life,  and  of  the  many  years  of  strenuous 
endeavor  to  bring  the  world  to  his  own  standard.  There  is 
no  faintest  touch  of  disappointment  or  disillusion  with  life 
written  here,  and  yet  a  strangely  solemn  expression  in  con- 
trast with  the  merriment,  the  humor,  or  the  scorn,  in  the  pic- 
tures of  his  middle  years.  In  one  of  these  now  familiar  pho- 
tographs, the  head  is  thrown  back  as  in  the  consciousness  of 
his  power,  —  a  leonine  face  and  head,  with  a  masterful  au- 
thority stamped  thereon.  In  the  other,  which  has  become 
deservedly  the  popular  favorite,  the  head  slightly  droops,  and 
the  air  and  consciousness  of  power  has  yielded  to  a  deep  ten- 
derness in  the  large  dark  eyes.  There  is  simplicity  here  and 
total  humility,  as  of  a  man  possessed  with  the  sense  of  his 
own  unworthiness,  not  sad  but  yet  resigned,  the  far-seeing 
eyes  taking  in  the  tragedy  and  the  pathos  of  life,  but  looking 
beyond  into  the  eternal  mystery,  as  though  he  were  repeat- 
ing these  words  of  his  own,  "Let  us  be  clear-souled  enough  to 
look  through  and  behind  the  present  connection  of  life  and 
pain,  and  know  that  in  its  essence  life  is  not  pain,  but  joy;  " 
or  again :  "  It  is  the  half -seriousness  that  is  gloomy.  The  full 
seriousness,  the  life  lived  in  its  deepest  consciousness,  is  as 
full  of  joy  as  it  is  of  seriousness." 

It  was  about  the  time  when  these  photographs  were  taken 
that  he  spoke,  in  his  essay  on  Literature  and  Life,  of 
those  qualities   in   art   separating  a  true   portrait   from   a 


596  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1886 

photograph.  "A  portrait  has  a  value  of  its  own,  entirely 
independent  of  its  likeness  to  the  man  who  sat  for  it;  a 
photograph  has  none."  He  declined  requests  to  sit  for  his 
portrait.  To  his  friend,  Mr.  S.  H.  Kussell,  who  had  asked 
that  Mr.  Vinton  should  be  allowed  to  paint  his  portrait,  he 
sent  the  following  letter,  not  to  be  taken  too  literally,  and 
yet  indicating  what  was  more  than  a  passing  mood :  — 

175  Marlborough  Street,  Boston,  February  17,  1880. 

My  deab  Mr.  Russell,  —  I  thank  you  very  heartily  for  your 
kind  note.  It  is  very  pleasant  to  me  to  know  that  you  would 
care  to  have  my  picture  painted,  and  Mr.  Vinton  flatters  me  very 
much  by  wanting  to  paint  it. 

But,  my  dear  Mr.  Russell,  to  have  one's  portrait  painted  has 
always  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  very  great  and  solemn  thing,  to  be 
given  as  a  privilege  to  very  great  people  as  they  are  getting  to 
the  end  of  life.  I  have  almost  a  superstition  about  it.  The 
modern  promiscuousness  of  the  cheap  photograph  seems  to  me  to 
have  taken  the  sacredness  in  large  part  from  one  of  the  most 
sacred  things.  Let  us  preserve  the  venerableness  of  the  portrait. 
I  am  really  serious  about  this,  and  I  shall  not  think  for  twenty 
years  yet,  even  if  I  dare  to  think  it  then,  that  I  have  any  right 
to  be  painted.   .   .   . 

Yours  most  faithfully, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

There  is  one  portrait  of  Phillips  Brooks  painted  by  Mrs. 
Henry  Whitman,  wherein  has  been  preserved  a  certain  qual- 
ity of  expression  which  his  photographs  do  not  give.  Not 
only  does  it  present  the  strength  and  grace  of  his  stature, 
but  the  artist  has  caught  what  was,  after  all,  the  deepest,  the 
most  distinctive  quality  of  his  nature,  the  eternal  child-like- 
ness, —  something  of  that  expression  on  his  face,  in  those 
wonderful  afternoon  sermons  in  Trinity  Church,  which  all 
remember  and  cherish,  but  no  one  can  describe. 

The  love  of  humanity  for  its  own  sake,  the  gifts  of  imagi- 
nation and  sympathetic  insight,  these  qualities,  manifested 
in  his  preaching  from  the  first,  explain,  to  some  extent,  the 
impression  he  made  as  belonging  to  no  one  denomination 
or  branch  of  the  Christian  church,  but  rather  as  belonging 
alike  to  all.     A  Swedenborgian  lady  remarked  to  her  friend 


.  'Z^.  .ory 


^T.  50]         MISUNDERSTANDINGS  597 

as  she  came  away  from  listening  to  him  that  Dr.  Brooks 
was  a  Swedenborgian.  She  was  told  that  others  said  the 
same  thing  of  him,  that  Unitarians  claimed  him,  that  Metho- 
dists held  him  as  at  heart  one  of  their  own,  and  so  in  other 
churches.  That  was  all  as  it  might  be,  she  said,  but  she 
knew  ;  Swedenborgians  had  certain  unfailing  tests  of  know- 
ing, and  she  could  not  be  mistaken.  Indeed,  so  far  did  this 
conviction  carry  people,  that  they  would  sooner  have  believed 
that  Mr.  Brooks  was  mistaken,  or  did  not  understand  him- 
self, when  he  denied  their  claims,  than  that  they  could  pos- 
sibly be  mistaken  in  their  judgment  about  him. 

There  was  danger  in  this  situation,  and  trouble  impending 
for  Phillips  Brooks.  He  was  too  great  a  man  to  be  judged 
by  the  canons  of  sectarian  opinion.  There  was  fear  that  he 
might  be  entangled  in  a  complicated  network  of  misunder- 
standings. But  so  it  was  that  Phillips  Brooks  was  claimed 
by  all  alike,  and  listened  to  by  all,  without  regard  to  reli- 
gious, differences  and  divisions.  Methodists  and  Baptists, 
Presbyterians,  Congregationalists,  and  Unitarians,  Sweden- 
borgians, Free  Eeligionists,  Spiritualists,  Episcopalians, 
Low  Church  and  High,  Koman  Catholics,  Orthodox  Greeks, 
and  peoples  of  no  religion,  —  these  all  bore  the  same  testi- 
mony to  his  power  of  lifting  them  up  to  a  higher  plane  where 
what  they  believed  seemed  to  be  transfigured  in  a  diviner 
light.  He  spoke  to  all  alike,  as  though  it  had  been  his  spe- 
cial privilege  to  learn  their  own  peculiar  religious  dialect. 
To  Methodists  he  revived  the  sense  of  what  Wesley  must 
have  been  in  the  plenitude  of  his  power.  To  Baptists  he 
brought  home  anew  the  importance  of  the  conviction  for 
which  they  stood,  —  the  individual  as  the  final  resort  of  spir- 
itual authority.  To  Congregationalists  he  spoke  preemi- 
nently, as  though  he  still  remained  in  the  fold  of  his  ances- 
tors, and  had  known  no  alien  influence.  In  his  freedom  and 
his  appeal  to  humanity  he  met  the  Unitarian.  Free  Reli- 
gionists made  many  efforts  to  secure  him  as  a  speaker  at 
their  assemblies.  When  he  went  to  England  he  seemed  to 
reflect  the  best  type  of  Anglican  theology. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  there  were  those  who  were  puzzled 


598  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

rather  than  edified  by  such  an  attitude.  There  must  be 
something  wrong  when  a  man  could  not  be  classified  in  the 
categories  of  religious  opinions,  when  all  were  speaking  well 
of  him.  Among  those  who  sought  to  know  the  sources  of 
his  power  were  the  Unitarians.  Some  of  them  were  very 
confident  that  it  came  from  Channing,  from  Parker,  or  from 
Martineau.  Where  else  could  it  have  come  from?  But  then 
there  followed  other  questions:  How  could  Mr.  Brooks  be 
honest  and  yet  remain  in  the  Episcopal  Church?  Apologies 
were  made  for  him  on  the  ground  of  theological  inability,  of 
unconscious  change  of  opinion.  It  was  useless  to  tell  people 
who  did  not  study  religious  history,  or  who  kept  away 
from  the  history  of  the  Anglican  Church  as  by  the  grace  of 
God  preventing  them,  that  the  large  tolerance  and  freedom 
which  Phillips  Brooks  exemplified  had  their  congenial  home 
in  a  national  church,  whose  unwritten  constitution  included 
more  than  one  variety  of  religious  attitude.  It  was  assumed 
that  Mr.  Brooks  had  reacted  and  broken  away  from  the  nar- 
rowness and  severity  of  Puritan  theology;  and  how,  then, 
could  he  remain  in  a  church  whose  standards  it  was  also 
assumed  were  still  affirming  it.  If  two  interpretations  were 
put  upon  the  Thirty  -  Nine  Articles,  one  of  them  must  be 
false.  It  was  not  uncommon  to  hear  such  language  as  this 
concerning  Mr.  Brooks  or  others  of  a  similar  attitude:  "I 
have  no  question  as  to  his  honor,  his  sincerity,  his  devotion 
to  truth  as  he  sees  it,  to  the  church  as  he  believes  in  it,  and 
to  God  as  he  understands  his  duty  to  God.  But  I  think 
his  attitude  is  logically  indefensible.  Grant  his  premises, 
and  I  see  no  reasonable  way  for  stopping  where  he  stops." 
There  was  danger  of  misunderstanding  here,  for  in  Mr. 
Brooks's  own  communion  there  were  some  who  argued  that, 
if  there  were  smoke  there  must  be  some  fire,  that  the  Unita- 
rians would  not  claim  him  for  their  own  unless  he  had  given 
ground  for  the  claim.  The  Unitarians  were  thinking  of  the 
large  humanity  and  the  wide  tolerance,  and  on  the  other  side 
people  were  thinking  of  truths  which  Unitarianism  denied, 
—  the  doctrines  of  the  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation. 

Phillips  Brooks  saw  clearly  the  difficulties  in  which  he 


MT.  50]        ESSAY   ON   BIOGRAPHY  599 

was  involved  by  this  recognition  and  claim  on  the  part  of 
others,  as  well  as  by  his  own  recognition  of  the  various  reli- 
gious bodies  as  having  their  place  and  function  in  the  univer- 
sal church.  But  he  was  not  the  man  to  flinch  from  danger. 
He  did  what  he  could  to  make  his  position  clear,  as  in  his 
lectures  on  Tolerance,  where  he  was  justifying  his  own  atti- 
tude when  he  maintained  that  true  tolerance,  and  affiliation 
even  with  others  of  opposed  beliefs,  does  not  spring  from 
indifference  to  the  truth,  but  is  grounded  on  a  deeper  persua- 
sion of  the  truth. 

In  March  Mr.  Brooks  went  to  Phillips  Academy  at  Exe- 
ter, to  deliver  an  address  on  Biography,  afterwards  pub- 
lished in  pamphlet  form  "at  the  request  of  many  teachers." 
The  address  shows  how  Phillips  Brooks  had  cultivated  in 
himself  that  original  gift,  with  which  he  was  by  nature  en- 
dowed, the  interest  in  human  life  and  the  ability  to  interpret 
its  meaning.  "  Life  "  was  a  word  running  through  all  his 
sermons  and  reappears  in  many  of  their  titles,  —  the  "  Sym- 
metry of  Life,"  the  "Withheld  Completions  of  Life,"  the 
"Battle  of  Life,"  the  "Shortness  of  Life,"  the  "Seriousness 
of  Life,"  the  " Positiveness  of  the  Divine  Life,"  the  "Lib- 
erty of  the  Christian  Life,"  the  "Eternal  Life,"  "New  Starts 
in  Life,"  the  "Sacredness  of  Life,"  "Whole  Views  of  Life," 
the  "Law  of  the  Spirit  of  Life."  This  ever  recurring  word 
is  expressive  of  the  man.  For  every  one  has  his  word  by 
which  we  know  him.  He  had  other  words,  "rich,"  "large," 
"full,"  but  these  were  the  epithets  of  that  commanding  word 
"  life." 

In  the  essay  on  Biography,  he  appears  simply  as  the  stu- 
dent of  life,  dropping  for  the  moment  theories  of  its  purpose 
or  conduct.  He  appears  as  an  omnivorous  reader  of  bio- 
graphies, so  that  when  he  came  to  speak  it  was  from  the  over- 
flowing fulness  of  his  knowledge  combined  with  a  critical 
capacity  for  estimating  the  art  of  biography. 

I  think  that  I  would  rather  have  written  a  great  biography 
than  a  great  book  of  any  other  sort,  as  I  would  rather  have 
painted  a  great  portrait  than  any  other  kind  of  picture. 

The  writing  of  a  biography,  or  indeed  the  proper  reading  of 


6oo  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

it,  requires  one  faculty  which  is  not  very  common,  and  which  does 
not  come  into  action  without  some  experience,  —  the  power  of  a 
large  vital  imagination,  the  power  of  conceiving  life  as  a  whole. 

There  are  many  things  said  in  this  essay  which  are  redo- 
lent of  his  distinctive  power. 

The  New  Testament  is  a  biography.  Make  it  a  mere  book  of 
dogmas,  and  its  vitality  is  gone.  Make  it  a  book  of  laws,  and 
it  grows  hard  and  untimely.  Make  it  a  biography,  and  it  is  a 
true  book  of  life.  Make  it  the  history  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
and  the  world  holds  it  in  its  heart  forever. 

I  believe  fully  that  the  intrinsic  life  of  any  human  being  is  so 
interesting  that  if  it  can  be  simply  and  sympathetically  put  in 
words,  it  will  be  legitimately  interesting  to  other  men.  There  is 
not  one  of  us  living  to-day  so  simple  and  monotonous  a  life  that, 
if  he  be  true  and  natural,  his  life  faithfully  written  would  not  be 
worthy  of  men's  eyes  and  hold  men's  hearts.  Not  one  of  us, 
therefore,  who,  if  he  be  true  and  pure  and  natural,  may  not, 
though  his  life  never  should  be  written,  be  interesting  and  stimu- 
lating to  his  fellow  men  in  some  small  circle  as  they  touch  his  life. 

Yet  he  condemns  the  exaggeration  of  Mr.  Ruskin  in  his 
saying  that  "the  lives  in  which  the  public  are  interested  are 
hardly  ever  worth  writing."  Notable  and  exceptional  lives 
are  entitled  to  biography,  and  "  distinction  is  a  legitimate 
object  of  our  interest."     He  defines  distinction  as 

the  emphasis  put  upon  qualities  by  circumstances.  He  who  listens 
to  the  long  music  of  human  history,  hears  the  special  stress  with 
which  some  great  human  note  was  uttered  long  ago,  ringing  down 
the  ages  and  mingling  with  and  enriching  the  later  music  of 
modern  days.  It  is  a  perfectly  legitimate  curiosity  with  which 
men  ask  about  that  resonant,  far-reaching  life.  They  are  probably 
asking  with  a  deeper  impulse  than  they  know.  They  are  dimly 
aware  that  in  that  famous,  interesting  man  their  own  humanity  — 
which  it  is  endlessly  pathetic  to  see  how  men  are  always  trying 
and  always  failing  to  understand  —  is  felt  pulsating  at  one  of  its 
most  sensitive  and  vital  points. 

--._/   In  the  classification  of  biographies,  he  gives  the  highest 
place  to  Boswell's  Johnson  and  Lockhart's  Scott:  — 

Johnson  and  Scott,  —  so  human  in  their  strength  and  in  their 
weakness,  in  their  virtues  and  in  their  faults :  one  like  a  day  of 
clouds  and  storms,  the  other  like  a  day  of  sunshine  and  bright 


^T.  50]       ESSAY   ON   BIOGRAPHY  601 

breezes,  yet  both  like  Nature,  both  real  in  times  of  unreality, 
both  going  bravely  and  Christianly  into  that  darkness  and  tragi- 
calness  which  settled  at  last  on  both  their  lives. 

The  biographies  of  these  men,  fortunate  in  their  biogi-a- 
phers,  are  to  be  read  and  reread  by  all  who  want  to  keep 
their  manhood  healthy,  broad,  and  brave,  and  true. 

Set  these  two  great  books  first,  then,  easily  first,  among  Eng- 
lish biographies.  The  streets  of  London  and  the  streets  of  Edin- 
burgh live  to-day  with  the  images  of  these  two  men  more  than 
any  others  of  the  millions  who  have  walked  in  them.  But  in  a 
broader  way  the  streets  of  human  nature  still  live  with  their 
presence.  The  unfading  interest  in  Dr.  Johnson  is  one  of  the 
good  signs  of  English  character.  Men  do  not  read  his  books, 
but  they  never  cease  to  care  about  him.  It  shows  what  hold  the 
best  and  broadest  human  qualities  always  keep  on  the  heart  of 
man. 

The  interest  of  Phillips  Brooks  in  biography  as  one  of  the 
fine  arts  must  have  been  nourished  by  that  dream  of  his  own 
to  write  the  life  of  Cromwell,  not  abandoned  until  the  years 
came  which  had  no  leisure  in  them.  In  his  remarks  on 
Cromwell  he  tells  us,  it  may  be,  how  he  would  have  done  it :  — 

You  must  get  deep  into  him.  You  must  see  how  he  led  and 
was  led;  how  he  made  his  times  and  was  made  by  them.  .  .  . 
It  does  not  mean  that  you  are  to  make  him  slavishly  your  hero, 
and  think  everything  he  did  was  right ;  but  get  the  man,  —  his 
hates,  his  loves,  his  dreams,  his  blundering  hopes,  his  noble,  hot, 
half-forged  purposes,  his  faith,  his  doubts,  —  get  all  of  these  in 
one  vehement  person  clear  before  your  soul. 

There  is  another  observation  here  which  is  full  of  insight 
into  the  lives  of  men,  to  the  effect  that  there  are  some  very 
great  men  who  are  unsuited  for  biography ;  and  among  them 
are  Shakespeare,  Shelley,  and  Wordsworth.  The  lives  of 
these  men  are  in  their  poetry.  The  more  profound  and 
spiritual  the  poet,  the  more  impossible  a  biography  of  him 
becomes. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  lecture  he  turns  to  the  men  who 
write  biographies.  There  are  lives  of  men  written  by  them- 
selves, autobiographies,  in  which  English  literature  is  pecul- 
iarly rich;  lives  of  men  which  are  "  written  by  their  friends, 


6oi  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1886 

whose  atmosphere  must  vary  widely  from  those  biographies 
which  are  written  by  men  who  never  knew  or  saw  their  sub- 
ject, but  have  felt  his  power  and  wish  to  make  it  known  to 
the  world." 

And  finally  instructions  are  given  as  to  how  to  read  bio- 
graphies. The  rule  should  be  to  divest  one's  self  of  the  liter- 
ary sense  as  far  as  possible,  and  read  only  to  get  the  man. 
"Then  you  may  close  and  lose  and  forget  the  book.  The 
man  is  yours  forever."  You  may  begin  to  read  the  biogra- 
phy in  the  middle,  and  when  you  have  become  interested  in 
the  man,  then  you  will  care  to  know 

how  he  came  to  be  what  you  jfind  him,  —  what  his  training 
was;  what  his  youth  was;  who  his  parents  were;  perhaps  who 
his  ancestors  were,  and  who  was  the  first  man  of  his  name  who 
came  over  to  America,  and  where  that  progenitor's  other  de- 
scendants have  settled. 

In  the  spring  of  1886  Dr.  Brooks  was  elected  to  be  As- 
sistant Bishop  of  Pennsylvania,  in  succession  to  Rt.  Rev. 
William  Bacon  Stevens,  whose  increasing  infirmities  called 
for  aid  in  his  episcopal  duties.  The  possibility  of  this  elec- 
tion had  already  been  suggested  to  him,  and,  as  we  have 
seen,  he  had  not  encouraged  the  suggestion.  When  the 
question  was  again  brought  before  him  he  wrote  to  Rev. 
W.  F.  Paddock,  of  Philadelphia:  — 

February  26,  1886. 
My  dear  Paddock,  —  The  idea  of  your  writing  to  me  like 
that!  You,  that  have  known  me  from  my  infancy,  that  have 
played  with  me  on  the  pleasant  slopes  of  Shooter's  Hill,  that 
have  roomed  with  me  in  St.  George's,  that  have  preached  side 
by  side  with  me  in  Philadelphia!  That  you  should  think  that 
now,  in  my  declining  years,  I  would  be  a  Bishop !  No,  my  dear 
fellow,  I  was  not  made  for  such  a  fate.  Stop,  I  beseech  you, 
any  movement  that  looks  at  all  towards  setting  me  up  for  that 
most  unsuitable  place.  Kill  it  in  the  nest !  Nip  it  in  the  bud  I 
Blight  it  or  ere  it  be  sprung  up!  Yet  let  me  not  appear  like 
a  fool,  declining  and  rejecting  an  office  which  I  never  have  had 
offered  me!  This  letter  is  for  your  own  friendly  eye  alone,  and 
I  tell  you  as  if  we  sat  upon  the  steps  of  St.  George's  and  talked 
it  over,  that  I  am  neither  suited  nor  inclined  to  be  a  Bishop,  nor 
do  I  see  how  anything  could  make  me  be  one.     There ! 


^T.  50]  ELECTED  ASSISTANT   BISHOP     603' 

This  letter  would  seem  to  have  been  sufficiently  positive 
in  its  expression  of  unwillingness  to  accept  the  episcopate, 
either  in  Pennsylvania  or  elsewhere,  to  have  decided  the 
matter.  So  Dr.  Paddock  interpreted  it.  But  where  the 
episcopate  is  concerned  no  avowals  of  unwillingness  seem  to 
avail.  The  nolo  episcopari,  however  vehemently  uttered,  is 
interpreted  in  the  ecclesiastical  usage  as  the  language  of 
a  becoming  modesty.  In  the  long  history  of  the  episcopate 
it  has  been  taken  for  granted  that  it  would  precede  the  final 
acceptance.  There  are  well-known  instances  in  the  ancient 
church  where  the  office  was  at  last  forced  upon  unwilling 
men.  That  Dr.  Brooks  or  his  supporters  should  have  taken 
refuge  in  these  ecclesiastical  conventionalities  was  too  im- 
probable for  belief.  But  he  had  friends  in  Philadelphia  who 
would  not  take  no  for  an  answer.  As  the  time  for  the  elec- 
tion approached,  the  feeling  was  universal  among  his  friends 
that  he  must  be  the  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania.  Among  all  the 
candidates  he  was  the  one  most  earnestly,  even  passionately 
wanted.  Dr.  Brooks  himself  took  a  personal  interest  in  the 
subject  because  he  was  anxious  that  his  friend,  Dr.  Mc- 
Vickar,  of  Holy  Trinity  Church,  should  be  elected.  Against 
Dr.  McVickar,  however,  this  objection  had  been  urged,  that 
on  a  certain  occasion  he  had  gone  to  hear  the  Rev.  James 
Freeman  Clarke,  an  eminent  Unitarian  minister  of  Boston, 
and  had  even  occupied  a  place  of  prominence  upon  the  plat- 
form. Although  it  turned  out  that  this  prominent  place  had 
rather  been  forced  upon  him,  yet  the  fact  remained  that  he 
was  there,  and  it  was  regarded  by  some  as  a  damaging  inci- 
dent, unfitting  him  for  the  episcopal  office.  To  this  incident 
Dr.  Brooks  alludes  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Cooper :  — 

233  Clarendok  Street,  Boston, 
Good  Friday  evening,  April  23,  1886. 

Mt  dear  Cooper,  —  More  than  two  months  ago,  it  was  on 
the  5th  of  February,  you  wrote  me  a  beautiful  letter,  which  I 
have  been  meaning  to  answer  ever  since.  For  a  while  I  thought 
it  not  entirely  impossible  that  I  might  get  on  to  see  you  after 
Easter.  I  should  certainly  have  done  so  if  I  had  not  worked  up 
this  plan  of  going  out  to  California.  On  Thursday  after  Easter 
I  shall  start,  and  be  gone  until  almost  the  first  of  July.     How 


6o4  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

I  wish  you  were  going.  I  do  not  expect  to  enjoy  it  half  as  much 
as  a  trip  to  Europe,  but  I  think  that  one  ought  to  get  sight  of 
,  the  Pacific  some  time,  and  to  have  crossed  the  continent  before 
he  dies ;  so  I  am  going. 

And  at  last  Bishop  Stevens  has  yielded  and  wants  an  assistant. 
Do  you  remember  the  night  when  he  was  chosen  Assistant  Bishop 
more  than  twenty  years  ago? 

I  hope  that  McVickar  is  your  man.  I  have  heard  some  fool- 
ish talk  about  his  hearing  of  Dr.  James  Freeman  Clarke  stand- 
ing in  his  way.  Surely  that  is  not  so !  It  would  be  too  absurdly 
narrow.  A  paper  to-day  says  that  my  name  is  mentioned. 
Surely,  if  that  stupid  cause  interferes  with  McVickar,  it  ought 
to  interfere  with  me,  for  I  honor  and  admire  Freeman  Clarke, 
and  should  go  to  hear  him  whenever  I  could,  bishop  or  no 
bishop ! 

But,  Cooper,  if  my  name  is  really  mentioned  for  the  assistant 
bishopric,  in  caucus  or  convention,  I  authorize  you  and  charge 
you  to  withdraw  it  absolutely  by  authority  from  me.  Under  no 
circumstances  could  I  accept  the  place.  This  is  absolute,  and  I 
rely  on  you.  I  shall  be  off  somewhere  in  New  Mexico  when 
your  election  takes  place  and  shall  know  nothing  about  it ;  so  I 
rely  on  you.  I  have  written  this  to  nobody  else,  and  I  rely  en- 
tirely on  you. 

To  this  letter  Mr.  Cooper  replied,  declining  to  abide  by 
his  decision.  He  took  the  liberty  of  an  old  friend,  who,  in 
an  emergency,  demands  compliance  with  his  wishes,  and 
stated  the  only  condition  on  which  he  would  allow  him  to 
say  that  he  would  not  accept :  — 

Unless  you  have  made  up  your  mind  never  to  accept  the  office 
of  Bishop,  you  must  recede  from  your  decision.  If  you  have 
fully  decided  that  you  never  will  accept  any  diocese,  why  then 
you  must  reiterate  your  orders. 

Dr.   Brooks  responded  at  once  to  this  statement  of  the 

case : — 

CmcAGO,  May  2,  1886. 
Dear  Cooper,  —  In  the  hurry  of  getting  ready  to  leave  Bos- 
ton the  other  day  I  sent  you  a  telegram,  which  now  I  must  sup- 
plement by  a  bit  of  a  letter.  I  do  not  want  you  to  think  that 
I  have  been  careless  about  anything  which  you  have  written.  I 
have  studied  and  felt  the  force  of  it  all.  But  it  all  comes  to 
this,  that  perhaps  McVickar  may  fail  of  an  election.  We  all  ear- 
nestly hope  that  he  will  not,   for  he  is  the  very  man  for  the 


^T.  50]    ELECTED  ASSISTANT   BISHOP    605 

place.  He  suits  it  and  deserves  it.  And  the  reason  for  the 
opposition  to  him  is  something  totally  beneath  contempt.  But 
I  cannot  feel  that  I  am  so  responsible  for  any  other  election  as 
to  be  bound,  in  order  to  prevent  it,  to  accept  an  office  for  which 
I  have  neither  taste  nor  fitness,  and  to  spend  the  rest  of  my  days 
in  the  Episcopate.  And  I  would  never  consent  to  be  elected 
without  letting  those  who  voted  for  me  clearly  know  that  I  would 
do  what  McVickar  did  whenever  I  got  the  chance,  and  that  I 
despise  them  with  all  my  heart  for  transferring  their  votes  from 
him  to  me  on  that  account.  Tell  them  that,  and  then  see 
whether  they  will  vote  for  me. 

No,  my  dear  Cooper,  it  would  be  a  delight  to  live  in  the  same 
town  with  you  again,  and  be  once  more  together  as  we  were  when 
we  were  boys,  but  I  could  not  be  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania  even  for 
that.  So  you  must  withdraw  my  name  absolutely  if  it  is  offered, 
for  under  no  circumstances  could  I  accept  the  office.  Once  more, 
I  rely  on  you  !     All  blessings  on  you  always. 

Affectionately,  P.  B. 

Mr.  Lemuel  Coffin,  whose  friendship  with  Dr.  Brooks 
went  back  to  the  early  years  in  Philadelphia,  wrote  him 
most  earnestly,  begging  that  he  would  accept  the  office  to 
which  he  felt  sure  that  he  could  be  elected;  and  again  Dr. 
Brooks  sends  a  characteristic  letter :  — 

CmcAGO,  Illinois,  May  2,  1886. 
Dear  Mr.  Coffin,  —  There  was  only  time  for  a  bit  of  a  tele- 
gram from  Boston  in  answer  to  your  kind  letter.  Now  let  me 
acknowledge  it  more  fully,  and  say  how  good  I  think  you  are  to 
want  me  to  be  your  bishop  after  all  you  have  seen  of  me  for  this 
last  quarter  of  a  century.  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  think  it 
best,  partly  because  I  do  not  think  I  would  make  a  good  bishop, 
and  partly  because  I  am  so  disgusted  that  McVickar  should  be 
so  contemptibly  thrown  over  for  such  an  absurd  reason.  Why, 
my  dear  Mr.  Coffin,  I  would  go  and  hear  Freeman  Clarke  every 
week  if  I  had  a  chance.  If  even  you,  who  represent  McVickar 's 
friends,  call  that  an  "  indiscreet  act, "  why,  I  think  the  diocese 

deserves   a   Mr.    X or   worse!     A   man   may  go  and   hear 

mummeries  at  St.  Clement's,  or  twaddle  at  a  hundred  churches, 
but  if  he  goes  to  hear  a  great  man  and  an  old  saint  talk  Essen- 
tial Christianity  under  another  name,  he  is  said  to  have  denied 
Christ,  and  a  thousand  other  foolish  things.  No.  Gather  around 
McVickar.  Do  not  feebly  apologize  for  him,  but  defend  and 
approve  him,  and  declare  your  manly  contempt  for  this  kind  of 


6o6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

opposition  to  him;  and  if  he  is  defeated  upon  this  ground,  let 
him   fall   honorably   in   the  midst   of   his   friends,    and   let   Mr. 

X have  the  diocese.      I  do  not  know  why  anybody  should 

want  it  if  that  is  the  stuff  it  is  made  of. 

I  am  sorry,  very  sorry,  you  are  sick.  Do  get  well;  then, 
however  the  election  goes,  there  is  something  to  be  thankful  for. 
My  best  love  to  Mrs.  Coflan. 

Ever  faithfully  yours,  P.  B. 

Positive  as  was  the  tone  of  these  letters,  it  still  seemed  to 
the  friends  of  Dr.  Brooks  that  they  could  read  between  the 
lines  the  possibility,  even  the  probability,  of  his  accepting 
the  office  if  it  should  be  once  offered  to  him.  When  the 
convention  met  in  Philadelphia,  on  the  5th  of  May,  it  was 
well  enough  known  what  the  tenor  of  Dr.  Brooks's  letters 
had  been.  But  despite  the  discouragement  they  had  re- 
ceived, his  friends  determined  to  nominate  and  elect  him. 
He  had  not  said  in  so  many  words  that  he  would  decline  if 
he  were  elected,  and  that  constituted  a  ground  of  hope.  A 
peculiarity  of  Phillips  Brooks  was  recalled,  with  which  they 
were  all  familiar,  —  how  he  was  wont  to  recede,  under  pres- 
sure, from  a  position  which  he  had  taken.  Those  who  were 
unfavorable  to  his  election  conveyed  the  information  to  the 
convention  that  he  was  unwilling  that  his  name  should  be 
presented,  and  that  it  was  useless  to  vote  for  him.  It  is 
possible  that  this  prevented  some  from  voting  for  him  who 
otherwise  would  have  done  so.  In  a  crowded  house,  amid 
intense  excitement,  the  balloting  went  on,  and  after  eight 
ballots  had  been  taken  without  result,  on  the  ninth  ballot 
Dr.  Brooks  was  elected,  receiving  eighty-two  clerical  votes, 
—  a  majority  of  two  over  the  total  number  of  votes  cast,  and 
a  plurality  of  sixteen  over  the  vote  for  the  rival  candidate. 
The  clerical  vote  was  at  once  ratified  by  that  of  the  laity, 
the  lay  vote  standing  sixty-four  to  thii*ty-three. 

While  the  convention  was  in  session  Dr.  Brooks  was 
absent  from  home,  and  the  news  of  his  election  reached  him 
by  telegraph  in  the  West,  in  the  distant  territory  of  New 
Mexico.  Despite  his  previous  utterances,  and  although  his 
decision  was  a  foregone  conclusion,  he  yet  acted  honorably 


MT.  50]   ELECTED  ASSISTANT   BISHOP     607 

by  the  convention  and  by  his  friends,  reserving  his  final 
answer  until  he  should  have  taken  two  weeks  for  considera- 
tion. There  was  no  lack  of  pressure  brought  upon  him  to 
induce  him  to  accept.  Bishop  Stevens  expressed  to  him  the 
pleasure  and  satisfaction  he  felt  at  the  choice  of  the  conven- 
tion, his  earnest  desire  that  he  should  accept,  his  conviction 
that  they  would  work  in  harmony.  He  was  also  assured  by 
his  friends  that  they  had  not  been  unmindful  of  his  wishes  :  — 

I  am  sure  your  best  friends  made  every  effort  —  at  your  re- 
quest, and  not  from  their  inclination  —  to  convince  the  brethren 
of  your  unwillingness  to  fill  this  office.  But  when,  in  spite  of 
all  this,  the  meeting  to  select  a  candidate  overwhelmingly  went  for 
you,  I  for  one  said  I  cannot  stand  and  resist  what  may  be  the 
will  of  God,  and  accordingly  did  what  I  could  for  your  election. 

I  am  emboldened  [writes  another  clergyman]  by  what  I  be- 
lieve is  a  fact  which  has  several  times  appeared  in  your  life,  and 
which  convinces  me  that  you  possess  the  rare  power  of  revising 
and  changing  your  purposes,  even  when  most  deliberately  and 
conscientiously  formed,  provided  sufficient  reason  to  do  so  is 
made  evident  to  you.  You  shrank  back  from  the  first  work  you 
were  called  to  in  Philadelphia,  —  in  the  Church  of  the  Advent. 
You  shrank  back  still  more  from  the  call  to  Holy  Trinity,  and 
again  God  mercifully  led  you  to  reconsider  your  refusal.  When 
you  went  to  Boston,  it  was  only  after  you  had  said  No,  and  had 
thought  it  your  duty  not  to  go. 

While  the  question  was  pending,  it  was  intimated  that 
considerations  of  health  might  influence  the  decision.  "It 
is  known,"  said  the  correspondent  of  a  Philadelphia  paper, 
"that  the  celebrated  New  England  clergyman  is  not  in  the 
best  of  health,  and  that  he  is  now  travelling  in  the  West  for 
recuperation."  But  if  this  fear  were  an  inference  from  the 
circumstance  that  he  was  travelling,  it  had  no  foundation, 
A  clergyman,  however,  writes  to  him,  who  has  been  alarmed 
at  something  he  has  heard :  — 

In  talking  with  Mr.  ,  I  was  surprised  to  learn  that  you 

ever  felt  the  burden  of  preparation  for  the  pulpit.  From  the 
first  sermon  I  heard  from  you  in  Dr.  Vinton's  pulpit  in  1860 
(and  it  was  the  first  he  heard),  I  have  been  always  impressed 
with  the  fact  that  you  were  only  pouring  forth  from  the  abun- 


6o8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

dance  and  richness  of  your  own  mind,  and  that  writing  and 
speaking  with  you  must  be  only  a  delight.  Surely,  on  the  whole, 
it  must  be  so.  You  certainly  write  with  an  ease  that  comes  to 
very  few,  and  I  believe  that  with  ripening  age  and  deepening 
experience  you  will  do  your  work  full  as  easily  and  from  a  fuller 
reservoir.  I  remember  going  home  with  Dr.  Tyng  one  Sunday 
and  his  astonishing  me  by  talking  in  the  most  depressed  way 
about  his  work,  and  his  inability  to  meet  the  demand  upon  him, 
and  how  he  longed  to  escape  from  it  at  times.  So  I  suppose  this 
is  an  experience  from  which  none  are  exempt. 

But  certainly  God  has  given  you  uncommon  gifts  and  a  very 
wide  usefulness,  which,  I  trust,  is  by  no  means  at  its  height.  I 
used  to  know  Dr.  Bushnell,  in  days  gone  by,  but  there  came  a 
time  when  there  was  a  vastly  added  power,  a  going  down  into 
deeper  depths  and  a  going  up  unto  higher  heights,  and  a  bringing 
forth  richer  spiritual  meanings,  and  so  may  it  be  with  you. 

These  letters  of  Mr.  Brooks  which  follow  show  that,  while 
he  was  touched  by  the  action  of  his  friends  in  their  in- 
sistence that  he  should  become  the  Bishop  of  Pennsylvania, 
and  was  determined  to  consider  the  question  fairly,  yet  his 
predominant  mood  before  the  election  took  place  had  not 
changed.     To  McVickar  he  writes :  — 

Santa  Fe,  New  Mexico,  May  9,  1886. 

Dear  William,  —  This  note  which  I  enclose  is  formal  enough, 
I  hope.  Now  for  a  more  familiar  talk.  How  is  it  that  you  have 
allowed  this  thing  to  come  about?  Surely  my  declaration  to 
Cooper  was  plain  and  positive  enough.  To  that  I  hold,  and 
when  your  letter  comes  I  shall  decline.  My  dear,  dear  Boy,  I 
would  do  otherwise  and  be  your  bishop  if  I  could,  but  I  cannot. 
You  will  not  think  on  such  a  question  as  this  that  I  have  been,  or 
am,  light  or  frivolous  or  prejudiced.  I  have  considered  it  ear- 
nestly and  solemnly.  I  did  not  think  that  there  was  any  chance 
of  my  being  elected,  but  I  considered  it  exactly  as  if  I  thought 
there  was,  and  conscience,  soul,  and  judgment  all  said  no  !  I 
see  no  reason  whatsoever  for  a  change.  I  am  sorry  to  compel  an- 
other convention  and  election,  but  I  cannot  let  myself  take  a 
place  which  is  not  mine  simply  to  save  that  trouble.  Besides,  in 
some  sense,  it  is  the  Convention's  fault,  for  I  said,  clearly  as  I 
knew  how,  that  I  could  not  accept. 

You  will  not  think  I  am  ungrateful  to  you  all.  I  love  you 
dearly.  That  my  old  friends  should  have  proposed  me  and 
elected  me  touches  me  more  deeply  than  I  can  say,  nor  am  I 


^T.  50]   ELECTED  ASSISTANT   BISHOP     609 

careless  of  the  pleasure  it  would  be  to  come  and  live  in  the  old 
places  with  the  old  friends  and  new.  Nor  am  I  foolishly  con- 
temptuous of  the  Episcopate.  But  simply  /  must  not.  I  am 
not  made  for  it.  I  can  do  better  work  elsewhere  than  /  could 
do  as  Bishop.  So  my  decision  is  absolute  and  final,  and  when 
your  Committee's  formal  letter  comes,  I  shall  write  and  say  that 
you  must  choose  again.  I  am  so  heartily  sorry  that  my  telegram 
to  Cooper  did  not  come  before  the  Convention  had  adjourned. 
Then  you  could  have  made  your  other  choice  at  once.  Who 
will  he  be  ?  I  have  heard,  of  course,  nothing  of  the  course  which 
the  Convention  took,  but,  oh,  that  it  could  be  you! 
I  am  just  as  much  as  before  these  things  occurred, 

Your  affectionate  friend  and  brother,  P.  B. 

This  was  the  formal  letter  of  declination  addressed  to  the 

committee   of   gentlemen   appointed   to   convey  to  him  the 

notice  of  his  election :  — 

San  Francisco,  May  22,  1886. 

Mt  dear  Friends,  —  I  have  received  your  letter  which  gives 
me  formal  notice  of  my  election  to  be  the  Assistant  Bishop  of 
the  Diocese  of  Pennsylvania.  I  thank  you  most  sincerely  for 
the  kind  and  courteous  words  in  which  you  have  given  me  your 
message. 

The  question  which  has  been  so  unexpectedly  presented  to  me 
has  received,  I  need  not  say,  the  most  earnest  and  conscientious 
consideration  which  it  is  in  my  power  to  give ;  and  I  have  not 
lightly  concluded  that  I  must  not  accept  the  high  and  interesting 
office  to  which  I  have  been  called. 

I  have  been  deeply  touched  by  the  kind  regard  of  my  brethren 
of  the  Clergy  and  Laity  who  have  elected  me.  I  have  felt  anew 
the  warm  and  grateful  interest  which  I  have  never  lost  in  a  city 
and  a  Diocese  where  many  of  the  happiest  days  of  my  ministry 
were  passed.  I  have  recognized  the  great  and  useful  work  which 
a  Bishop  of  our  Church  in  Pennsylvania  may  do  for  God  and 
man,  for  Christ  and  the  Church.  I  think  I  have  not  been  deaf 
to  any  of  the  persuasions  which  plead  for  the  acceptance  of  the 
work  to  which  you  call  me.  And  yet  I  must  ask  you  to  report 
to  the  Convention  that  I  cannot  accept  the  invitation  to  become 
the  Assistant  Bishop  of  your  Diocese.  My  present  work,  in 
which  I  have  been  long  engaged,  and  to  which  I  am  profoundly 
attached,  still,  I  believe,  welcomes  and  demands  my  care.  I 
must  not  leave  it,  not  even  for  such  a  useful  and  important  task 
as  I  should  find  in  the  service  to  which  I  am  invited.  I  know 
how  happy  that  service  would  be  made  by  the  sympathy  and  coop- 

voL.  n 


6io  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

eration  of  the  Clergy  and  Laity,  on  which  the  Bishops  of  Penn- 
sylvania may  always  count. 

There  enters  into  my  decision  that  I  must  not  come  to  you  no 
small  element  of  regret,  but  I  have  no  hesitation  or  doubt  with 
regard  to  the  result  to  which  I  have  been  led. 

It  will  always  be  a  deep  source  of  satisfaction  to  me  to  think 
of  the  honor  and  confidence  with  which  my  brethren  in  Pennsyl- 
vania have  regarded  me.  Now  and  always  I  shall  rejoice  like 
one  of  you  in  every  token  of  God's  guidance  and  goodness  to  His 
Church  among  you,  whose  loving  faithfulness  in  His  work  I  know 
80  well  and  honor  so  profoundly. 

I  am,  my  dear  friends,  with  sincere  affection  and  respect, 

Your  friend  and  brother,  Phillips  Brooks. 

To  Rev.  W.  N.  McVickar  he  writes  on  the  same  subject 
in  more  informal  fashion :  — 

San  Fbancisco,  May  24,  1886. 

You  are  very  good  and  kind,  the  same  true  friend  you  have 
been  now  for  so  many  years,  and  I  dare  say  you  are  wise,  too, 
and  that  your  arguments  are  good  and  sound.  I  think  they  are, 
or  at  least  would  be  for  any  one  but  me.  But  while  I  feel 
them  all,  the  balance  is  decidedly  upon  the  other  side,  and  so  I 
have  declined.  I  sent  the  letters  yesterday.  I  told  them  all 
beforehand  how  it  must  be  so,  and  said  that  if  they  chose  me  I 
could  not  accept,  —  and  yet  they  chose  me.  I  do  not  complain 
of  that,  I  should  be  a  beast  if  I  did.  They  were  very  good,  and 
I  am  proud  of  their  regard.  But  this  choice  does  not  bring  any- 
thing to  change  my  previous  judgment.  It  was  by  a  bare  major- 
ity, and  after  considerable  struggle.  It  simply  presents  the 
chance  to  be  bishop  which  I  had  considered  in  its  possibility 
before,  and  yet  I  have  carefully  considered  it  again.  Along  the 
arid  plains  of  Arizona  I  turned  it  over  in  the  thing  I  call  my 
mind.  Under  the  orange  trees  of  Pasadena  I  let  it  soak  into 
me  with  the  sunshine.  Among  the  cataracts  of  Yosemite  I  lis- 
tened to  the  tempting  invitation.  But  it  was  no  good.  I  could 
not  see  myself  there  doing  those  things  that  a  Bishop  does,  and 
so  I  wrote  a  formal  letter  (true,  though,  every  word  of  it)  to 
the  committee,  and  declined ;  so  now  that  is  all  over.    .    .    . 

What  a  queer  town  this  is,  and  who  would  live  here  if  he  could 
live  anywhere  else!  But  some  of  the  beauty  of  this  great  Pacific 
slope  passes  one's  dreams.  I  am  ashamed  sometimes  to  think 
what  a  Yankee  I  am,  that  all  the  beauty  of  the  rest  of  the  world 
makes  me  love  our  own  ugly  little  corner  of  it  all  the  more  in- 
tensely. 


vET.  5o]    ELECTED  ASSISTANT   BISHOP    6ii 

Thank  you  again  for  caring  what  becomes  of  me,  and  I  am 
more  than  ever,  Affectionately  yours, 

P.  B. 

In  the  many  letters  lie  received,  we  may  see  again  how 
Phillips  Brooks  had  become,  as  it  were,  the  common  prop- 
erty of  the  people.  The  case  was  laid  before  him  on  both 
sides,  as  if  he  were  incompetent  to  form  an  opinion  for 
himself.  His  life  as  a  parish  minister  was  urged  as  a  vaster 
field  of  influence  than  any  episcopate  could  ever  become. 
To  be  a  bishop  was  thought  to  mean  the  loss  or  diminution 
of  his  power  as  a  preacher  because  of  the  preoccupation  with 
ecclesiastical  affairs  and  the  detail  of  administration.  There 
does  not  seem,  however,  to  have  been  any  serious  alarm  in 
Trinity  Church,  Boston.  It  was  somehow  taken  for  granted 
that  he  would  not  think  of  leaving.  But  very  gracious  to 
him  were  the  letters  desiring  him  to  remain,  and  the  con- 
gratulations when  his  decision  was  known.  Among  the  let- 
ters, this  one  from  the  late  Bishop  Paddock  may  be  given :  — 

AsHTTELD,  May  15,  1886. 

My  dear  Brother,  — Yesterday  at  our  Diocesan  Missionary 
Meeting  at  Amherst  I  saw  the  announcement  that  you  had  de- 
cided to  remain  at  your  present  field  of  labor,  and  decline  the 
honorable  and  great  work  to  which  you  had  been  called  in  Penn- 
sylvania. I  rejoice  that  you  can  see  it  your  duty  to  stay  with 
us  and  still  contribute  so  greatly  as  God  has  enabled  you  to  do 
to  the  building  up  of  His  Church  in  our  Diocese  and  of  His  king- 
dom in  the  hearts  of  men.  May  He  increase  and  multiply  your 
great  influence  for  good  in  your  present  field,  and  justify,  by 
your  abiding  work  and  holy  success,  your  decision  that  your 
present  field  is  your  post  of  duty. 

I  do  not  know  what  we  should  have  done  had  you  gone  from 
us ;  and  with  many  other  considerable  cares,  I  am  truly  thankful 
that  I  have  not  got  to  work  out  that  problem. 
I  am,  dear  Brother,  yours  sincerely, 

Benj.  S.  Paddock. 

It  was  sometimes  said  of  Mr.  Brooks  that  he  had  scant 
respect  for  the  office  of  a  bishop.  He  may  have  expressed 
himself  carelessly  on  the  subject,  and  thus  given  rise  to  the 
impression.     At  one  time,  indeed,  he  distinctly  asserted  that 


6i2  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

in  the  presbyterate  the  more  important  work  for  the  church 
was  to  be  done.  When  he  made  this  statement,  he  was 
speaking  at  the  grave  of  Dr.  Vinton.  It  had  been  his  de- 
sire, however,  that  Dr.  Vinton  should  become  the  Bishop 
of  Massachusetts  after  the  death  of  Dr.  Eastburn,  and  he 
urged  that  in  his  election  the  office  and  the  man  who  could 
exemplify  the  power  of  the  office  would  be  signally  brought 
together.  He  was  alive  to  the  incongruousness  of  the  situa- 
tion when  the  office  was  not  adequately  filled.  But  he  had 
nothing  of  the  Puritan  dislike  for  the  office  in  itself,  as  was 
sometimes  suspected.  Whenever  personal  criticism  went  so 
far  as  to  suggest  such  a  thought,  he  quickly  and  strongly  re- 
sented it.  The  office  was  a  high  one,  he  would  then  assert, 
and  it  only  needed  to  see  the  right  man  in  its  occupancy  to 
bring  out  its  charm  and  its  efficiency.  He  hoped  the  day 
would  come,  as  he  remarked  in  one  of  his  letters  on  the 
subject,  when  "  the  episcopate  will  stand  not  simply  for  the 
restraint  and  regulation,  but  for  the  inspiration  of  the  church." 
He  had  a  very  free  way  of  speaking  on  this  as  on  many  other 
subjects,  when  he  did  not  talk  to  be  reported,  which  gave  rise 
to  misunderstandings.  Indeed,  much  of  his  conversation,  as 
also  his  letters,  needed  to  be  interpreted  by  one  who  knew 
him. 

While  Mr.  Brooks  was  in  California,  he  was  turning  over 
the  question  in  his  mind  of  the  restriction  of  immigration  to 
this  country,  particularly  of  the  Chinese.  He  touches  upon 
the  subject  in  a  satirical  way  in  this  letter  to  Mr.  Robert 
Treat  Paine,  and  again  alludes  to  the  Pennsylvania  episco- 
pate. Probably  he  was  never  so  near  looking  upon  his  call 
to  it  with  favor,  and  like  a  lost  opportunity,  as  after  he  had 
given  his  irrevocable  decision :  — 

Monterey,  Califorkia,  June  1, 1886. 
My  dear  Bob,  —  Ever  since  I  left  Boston  I  have  had  dreams 
that  you  might  write  to  me  and  let  me  know  how  everything  was 
going  with  you  all.  Perhaps  I  may  hear  from  you  yet,  but 
meanwhile,  before  I  turn  my  face  homeward,  I  want  to  tell  you 
what  a  good  time  I  have  had,  and  how  delightfully  California  has 
treated  me.      She  has  given  her  best  weather,  and  her  most  pro- 


^T.  50]         HARVARD   UNIVERSITY  613 

fuse  flowers,  and  her  cataracts  full  of  water,  and  her  people 
pleasant  and  interesting  everywhere.  The  journey  out  here  was 
delightful,  and  the  Yosemite  was  quite  as  grand  as  fancy  had 
painted  it,  and  the  San  Franciscan,  American,  or  Chinese  was 
full  of  interest.  One  thing  all  the  Americans  say  ahout  the 
Chinamen,  —  that  no  more  of  them  must  come.  All  intelligent 
people  own  that  they  could  not  have  done,  and  could  not  now  do, 
without  them,  and  would  by  no  means  drive  out  those  that  are 
here;  but  they  would  let  in  no  more.  The  unanimity  on  this 
last  point  is  striking.  I  have  not  met  with  an  exception.  And 
yet  one  is  much  struck  also  by  hearing  the  best  of  qualities,  — 
thrift,  industry,  self-control,  and  patience,  —  so  often  made  a 
large  part  of  the  burden  of  indictment  against  the  poor  Mongo- 
lian. Certainly  the  look  of  Chinatown  and  its  inhabitants  is 
surprisingly  prepossessing  when  one  considers  that  he  is  seeing 
the  very  dregs  and  refuse  of  a  race.  If  these  are  the  lowest, 
the  highest  specimens  must  be  something  very  good  indeed. 

I  have  had  a  lot  of  correspondence  about  that  Episcopate  in 
Pennsylvania.  There  was  no  moment  when  I  thought  of  going. 
How  could  I,  so  long  as  I  dared  to  believe  that  you  all  still 
wanted  me  to  stay  in  Boston?  Will  you  tell  me,  honestly  and 
truly,  and  like  a  friend,  when  you  think  it  is  best  to  go  away? 
Until  you  do,  I  shall  rejoice  to  come  back  year  after  year  and 
do  the  best  I  can.  I  am  going  back  this  year,  taking  it  for 
granted  that  my  work  in  Trinity  is  not  yet  done. 

Among  the  motives  operating  powerfully  with  Phillips 
Brooks  to  hold  him  fast  by  his  work  in  Boston  was  his  rela- 
tion to  Harvard  University.  A  change  was  now  impend- 
ing there,  when  the  University  would  rely  upon  his  moral 
support  before  its  whole  constituency,  and  indeed  the  whole 
American  people.  Since  the  death  of  Dr.  A.  P.  Peabody,  the 
daily  and  the  Sunday  religious  services  had  been  conducted 
by  clergymen  in  some  way  connected  with  the  College, 
whether  in  its  Faculty  or  its  Board  of  Overseers.  In  1886  it 
had  been  decided,  as  the  best  way  for  ministering  to  the  reli- 
gious life  of  the  students,  to  appoint  a  Board  of  Chaplains, 
six  in  number,  representing  the  different  religious  denomi- 
nations, who  should  take  their  turns  in  conducting  prayers 
and  in  preaching  on  Sunday  in  Appleton  Chapel.  For  this 
purpose  the  ablest  preachers  in  the  country  were  to  be  se- 
lected, in  order  that  everything  might  be  done  to  give  to 


6i4  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

religion  an  important  place  in  the  University,  and  to  this 
office  Phillips  Brooks  had  been  chosen.  One  of  the  chief 
difficulties  which  confronted  the  Board  of  Chaplains  was  the 
question  of  voluntary  or  compulsory  attendance  on  prayers. 
So  long  as  those  who  officiated  had  been  officers  of  the  Uni- 
versity it  had  been  easier  to  regard  the  question  as  one  of 
college  discipline.  But  to  the  new  chaplains,  coming  into 
the  college  world  from  without,  the  question  assumed  a  new 
form.  They  were  anxious  not  to  be  hampered  in  their  work, 
lest  religion  should  be  misrepresented  and  suffer  harm.  On 
the  threshold  they  encountered  a  feeling  which  had  long  been 
growing  among  the  students,  that  it  was  not  becoming  that 
attendance  on  religious  services  should  be  compulsory. 

For  several  years  the  subject  had  been  under  discussion  by 
the  Faculty,  the  Overseers,  and  the  Corporation.  The  senti- 
ment among  the  officers  of  the  University  was  for  the  most 
part  averse  to  the  change.  President  Eliot,  Dr.  A.  P. 
Peabody,  and  Mr.  Kalph  Waldo  Emerson  were  among  those 
who  deprecated  the  growing  opinion  among  the  students,  and 
indeed  were  strongly  averse  to  the  abandonment  of  a  require- 
ment which  went  back  in  its  origin  to  the  foundation  of  Har- 
vard College,  and  was  also  established  in  other  colleges  and 
institutions  of  learning,  not  only  in  this  country,  but  in  Eng- 
land. Phillips  Brooks  had  also  been  among  the  firmest 
opponents,  more  strenuous  even  than  many  in  resisting  the 
change.  A  petition  of  the  students  in  1885  had  been  referred 
to  a  committee  of  three,  of  which  he  was  a  member,  to  give 
the  question  thorough  consideration,  and  return  a  final  and 
exhaustive  answer  to  the  students'  request.  That  the  ques- 
tion was  at  last  under  serious  consideration  was  widely  known, 
and  not  only  Harvard,  but  the  other  colleges  were  deeply  in- 
terested in  the  decision.  It  was  a  great  relief  to  many  when 
the  answer  came,  that  Harvard  remained  true  to  the  ancient 
ways  of  the  fathers.  Thus  the  president  of  an  important 
college  wrote  to  Dr.  Brooks : : — 

Like  everybody  else  I  have  heard  speak  of  it  I  am  very  much 
pleased  by  your  report  to  the  Board  of  Overseers  in  regard  to 
college  prayers.      The  abandonment  of  a  custom  so  salutary  and 


^T.  50]        HARVARD   UNIVERSITY  615 

so  characteristic,  as  well  as  time-honored,  would  be  fraught  with 
most  serious  consequences  to  the  whole  fabric  of  our  civilization. 

A  brief  summary  of  this  report  of  the  committee  to  the 
Overseers  will  bring  out  some  interesting  features  of  the 
situation.  The  students  who  petitioned  did  not,  on  the 
whole,  rest  their  petition  on  the  strongest  ground.  They 
asked  that  attendance  at  prayers  be  made  voluntary  for  all 
over  the  age  of  twenty-one,  and  optional  according  to  the 
wishes  of  parents  or  guardians  for  all  under  that  age ;  and 
they  based  their  request  upon  the  assumption  that  compul- 
sory attendance  is  a  "religious  test"  and  "therefore  repug- 
nant," and  further  that  "it  was  a  remnant  of  ancient  en- 
croachments upon  civil  liberty,  and  therefore  tyrannical  and 
unjust."  To  this  petition  the  committee  replied  that  prayers 
were  upon  the  same  footing  as  other  requisitions  made  upon 
students  by  which  they  resign  their  liberty  to  spend  their 
time  as  they  please  and  conform  in  manners  and  habits  to 
what  the  college  faculty  regard  as  decent  and  proper. 
There  was  no  tyranny  more  than  in  daily  attendance  upon 
recitations  and  lectures.  It  was  not  a  religious  test,  for 
those  were  excused  from  attendance  who  could  plead  con- 
scientious religious  scruples.  There  was  no  hardship,  for 
those  who  lived  at  a  distance  from  the  chapel  were  excused, 
and  those  also  who  urged  the  plea  of  ill  health ;  and  further, 
the  religious  service  was  a  brief  one  and  attractive  in  its 
character,  as  shown  in  the  reverent  bearing  of  the  students. 

But  the  two  most  significant  features  in  the  committee's 
report  were,  first,  the  assumption  that  if  attendance  on 
prayers  were  not  compulsory,  the  only  alternative  was  the 
abandonment  or  discontinuance  of  the  daily  religious  service 
altogether.  That  this  would  be  the  result  was  argued  from 
the  attendance  at  the  English  cathedral  services,  which  was 
pitiably  small  under  the  most  favorable  auspices.  The  other 
assumption  was  that  the  large  number  of  names  appended  to 
the  students'  petition  carried  no  weight,  for  it  was  "well 
known  how  easily  such  signatures  are  obtained  not  only  in 
college,  but  in  the  outer  world."  This  petition,  too,  had  not 
been  left  in  some  designated  place,  where  those  who  wished 


6i6  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1886 

might  sign  it,  but  it  had  been  carried  from  room  to  room 
with  great  urgency.  These  were  the  main  points  in  the  re- 
port. But  there  was  one  other  reason  given  for  denying  the 
petition,  although  it  was  distinctly  said  the  least  of  the  argu- 
ments in  behalf  of  the  existing  system:  "Harvard  College 
<ean  ill  afford  the  loss  of  reputation  which  would  ensue  on  its 
being  the  first  of  all  literary  institutions  in  New  England  to 
abandon  religious  observances." 

To  those  who  knew  Phillips  Brooks  it  must  seem  strange 
that  he  should  have  been  willing  to  append  his  name  to  this 
report.  But  he  was  a  conservative  in  temperament ;  nor  had 
he  as  yet  looked  deeply  into  the  question.  He  probably 
acquiesced  out  of  force  of  habit  in  the  assumption  that  if 
students  were  not  required  to  go  to  prayers  they  would  not 
go.  Hardly,  however,  had  he  signed  the  report  than  his 
attention  began  to  go  beneath  the  surface  of  both  the  petition 
and  its  answer.  It  might  be  possible  that  the  students  had 
better  reasons  for  their  request  than  they  alleged.  It  was 
possible  that  they  would  continue  their  attendance,  even  if 
it  were  not  required.  If  religion  was  natural  for  man  and 
made  its  appeal  to  what  was  genuinely  human,  it  might  be 
properly  thrown  on  its  own  native  resources  without  being 
bolstered  up  by  an  extraneous  authority.  It  indicated  lack 
of  faith  in  God  and  man  to  assume  any  other  ground.  It 
pained  him  to  call  in  question  the  sincerity  or  earnestness 
of  those  who  had  signed  the  petition.  The  thing  to  do  was 
to  find  out  whether  the  sentiment  of  the  students  as  a  whole 
was  averse  to  compulsory  prayers,  and  then  to  trust  and  to 
honor  their  feeling  in  the  matter  as  having  some  divine  sig- 
nificance ;  to  have  faith  in  religion  also  that  its  ancient  power 
was  not  abated.  It  would  indeed  require  a  greater  expendi- 
ture of  spiritual  force  on  the  part  of  those  who  were  to  offi- 
ciate in  the  religious  offices  of  the  College,  but  that  must  be 
taken  for  granted. 

In  February,  1886,  the  students  renewed  their  petition. 
In  May  the  first  Board  of  Chaplains  was  appointed,  and  in 
June  Phillips  Brooks,  in  his  place  as  one  of  the  Board 
of  Overseers,  stood  up  and  earnestly  advocated  the  abolition 


^T.  50]       HARVARD  UNIVERSITY  617 

of  compulsory  attendance  on  prayers,  declaring  further  his 
unwillingness  to  officiate  as  a  chaplain  of  the  College  unless 
the  change  were  conceded.  He  did  not  argue  for  the  change 
as  a  concession  merely  to  the  expressed  wishes  of  the  stu- 
dents, but  as  in  itself  the  ideal  arrangement,  to  be  adopted 
because  of  its  inherent  fitness  and  propriety.  There  was 
surprise  and  even  astonishment  at  the  complete  reversal  of 
his  attitude.  But  his  influence  was  great ;  he  was  willing  to 
take  the  responsibility ;  it  could  not  hurt  the  College  if  it  was 
known  that  he  approved  the  change,  and  his  name,  indeed, 
would  be  a  guarantee  of  the  success  of  the  voluntary  system; 
there  was  nothing  else  to  do  after  his  bold  declaration  of  his 
faith  in  the  new  method.  In  taking  this  position  Mr.  Brooks 
had  the  sympathy  and  support  of  the  other  chaplains  associ- 
ated with  him.  Their  first  joint  act  after  their  appointment 
was  to  recommend  that  attendance  on  prayers  be  voluntary, 
and  their  recommendation  was  approved  by  the  Corporation 
and  the  Overseers.  In  the  fall  of  1886  the  new  arrange- 
ment  went  into  operation. 

In  the  discussion  of  the  order  of  service  to  be  used  at 
morning  prayers,  Mr.  Brooks  took  part.  With  him  origi- 
nated the  brief  address  of  three  minutes.  At  the  request  of 
the  students  he  said  a  few  words  before  closing  each  service, 
and  from  this  the  custom  grew  until  it  became  the  general 
rule.  It  imposed  a  harder  task  upon  the  chaplains,  but  it 
tended  to  vitalize  the  occasion,  and  to  prevent  it  from  becom- 
ing a  religious  formality.  That  the  new  plan  of  voluntary 
prayers  must  be  regarded  as  an  experiment  until  it  had  been 
demonstrated  a  success  was  evident  to  Mr.  Brooks,  and  in 
order  that  it  might  be  made  successful  he  was  anxious  that 
everything  should  be  done  to  make  the  new  arrangement 
attractive  and  impressive.  In  his  letters  to  Rev.  F.  G. 
Peabody,  who  had  been  elected  to  the  Plummer  Professor- 
ship, and  was  president  of  the  Board  of  Chaplains,  he  shows 
how  deep  his  interest  was :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  June  29, 1886. 
Dear  Mb.  Peabody,  — ...   I  feel  very  strongly,  as  I  think 
about  it,  that  the  meeting  of  October  3  should  be  devoted  to  a 


6i8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

full  and  comprehensive  address  from  you,  for  which  you  should 
take  plenty  of  time,  and  in  which  you  should  lay  before  the  Col- 
lege and  the  world  the  complete  meaning  of  the  new  movement. 
If  it  is  thought  well  for  one  of  the  preachers  to  say  a  few  words 
also,  well  and  good;  but  the  evening  should  be  yours. 

Let  us  not  fail  to  get  the  great  musician.      And  we  must  not  be 
cramped  for  money.      And  we  must  be  very  confident  in  hope. 
Ever  sincerely  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

233  Clakendon  Street,  Boston,  Aiignst  18,  1886. 
My  deab  Mk.  Peabody,  — ...  I  hope- that  on  that  day  the 
service  may  be  as  rich  and  strong  as  it  is  possible  to  make  it.  I 
have  begged  the  President  that  we  may  not  be  stinted  in  the 
matter  of  money.  At  any  rate,  for  those  two  days,  let  there  be 
no  economy.  Get  the  best  musical  material  that  can  be  had. 
Put  our  musical  director  on  his  mettle  regardless  of  expense,  and 
let  us  see  what  he  can  do,  only  let  him  know  that  it  is  excellence 
of  quality  and  not  simply  abundance  of  quantity  that  we  want. 
Ever  yours  most  sincerely,  Phillips  Brooks. 

It  may  be  added  here  that  doubts  and  misgivings  quickly 
vanished  when  the  voluntary  arrangement  had  been  put  to 
actual  trial.  The  attendance  at  prayers  was  large  and  the 
service  inspiring.  Mr.  Brooks  took  the  month  of  Novem- 
ber, and  every  morning  after  service  was  over  went  to  the 
chaplain's  rooms  at  Wadsworth  House,  where  the  students 
came  to  see  him  in  increasing  numbers.  After  his  month 
was  over,  he  wrote  again  to  Professor  Peabody :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  December  4,  1886. 
Dear  Mr.  Peabody,  — ...  I  cannot  tell  you  how  much  I 
have  enjoyed  this  last  busy  month,  or  how  deeply  interested  I 
am  in  the  world  over  which  you  preside.  Pray  use  me  for  it  in 
any  way,  at  any  time,  and  do  not  let  even  Cambridge  quench 
your  hope. 

After  returning  from  his  trip  to  the  West,  Mr.  Brooks 
took  up  his  residence  at  North  Andover  for  the  summer, 
where,  as  he  writes  to  Strong,  "there  is  peace  and  quiet  to 
a  terrible  degree.  I  go  down  to  Boston  on  Sundays  and 
wake  myself  up  with  preaching  to  a  miscellaneous  summer 
congregation,  and  then  go  back  to  my  bucolic  cares."  He 
tried  to  get  his  three  old  friends,  Cooper  and  Richards  and 
Strong,  to  meet  together  with  him  there,  and  "talk  over  the 


^T.  50]  CORRESPONDENCE  619 

universe,"  but  the  scheme  was  not  realized.     To  Mr.  Cooper 
he  writes :  — 

July  3,  1886. 

Another  journey  is  finished  without  accident.  I  have  seen  the 
Pacific,  and  now  here  I  am,  thankful  and  peaceful  among  my  acres 
and  bucolic  cares  at  North  Andover.  The  grass  is  to  be  sold 
this  afternoon  at  public  auction  out  behind  the  barn,  and  that 
makes  me  a  little  anxious  and  restless  this  morning.  Except  for 
that,  I  am  very  well  and  happy,  and  hope  these  few  lines  will 
find  you  the  same. 

And  you  are  coming  to  George  Strong's  week  after  next !  I 
am  sure  you  will  not  pass  me  by,  but  will  look  in  and  see  my 
farming.  There  is  nothing  in  the  world  to  do.  You  shall  not 
be  bothered  to  go  and  see  the  cattle,  for  there  are  none ;  nor  the 
kitchen  garden,  for  there  isn't  any;  nor  even  the  chickens,  for 
there  is  only  one  poor  lone  rooster,  which  the  man  who  kept  the 
place  last  winter  couldn't  catch,  but  left  behind  him  when  he 
went  away.  No,  you  shall  sit  on  the  piazza  and  smoke,  and  sit 
in  the  study  and  smoke,  and  sit  under  the  trees  and  smoke,  and 
we  will  talk  Pennsylvania  and  California,  and  you  shall  tell  me 
all  about  the  queer,  queer  things  which  have  gone  on  in  Philadel- 
phia since  the  first  of  May.  Now  write  a  beautiful  letter  at 
once  and  say  when  I  may  meet  you  and  Mrs.  Cooper  in  Boston, 
and  bring  you  here  for  as  many  days  and  nights  as  you  will  stay. 
I  am  sure  that  you  will  not  disappoint  your  ancient  friend. 

His  chief  recreation  at  North  Andover  was  in  drivins:  a 
quiet  horse  through  Boxford  and  other  adjacent  towns,  when 
he  dressed  in  a  most  unclerical  garb  and  seemed  to  enjoy  it 
as  if  it  were  the  proper  thing  to  enjoy.  But  in  his  manner 
he  had  grown  somewhat  more  quiet  and  subdued.  In  the 
course  of  these  excursions  he  came  to  the  ancient  town  of 
Rowley,  where  the  first  Samuel  Phillips,  son  of  the  George 
Phillips  who  was  the  founder  of  the  family,  had  spent  his 
long  life.  A  call  at  the  parsonage  for  the  minister,  who 
could  have  told  him  much  that  he  wanted  to  know,  was  fruit- 
less. It  seemed  that  in  the  quiet  of  those  peaceful  after- 
noons, where  it  was  like  a  perpetual  Sabbath,  the  minister 
had  the  custom  of  retiring  to  the  prophet's  little  chamber  on 
the  wall,  and  was  fast  asleep  while  his  distinguished  visitor 
was  knocking;  at  the  door.     But  there  was  a  monument  to  be 


620  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

seen,  erected  to  the  memory  of  this  distant  ancestor.  The 
only  relic  which  survived  of  him  in  the  town  was  a  fragment 
of  a  sermon  on  the  "sin  of  wearing  long  hair."  But  there 
were  traditions  of  him  remaining  to  the  effect  that  "he  com- 
bined culture  of  mind,  tenderness  and  sympathy  of  heart,  and 
well-balanced  Christian  living." 

The  days  at  North  Andover  were  marked  by  another  event, 
when  on  July  21  he  went  to  Framingham  and  read  an  essay 
before  the  Chautauqua  Assembly  on  Literature  and  Life. 
It  was  published  in  pamphlet  form  and  has  since  been  incor- 
porated in  his  "Essays  and  Addresses."  Among  the  writ- 
ings of  Phillips  Brooks,  this  essay  holds  an  important  place, 
valuable  in  itself  for  its  profound  and  beautiful  suggestions, 
most  admirable  as  an  introduction  to  the  study  of  literature ; 
but  also  important  because  it  gives  so  clearly  the  method  of 
his  life  work,  revealing  the  springs  of  his  enthusiasm  and 
the  sources  of  his  perpetual  freshness  and  power.  His  theme 
is  that  "  life  underlies  literature  and  is  the  greater  thing." 
"  It  is  possible  to  treat  almost  any  book  so  that  the  literary 
quality  will  disappear  and  the  pulsations  of  the  life  beneath 
be  felt."     "Men  must  live  before  they  can  make  literature." 

Very  impressive  and  mysterious  and  beautiful  are  these  noble 
years  in  the  life  of  a  people  or  a  man,  which  are  so  full  of  living 
that  they  had  no  time  or  thought  for  writing. 

How  many  of  us  can  remember  it  in  our  own  lives,  the  time 
when  life  claimed  utterance  and  clumsily,  shamefacedly,  secretly, 
but  with  a  dim  sense  of  crossing  a  line  and  entering  a  new  con- 
dition, we  wrote  something,  —  a  poem,  an  essay,  a  story,  —  some- 
thing which  gave  literary  expression  to  life. 

He  was  asking  himself  why  it  was  that  in  the  last  years  of 
the  nineteenth  century  there  seemed  to  be  a  falling  away  in 
the  quality  of  high  literature.  He  thinks  that  the  relations 
between  life  and  literature  are  very  delicate  and  easily  dis- 
turbed. 

Life  may  become  too  strong  for  literature.  There  is  question 
whether  it  be  not  so  to-day,  when  the  world  is  intensely  and 
vehemently  alive.  It  may  be  that  former  methods  and  standards 
are  not  sufficient  for  the  expression  of  the  growing  life,  its  new 


^T.  50]  SERMONS  621 

activities,  its  unexpected  energies,  its  feverish  problems.  If  the 
social  perplexities  of  the  age  could  be  set  forth  in  a  more  com- 
petent literature,  catching  the  true  meaning  of  the  situation,  then 
the  pent-up  torrent  of  life  would  find  easier  vent  and  open  into 
broader,  juster,  and  more  charitable  thought.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances a  man  must  believe  in  the  future  more  than  he  rever- 
ences the  past. 

In  the  retirement  of  North  Andover  Mr.  Brooks  was 
thinking  much  of  Richardson,  whose  death  had  moved  him 
deeply.  He  speaks  of  him  in  a  letter:  "Richardson  is  off 
alone  on  his  long  journey.  I  wonder  how  long  it  is."  In 
an  article  for  the  "Harvard  Monthly"  (October,  1886),  he 
paid  a  tribute  to  his  character  and  genius.  The  qualities 
which  he  discerned  and  selected  for  praise  are  those  which 
the  two  men  held  in  common,  and  which  served  to  draw  them 
together,  —  the  instinctive  and  spontaneous  character  of  his 
genius,  expressing  great  ideas,  based  upon  thorough  study, 
and  yet  of  which  he  could  give  no  account  as  to  how  they 
came  to  him,  "not  a  man  of  theories,"  but  "his  life  passed 
into  his  buildings  by  ways  too  subtle  even  for  himself  to 
understand."  "He  grew  simpler  as  he  grew  older." 
"Whoever  came  in  contact  with  his  work  felt  that  the  wind 
blew  out  of  an  elemental  simplicity,  out  of  the  primitive  life 
and  qualities  of  man." 

The  loss  which  his  death  brought  to  his  friends  it  is  not  possi- 
ble to  describe.  It  is  a  change  in  all  their  life.  When  some 
men  die  it  is  as  if  you  had  lost  your  penknife,  and  were  subject 
to  perpetual  inconvenience  until  you  could  get  another.  Other 
men's  going  is  like  the  vanishing  of  a  great  mountain  from  the 
landscape,  and  the  outlook  of  life  is  changed  forever. 

His  life  was  like  a  great  picture  full  of  glowing  color.  The 
canvas  on  which  it  was  painted  was  immense.  It  lighted  all  the 
room  in  which  it  hung.  It  warmed  the  chilliest  air.  It  made, 
and  it  will  long  make,  life  broader,  work  easier,  and  simple 
strength  and  courage  dearer  to  many  men.^ 

Mr.  Brooks  was  further  occupied  during  the  summer  with 
the  preparation  for  the  press  of  his  fourth  volume  of  ser- 
mons, which  appeared  in  the  fall  with  the  title  "  Twenty  Ser- 
^  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  489. 


622  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

mons,"  and  was  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  his  brother 
Frederick.  The  book  has  a  distinct  character  from  his  other 
vokimes  of  sermons,  —  his  message  to  the  hour,  stamped 
with  his  imprimatur,  and  reflecting,  also,  the  changes  in  his 
inner  life  and  experience.  The  first  sermon,  with  which  the 
volume  opens,  entitled  "The  Mother's  Wonder,"  is  an  epit- 
ome of  his  own  spiritual  history.  It  was  written  at  the 
time  when  his  father's  health  was  declining,  when  he  no 
longer  attempted  to  exercise  any  semblance  of  a  sway  over 
his  son's  career.  It  recalls  the  moment  in  Philadelphia 
when  the  son  was  throwing  himself  into  social  and  political 
reforms,  advocating  them  with  vehement  eloquence  from  the 
pulpit,  and  the  father's  earnest  remonstrance  against  his 
course.  He  had  believed  that  he  was  right  in  following 
his  own  judgment,  despite  his  father's  protest.  He  was 
recalling  his  own  reticence  and  invincible  reserve  in  those 
mysterious  years  when  he  was  trying  to  read  the  call  of 
God  to  his  soul,  and  his  mother  stood  by  perplexed,  but 
silent  and  submissive,  while  he  made  no  sign.  He  had 
changed  much  since  those  years  went  by,  but  they  were  up- 
permost in  his  consciousness  still.  He  is  sending  now,  as 
it  were,  his  voice  beyond  the  darkness  to  the  father  and 
mother  in  paradise,  his  apology  for  that  which,  in  itself,  was 
right  or  inevitable,  yet  had  none  the  less  given  pain.  The 
mother  of  Christ  remonstrating  with  her  son,  "Why  hast 
thou  thus  dealt  with  us?  "  is  a  type  and  illustration  of  that 
"which  is  recurring  in  every  household  as  a  boy  claims  for 
the  first  time  his  own  life."  He  strikes  the  principle  rest- 
ing beneath  the  familiar  experience,  how  people  are  in  dan- 
ger of  realizing  responsibility  more  than  they  realize  God. 
He  takes  up  the  subject  of  reform  and  reformers,  again,  and 
in  so  doing  shows  that  his  father's  protest  had  done  its  work 
and  had  mingled  with  his  own  judgment  till  it  had  modified 
his  life  method.  The  subject  enlarges  under  his  treatment 
till  it  becomes  a  discussion  of  God's  part  in  the  control  of 
human  affairs  and  in  the  development  of  every  individual 
career.  But  this  larger  conviction  has  its  roots  in  his  expe- 
rience as  a  boy  in  the  intimate  life  of  the  human  household. 


^T.  50]  SERMONS  623 

Many  of  the  sermons  in  this  volume  are  noteworthy  not 
only  as  great  pictures  on  the  canvas  of  life,  but  because  they 
reveal  the  man  behind  the  sermon.  In  "Visions  and  Tasks," 
already  mentioned,  he  pays  his  tribute  to  his  mother,  and  to 
every  mother  who  mediates  between  the  vision  and  the  child 
whom  she  loves  and  thus  brings  the  highest  truth  to  the 
childish  capacity.  "It  is  a  truth  which  we  have  all  learned 
from  some  great  experience  through  which  we  have  been  led, 
that  any  great  experience,  seriously  and  greatly  met  and 
passed  through,  makes  the  man  who  has  passed  through  it 
always  afterward  a  purer  mediimi  through  which  the  highest 
truth  may  shine  on  other  men." 

In  the  "Beautiful  Gate  of  the  Temple,"  a  sermon  first 
preached  in  Philadelphia,  and  afterwards  rewritten, —  a  fa- 
vorite sermon  and  repeated  many  times,  —  he  has  described 
the  religion  of  childhood,  how  it  differs  from  the  religion  of  the 
mature  man,  how  it  is  to  be  taught  and  cultivated  in  order 
to  its  later  healthy  expansion.  Upon  this  subject  he  could 
speak  with  singular  force  and  wisdom,  for  he  had  the  gift 
of  knowing  how  to  enter  into  a  child's  heart  and  to  dwell 
there  in  joy  and  freedom. 

The  text  "Make  the  men  sit  down"  was  suggestive  to  his 
mind  of  the  contemplative  restful  aspects  of  religion,  as 
compared  with  its  incessant  call  to  activity.  He  was  think- 
ing of  his  experience  in  India  and  the  wide  contrast  between 
Oriental  and  Occidental  types  of  religion.  As  he  begins  his 
sermon,  he  takes  the  congregation  into  his  confidence,  by 
telling  them  how  often  he  has  found  that  the  wrong  people 
take  the  wrong  sermon  to  themselves.  As  he  is  proposing 
to  speak  of  the  peace  and  repose  which  religion  may  bring, 
he  fears  it  will  not  appeal  to  those  who  are  always  rushing 
into  more  and  more  wild  and  superficial  action,  to  those  who 
really  need  meditation  and  quiet  self-study,  but  to  those 
already  resting  in  quiescent  calm,  and  need  to  be  roused  to 
action.  This  is  one  of  the  difficulties  of  the  pulpit  which  it 
is  almost  impossible  to  overcome. 

He  had  preached  a  sermon,  as  most  preachers  have  done, 
on   "The   Man  with  One  Talent,"  published   in  an  earlier 


624  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

volume,  but  it  required  a  certain  degree  of  boldness  and 
originality  to  speak  on  the  place  in  the  world  of  "  The  Man 
with  Two  Talents."  His  object  was  to  show  how  the  aver- 
age man  may  become  great  and  almost  infinitely  multiply 
his  gifts  by  living  in  the  consciousness  of  God.  The  power 
of  the  God  consciousness  is  also  brought  out  in  one  of  its 
most  profound  and  far-reaching  aspects  in  the  sermon  on 
"  Standing  before  God,"  where  he  meets  the  difficulty  which 
the  mind  encounters  in  thinking  of  immortality,  because  of 
the  countless  millions  of  human  souls  who  have  lived  or  are 
yet  to  live  on  the  earth,  till  the  insignificance  of  any  one 
soul  in  the  infinite  throng  overcomes  the  conviction  of  its 
priceless  value.  "The  Knowledge  of  God"  is  the  title  of 
another  sermon,  where  he  makes  his  plea  against  what  is 
called  Agnosticism.  His  chief  argument  is  built  upon  the 
fact  of  Christ's  unconquerable  conviction  as  in  the  words, 
"As  the  Father  knoweth  me,  even  so  know  I  the  Father:  " — 

Surely  it  must  forever  stand  as  a  most  impressive  and  signifi- 
cant fact,  a  fact  that  no  man  who  is  trying  to  estimate  the  worth 
and  strength  of  spiritual  things  can  leave  out  of  his  account,  that 
the  noblest  and  most  perfect  spiritual  being  whom  this  world  has 
ever  seen,  the  being  whom  the  world  with  most  amazing  unanim- 
ity owns  for  its  spiritual  pattern  and  leader,  was  sure  of  God. 
I  cannot  get  rid  of  the  immense,  the  literally  unmeasurable 
meaning  and  value  of  that  fact. 

There  are  sermons  here  which  are  the  outcome  of  that 
consciousness  of  humanity  in  which  he  also  lived.  The 
sense  of  sin,  the  evil  in  life,  the  conception  of  life  as  a  tragic 
struggle  between  hostile  forces  where  God  and  man  seem 
to  be  arrayed  against  each  other,  the  awful  mystery  of  the 
conflict  and  its  appalling  proportions,  —  these  things  are 
brought  out  in  sermons,  still  vividly  remembered  by  those 
who  heard  them,  as  revealing  the  preacher's  power.  In  a 
sermon  entitled  "Destruction  and  Fulfilment,"  he  traces  the 
beneficent  evidence  of  human  progress.  When  we  read  the 
sermon  on  Going  up  to  Jerusalem,  it  seems  to  have  a  pro- 
phetic character,  as  though  the  preacher,  in  urging  upon  his 
hearers  to  gain  some   clearer  perception  of  the  appointed 


MT.  50]    DOCTRINE  OF  THE  CHURCH       62s 

result  toward  which  the  steady  tendency  of  their  lives  was 
growing,  was  thinking  and  speaking  of  himself.  Life  was 
changing  for  him  now  to  its  last  appointed  phase.  From 
this  time  his  own  face  was  set,  like  that  of  the  Master  before 
him,  to  go  up  to  Jerusalem ;  and  when  friends  remonstrated 
and  would  fain  hold  him  back,  he  went  steadily  forward,  and 
as  they  looked  after  him  in  his  stride  toward  the  end,  they 
were  amazed.  "Do  not  pray  for  easy  lives.  Do  not  pray 
for  tasks  equal  to  your  powers.  Pray  for  powers  equal  to 
your  tasks." 

I  bid  you  clearly  know  that  if  the  life  which  you  have  chosen 
to  be  your  life  is  really  worthy  of  you,  it  involves  self-sacrifice 
and  pain.  If  your  Jerusalem  really  is  your  sacred  city,  there  is 
certainly  a  cross  in  it.  What  then?  Shall  you  flinch  and  draw 
back?  Shall  you  ask  for  yourself  another  life?  Oh,  no,  not 
another  life,  but  another  self.  Ask  to  be  born  again.  Ask  God 
to  fill  you  with  Himself,  and  then  calmly  look  up  and  go  on. 
Go  up  to  Jerusalem  expecting  all  things  that  are  written  concern- 
ing you  to  be  fulfilled.  Disappointment,  mortification,  miscon- 
ception, enmity,  pain,  death,  these  may  come  to  you,  but  if  they 
come  to  you  in  doing  your  duty  it  is  all  right. 

There  remains  to  be  mentioned  one  other  sermon  in  this 
volume  to  which  a  special  interest  and  importance  must  be 
attached.  Its  subject  is  the  "Church  of  the  Living  God." 
It  was  preached  in  1885,  on  the  third  Sunday  in  Advent, 
when  it  was  the  custom  at  Trinity  Church  to  take  up  the 
annual  collection  for  domestic  missions.  In  this  sermon  Mr. 
Brooks  defined  his  position  on  the  questions  then  agitating 
the  Episcopal  Church.  In  the  first  part  of  the  sermon  he 
gives  his  definition  of  the  Church  Universal :  — 

The  Christian  church  is  the  body  of  redeemed  humanity.  It 
is  man  in  his  deepest  interests,  in  his  spiritual  possibilities.  It 
is  the  under  life,  the  sacred,  the  profounder  life  of  man,  his 
regeneration.  Every  human  being  in  very  virtue  of  birth  into 
the  redeemed  world  is  a  potential  member  of  the  Christian 
church.      His  baptism  claims  and  asserts  his  membership.    .    .    . 

I  cannot  tell  you,  my  dear  friends,  how  strongly  this  view 
takes  possession  of  me  the  longer  that  I  live.  I  cannot  think, 
I  will  not  think,  about  the  Christian  church  as  if  it  were  a  selec- 
tion out  of  humanity.     In  its  idea  it  is  humanity. 

VOL.  II 


626  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1886 

He  defends  the  custom  of  baptizing  the  dying  child,  which 
sometimes  has  seemed  like  the  "blankest  superstition." 
"Will  the  ceremony  do  any  good?"  "Will  the  child  be  any 
the  better  for  this  hurried  incantation?  "     He  answers:  — 

Baptism  is  the  solemn,  grateful,  tender  recognition  of  that 
infant's  life  on  earth,  of  the  deep  meaning  of  his  humanity.  It 
is  the  human  race  in  its  profoundest  self-consciousness  welcoming 
this  new  member  to  its  multitude.  Only  for  a  few  moments  does 
he  tarry  in  this  condition  of  humanity.  His  life  touches  the 
earth  only  to  leave  it;  but  in  those  few  moments  of  his  tarrying, 
humanity  lifts  up  its  hand  and  claims  it,  .  .  .  appropriates  for 
it  that  redemption  of  Christ  which  revealed  man's  belonging  to 
God,  declares  it  a  member  of  that  Church  which  is  simply  hu- 
manity belonging  to  God,  the  divine  conception  of  humanity,  her 
own  realization  of  herself  as  it  belongs  to  God. 

He  exclaims  what  a  world  this  would  be  if  only  baptism 
were  universal,  with  this  understanding  of  its  significance. 
He  turns  to  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper  "as  the 
rallying  place  for  all  the  good  activity  and  worthy  hopes  of 
man.  It  is  in  the  power  of  this  great  Christian  sacrament, 
this  great  human  sacrament,  to  become  that  rallying  place." 
It  would  be  the  evidence  of  the  world's  transformation  if 
to  this  great  "sacrament  of  man"  all  classes  of  people  —  the 
mystic,  the  seeker  after  truth,  the  soldier,  the  student,  the 
schoolboy,  the  legislator,  the  inventor,  men,  women,  and 
children  —  were  to  come,  meeting  in  a  great  host  at  the  table 
of  the  Lord,  owning  themselves  His  children,  claiming  for 
themselves  His  strength,  and  thence  go  forth  to  their  work. 
"The  communion  service  would  lift  up  its  voice  and  sing 
itself  in  triumph,  the  great  anthem  of  dedicated  human  life." 

He  speaks  next  of  the  Christian  ministry.  The  old  sacer- 
dotal idea  has  not  died  away.  Sometimes  it  is  distinctly 
proclaimed  and  taught.  But  the  remedy  does  not  lie  in  any 
negation,  — 

not  to  deny  the  priesthood  of  the  clergy,  but  to  assert  the  priest- 
hood of  all  men.  We  can  have  no  hope,  I  believe,  of  the  de- 
struction of  the  spirit  of  hierarchy  by  direct  attack.  It  may  be 
smitten  down  a  thousand  times.  A  thousand  times  it  will  rise 
again.     Only  when  all  men  become   full   of    the   sense  of   the 


^T.  50]    DOCTRINE  OF  THE  CHURCH       627 

sacredness  of  their  own  life  will  the  assumption  of  supreme  cleri- 
cal sacredness  find  itself  overwhelmed  with  the  great  rising  tide. 

He  reverts  to  a  subject  already  mentioned,  but  he  was  now 
speaking  his  mind  fully  and  definitely  on  the  debated  opin- 
ions of  the  hour,  and  he  was  determined  to  be  as  complete  in 
his  utterance  as  he  was  clear. 

Why  is  it  that  the  Church  has  magnified  doctrine  overmuch 
and  throned  it  where  it  does  not  belong?  It  is  because  the 
Church  has  not  cared  enough  for  life.  She  has  not  overvalued 
doctrine:  she  has  undervalued  life.  .  .  .  When  she  thinks  of 
herself  as  the  true  inspirer  and  purifier  of  all  the  life  of  man, 
then  she  will  —  what  ?  Not  cast  away  her  doctrines,  as  many 
of  her  impetuous  advisers  bid  her  do.  She  will  see  their  value, 
their  precious  value,  as  she  has  never  seen  it  yet ;  but  she  will 
hold  them  always  as  the  means  of  life. 

The  decrying  of  dogma  in  the  interest  of  life,  of  creed  in  the 
interest  of  conduct,  is  very  natural,  but  very  superficial.  It  is 
superficial  because,  if  it  succeeded,  it  would  make  life  and  con- 
duct blind  and  weak.  But  it  is  natural  because  it  is  the  crude, 
healthy  outburst  of  human  protest  against  the  value  of  dogma  for 
its  own  sake,  of  which  the  Church  has  always  been  too  full.  Let 
us  not  join  in  it.  .  .  .  Let  us  do  all  we  can  to  build  up  life 
about  dogma,  and  demand  of  dogma  that  service  which  it  is  the 
real  joy  of  its  heart  to  render  to  life.  I  will  not  hear  men 
claim  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  has  no  help  or  inspiration 
to  give  to  the  merchant  or  the  statesman;  .  .  .  that  it  means 
nothing  to  the  scholar  or  the  bricklayer  whether  he  believes  or 
disbelieves  in  the  Atonemento 

I  must  do  all  I  can  to  make  the  world's  ordinary  operations 
know  their  sacredness  and  crave  the  sacred  impulse  which  the 
dogmas  have  to  give.  I  must  summon  all  life  to  look  up  to  the 
hills,  .  .  .  and  so  make  it  cry  out  to  the  truths  of  the  Trinity 
and  the  Atonement  to  open  the  depths  of  their  helpfulness,  as 
they  have  never  heard  the  cStll  to  open  them  when  only  theolo- 
gians were  calling  on  them  to  complete  their  theologic  systems. 
.  .  .  Here  in  the  assertion  of  the  great  human  Church  is  the 
true  adjustment  of  the  relations  of  Doctrine  and  Life.  Doctrine 
kept  active  by  life.     Life  kept  deep  by  doctrine. 

He  goes  on  to  affirm  that  this  large  human  idea  of  the 
church  is  a  vision  which  yet  lacks  fulfilment.  The  church 
and  the  world  are  now  in  conflict,  and  those  who  are  in  the 


628  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

church  must  keep  watchful  guard,  and  dread  and  oppose  the 
evil  influence  of  the  world.  But  it  is  unnatural.  We  must 
never  lose  sight  of  the  vision,  —  the  real  church  and  the  real 
world  struggling  each  into  perfection  for  itself  and  so  both 
into  unity  and  identity  with  each  other.  As  the  history  of 
the  church  passes  in  review,  there  is  encouragement:  "Very 
interesting  have  been  in  history  the  pulsations,  the  brighten- 
ing and  fading,  the  coming  and  going,  of  this  great  truth  of 
the  church  and  the  world,  really  identical."  He  speaks  of 
the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  and  of  its  relation  to  the 
church  universal :  — 

We  value  and  love  our  Communion  very  deeply.  To  many  of 
us  she  has  been  the  nurse,  almost  the  mother  of  our  spiritual  life. 
To  all  of  us  she  is  endeared  by  long  companionship,  and  by  famil- 
iar sympathy  in  the  profoundest  experiences  through  which  our 
souls  have  passed.  When  we  deliberately  turn  our  backs  for  a 
moment  upon  all  these  rich  and  sweet  associations  and  ask  our- 
selves in  colder  and  more  deliberate  consideration  wliy  it  is  that 
we  believe  in  our  Episcopal  Church  and  rejoice  to  commend  her 
to  our  fellow  countrymen  and  fellow  men,  the  answer  which  I  find 
myself  giving  is  that  our  Church  seems  to  me  to  be  truly  trying 
to  realize  this  relation  to  the  whole  world,  this  sacredness  of  all 
life,  this  ideal  belonging  of  all  men  to  the  Church  of  Christ, 
which,  as  I  have  been  saying,  is  the  great  truth  of  active  Chris- 
tianity. I  find  the  signs  of  such  an  effort  in  the  very  things  for 
which  some  people  fear  or  blame  our  Church.  I  find  it  in  the 
importance  which  she  gives  to  Baptism  and  in  the  breadth  of  her 
conception  of  that  rite ;  for  Baptism  is  the  strongest  visible  asser- 
tion of  this  truth.  I  find  it  in  her  simplicity  of  doctrine.  I 
find  it  in  the  value  which  she  sets  on  worship;  her  constant  sum- 
mons to  all  men  not  merely  to  be  preached  to,  but  to  pray;  her 
firm  belief  in  the  ability  and  right  of  all  men  to  offer  prayer  to 
God.  I  find  it  in  her  strong  historic  spirit,  her  sense  of  union 
with  the  ages  which  have  passed  out  of  sight,  and  of  whose  men 
we  know  only  their  absolute  humanity. 

But  he  has  a  word  of  protest  to  make  against  those  who, 
in  the  Episcopal  Church,  love  to  call  her  in  exclusive  phrase 
"The  American  Church."  That  is  a  name  to  which  she  has 
no  right,  but  rather  it  belongs  to  the  total  body  of  Christian- 
ity in  America  which,  under  many  divisions  and  different 


^T.  50]        GENERAL  CONVENTION  6i<) 

names,  broken,  discordant,  disjointed,  often  quarrelsome, 
and  disgracefully  jealous,  yet  still  bearing  witness  to  the 
love  of  God,  the  redemption  of  Christ,  and  the  sacred  possi- 
bilities of  man.  The  doctrine  of  Apostolical  Succession  he 
designates  a  fiction :  — 

If  our  Church  does  especial  work  in  our  country,  it  must  be 
by  the  especial  and  peculiar  way  in  which  she  bears  that  witness; 
not  by  any  fiction  of  an  apostolic  succession  in  her  ministry  which 
gives  to  them  alone  a  right  to  bear  such  witness.  There  is  no 
such  peculiar  privilege  of  commission  belonging  to  her  or  to  any 
other  human  body. 

He  deprecates  the  exaggeration  of  the  historic  feeling  in 
the  Episcopal  Church,  which,  while  it  makes  part  of  the 
strength  of  the  church,  may  also  constitute  its  weakness. 
It  may  be  tempted  "to  treasure  overmuch  its  association 
with  the  great  Church  of  another  land,  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land," importing  customs  and  costumes,  names  and  ways, 
and  so  become  "what  she  has  been  in  part  of  her  history, 
what  she  is  in  many  parts  of  the  land  to-day,  an  exotic  and 
not  a  true  part  of  the  nation's  life."  "The  true  apostolical 
succession,  .  .  .  she  must  not  boast  that  she  has,  but  she 
must  struggle  more  and  more  earnestly  to  win." 

With  thoughts  like  these  already  in  his  mind,  indeed 
they  had  been  in  his  mind  from  the  beginning  of  his  min- 
istry, Dr.  Brooks  went  as  a  delegate  from  Massachusetts  to 
the  General  Convention  of  the  Episcopal  Church  which  met 
in  Chicago  in  October,  1886.  This  convention  is  remem- 
bered as  having  set  forth  what  is  known  as  the  "Quadrilat- 
eral,"—  the  terms  on  which  the  Episcopal  Church  would 
consent  to  approach  the  question  of  Church  Unity.  By  some 
the  terms  she  proposed  were  regarded  as  an  invitation  to 
organic  union  of  the  churches,  and  by  others  as  a  protest 
against  schemes  of  church  unity  already  broached.  Dr. 
Brooks  had  been  a  member  of  the  General  Convention  since 
1880,  but  had  not  hitherto  taken  any  important  part  in  its 
discussions.  At  the  session  of  1886  he  made  himself  heard 
upon  various  questions  in  debate.  Thus  he  offered  the  fol- 
lowing resolution :  — 


630  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

Hesolved,  That  the  General  Convention  of  the  Protestant  Epis- 
copal Church  sends  cordial  greetings  to  the  assembly  of  the  Con- 
gregational Church  now  in  session  in  this  city,  and  expresses  its 
devout  hope  that  our  deliberations,  though  separately  conducted, 
may  minister  together  to  the  glory  of  God  and  the  advancement 
of  our  common  Christianity. 

In  support  of  this  resolution  he  spoke,  saying  that  the 
Congregationalists  represented  "a  large  body  of  workers  in 
the  cause  of  Christianity  alongside  of  us,  who  sometimes 
seem  to  me  unnecessarily  separated  from  us."  The  motion 
commended  itself  to  the  House  of  Deputies  and  was  unani- 
mously passed,  with  this  amendment;  "And  we  assure  them 
that  we  earnestly  pray  for  such  real  unity  as  is  according 
to  God's  will  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord." 

On  the  question  raised  in  the  course  of  the  debate  on  the 
revision  of  the  Prayer  Book,  whether  the  "  Venite"  should 
be  changed  so  as  to  correspond  with  the  form  in  the  English 
Prayer  Book,  Dr.  Brooks  opposed  the  change,  deprecating 
the  tendency  to  imitate  the  Church  of  England.  Again,  at 
a  meeting  of  the  General  Convention  sitting  as  the  Board  of 
Missions,  there  was  considerable  discussion  on  the  subject  of 
a  proposed  Enrolment  Fund  looking  to  the  raising  of  a  mil- 
lion dollars,  to  be  devoted  to  missions  only  when  the  full 
amount  should  be  raised.  Dr.  Brooks  spoke  earnestly  in 
behalf  of  the  scheme,  urging  that  these  features  of  the  plan 
should  be  rigidly  adhered  to,  —  that  the  fund  should  not  be 
used  until  the  full  amount  had  been  subscribed,  and  that  the 
money  should  be  collected  in  small  sums  from  the  whole 
church.  "Our  church  is  too  largely  a  church  of  the  rich. 
There  will  be  a  temptation  to  seek  the  money  in  large  con- 
tributions from  rich  men  and  rich  women,  in  sums  of  ilOOO 
or  $10,000.  Our  church  should  be  interested  in  the  one  dol- 
lars, and  the  idea  made  prominent  that  the  sum  is  to  be 
raised  by  the  people  in  a  multitude  of  small  subscriptions." 

The  Convention  of  1886  is  also  remembered  for  the  effort 
made  to  change  the  name  of  the  church  by  dropping  from  its 
title  the  words  "Protestant  Episcopal."  Various  names  were 
proposed  as  substitutes,   such  as   "The  Catholic  Church," 


^T.  5o]         GENERAL   CONVENTION  631 

"The  American  Church,"  while  others  preferred  that  it 
should  be  known,  after  "Protestant  Episcopal"  had  been 
elided,  as  "The  Church  in  the  United  States  of  America." 
In  his  speech  against  the  proposed  change  Mr.  Brooks  urged 
the  fitness  of  the  existing  name  "Protestant  Episcopal"  as 
discriminating  the  church  from  the  Koman  Catholic  on  the 
one  hand,  and  from  Protestant  churches  which  had  not  re- 
tained episcopacy.  It  was  easy  to  make  the  name  sound 
ridiculous  by  a  certain  method  of  pronunciation,  or  by  the 
prolongation  of  the  syllables.  But  the  name  nevertheless 
answered  its  true  purpose.  It  was  not  possible  to  abolish  the 
present  title  without  considering  what  title  should  be  substi- 
tuted. Such  names  as  "American"  or  " Catholic  "  implied 
an  assumption  which  was  not  true,  —  that  this  church  was 
one  of  such  large  prominence,  so  largely  representative  of  the 
Christianity  of  America,  that  all  other  denominations  are 
practically  insignificant.  That  tendency  in  the  church  which 
sought  to  borrow  traditions,  vestments,  and  manner  of  wor- 
ship from  the  Church  of  England  did  not  reflect  the  genius 
and  spirit  of  America.  Until  the  church  identified  itself 
more  fully  with  the  spirit  of  American  institutions  and  ceased 
to  support  its  claim  by  its  relation  to  the  Church  of  England, 
it  was  not  entitled  to  be  known  as  the  American  Church. 
But  if  this  ground  were  untenable,  upon  what  other  ground 
could  the  church  take  its  stand  as  the  American  Church? 

It  must  stand  before  the  country  with  the  distinctive  assertion 
of  Apostolical  Succession  as  the  very  substance  and  essence  and 
life  of  the  Church.  Now  there  are  those  who  believe  the  apos- 
tolic succession  to  be  the  essence  and  substance  of  the  Church. 
There  is  no  doubt  about  that.  The  position  which  they  take  in 
regard  to  the  Church  is  absolutely  clear.  That  there  are  other 
men  in  our  Church  who  believe  nothing  of  the  kind,  there  is  no 
doubt.  I,  for  one,  and  I  think  that  I  am  speaking  for  multi- 
tudes in  this  congregation  this  morning,  do  not  believe  in  the 
doctrine  of  apostolic  succession  in  any  such  sense  as  many  receive 
it.  I  do  not  believe  in  the  exclusive  prerogative  which  gives  to 
the  Church  which  receives  it  any  such  absolute  right  of  Christian 
faith.  That  is  not  the  question  before  us ;  but  there  is  no  con- 
ceivable explanation  of  the  desire  to  change  the   name   of   the 


632  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

Church  except  the  distinct  adoption  of  that  theory  as  the  absolute 
condition  on  which  it  lives.  We  have  been  told,  Sir,  with  great 
rhetorical  flourish,  that  this  Church,  when  it  shall  have  taken  its 
new  name,  is  going  to  extend  its  area  and  take  in  all  Christian- 
ity. I  appeal  to  any  reasoning  man,  whether,  in  any  sense,  this 
is  to  be  considered  an  expansion  of  the  power  of  the  Church.  It 
immediately  dooms  it.  It  dooms  it  to  live  in  the  corner  and 
minister  to  men  who  are  convinced  of  a  certain  theory  with  re- 
gard to  the  possession  of  the  privileges  of  the  Christian  ministry. 
The  passage  of  such  a  resolution  as  should  fasten  upon  this 
Church  the  explicit  title  of  the  American  Catholic  Church  dooms 
it  to  become  distinctly  the  Church  of  those  men  who  accept  the 
theory  which  is  based  upon  mere  historical  argument.  Is  that 
going  to  be  the  Church  of  America?  Is  that  going  to  be  the 
Church  for  praying  people  ?  Is  that  the  Church  which  is  going 
to  do  a  work  worthy  of  the  Church  of  Christ  ? 

On  October  31,  the  first  Sunday  after  his  return  to  Bos- 
ton, Dr.  Brooks  preached  a  sermon  in  which  he  gave  to  his 
congregation  an  account  of  the  convention,  and  then  de- 
nounced in  pointed  and  vigorous  language  the  attempt  to 
change  the  name  of  the  church.  He  was  somewhat  despond- 
ent in  his  tone,  a  thing  so  exceptional  with  him  that  this 
case  forms  almost  the  solitary  instance  in  all  the  years  of  his 
ministry.  The  change  of  name  had  not  been  accomplished, 
and  the  vote  against  it  was  decisive,  but  he  had  been  im- 
pressed with  the  extent  of  the  vote  in  its  favor,  and  was 
haunted  by  the  fear  that  in  the  next  convention  the  change 
would  be  carried.  This  fear  he  did  not  disguise  in  his  ser- 
mon. It  was  a  critical  moment  for  him,  because  he  knew 
that  if  the  name  of  the  church  were  changed  to  the  American 
Church,  in  accordance  with  a  theory  of  apostolical  succession, 
there  was  no  longer  a  place  for  him  in  the  Episcopal  Church. 
He  spoke  out  plainly  what  he  felt  and  what  he  feared.  The 
sermon  which  he  now  preached  created  a  popular  sensation 
throughout  the  breadth  and  length  of  the  land,  and  in  Eng- 
land also,  where  it  was  quickly  carried.  The  sermon  was 
extemporaneous,  with  no  record  of  notes  for  its  preparation, 
but  from  the  full  reports  in  the  papers  its  drift  may  be 
gathered :  — 


^T.  50]        GENERAL   CONVENTION  633 

He  began  by  tracing  the  growing  belief  in  the  theory  of  apos- 
tolical succession,  since  the  time  of  the  Oxford  Movement  in  1833, 
till  at  last  those  who  held  the  theory  proposed  to  make  it  the  car- 
dinal feature  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  and  the  warrant  for  chang- 
ing its  name.  The  name  proposed  as  a  substitute,  which  seemed 
most  acceptable  to  those  desiring  the  change,  was  "The  American 
Church. "  Upon  this  name  he  commented  to  the  effect,  that  there 
were  only  two  grounds  which  would  justify  its  adoption.  On  the 
first  of  these  grounds,  the  Church  claiming  such  a  name  should  be 
the  largest  in  the  country,  numerically  so  strong  that  all  other 
Christian  commimities  would  appear  as  insignificant  or  unimpor- 
tant in  comparison.  But  the  change  of  name  was  not  urged  on 
this  ground;  it  would  be  absurd,  if  it  were,  for  the  Episcopal 
Church  stood  seventh  or  eighth  in  the  list,  when  tested  among  the 
churches  by  its  number  of  communicants.  It  was  evident  there- 
fore that  the  change  of  name  must  be  justified  on  another  ground, 
—  that  the  Episcopal  Church,  even ,  though  one  of  the  smaller 
Christian  bodies,  had  a  distinct  and  absolute  right,  through  a 
divine  commission  from  Clirist  and  the  Apostles  not  possessed  by 
other  churches,  and  entitling  her,  therefore,  to  claim  for  herself, 
and  to  be  known  as,  the  only  true  apostolic,  Catholic  Church  in 
America.  If  the  Episcopal  Church  did  indeed  possess  such  an 
exclusive  commission,  then  she  would  have  the  right  to  the  name, 
"The  Church  in  the  United  States  "  or  the  American  Church. 
Upon  this  point  he  remarked  that  there  was  not  a  line  in  the 
Prayer  Book  which  declares  any  such  theory.  It  was  simply  a 
theory  held  by  individuals,  —  a  theory  which  many  both  of  the 
clergy  and  laity  did  not  believe.  He  avowed  for  himself  that  he 
rejected  the  theory  and  would  not  consent  to  it  for  a  single  day. 
If  this  movement  in  behalf  of  a  change  of  name  were  not  checked, 
and  the  change  were  accomplished,  he  did  not  see  how  he  or  any 
one,  who  did  not  believe  in  apostolical  succession,  could  remain  in 
the  Episcopal  Church.  He  was  despondent  as  he  considered  that 
the  proposition  to  change  the  name  was  defeated  by  what  seemed 
a  small  majority ;  but  there  was  hope  in  the  circumstance  that  the 
laity  were  more  numerously  opposed  to  it  than  the  clergy ;  unless 
the  feeling  and  intentions  of  the  laity  should  be  asserted  more 
strongly  in  the  next  few  years,  he  feared  the  change  would  be  ac- 
complished, and  the  Episcopal  Church  be  doomed  in  consequence 
to  become  a  small  fantastic  sect. 

Having  freed  his  mind  on  the  subject  Dr.  Brooks  refused 
to  be  drawn  into  controversy.  He  became  the  target  for  crit- 
icism, but,  while  many  expositions  were  offered  of  the  falsity 


634  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

of  his  argument,  he  kept  silence.  He  had  not  yet  realized 
the  importance  of  his  utterances,  or  how,  when  he  was  speak- 
ing from  the  pulpit  of  Trinity  Church,  the  whole  people 
were  listening  to  him.  No  one  in  the  Episcopal  Church  com- 
manded the  hearing  that  was  accorded  to  him.  It  did  not 
give  him,  in  this  case,  any  pleasure  to  know  that  the  stric- 
tures he  had  made  upon  the  attitude  of  a  party  in  his  own 
church  were  listened  to  by  all  the  churches,  as  though  he 
had  been  specially  speaking  to  them.  He  was  annoyed  by 
the  way  in  which  the  press  had  given  publicity  to  his  re- 
marks. "A  man,"  he  said,  "may  go  on  all  his  life  preach- 
ing the  gospel  and  no  one  takes  any  notice  of  it,  but  when 
he  speaks  of  some  matter  of  church  administration,  he  is 
treated  as  if  he  had  made  some  marvellous  discovery."  Yet 
there  was  justification  for  the  popular  interest  aroused  by 
this  remarkable  sermon.  How  it  impressed  the  congrega- 
tion listening  to  him  is  evident  from  this  testimony  of  one 
who  was  present :  — 

It  was  the  most  thrilling,  dramatic  thing  I  ever  heard.  He 
was  intensely  stirred,  and  the  stillness  as  people  listened  was 
painful.  By  and  by  the  sound  of  sobs  was  heard  in  different 
parts  of  the  church;  the  excitement  was  so  great  that  tears  must 
come  to  relieve  the  tension. 

Phillips  Brooks  was  stirred  to  the  depths  of  his  being.  All 
that  he  held  most  true  was  in  the  issue.  Indig-nation  min- 
gled  with  alarm,  as  in  vehement  speech  he  gave  expression  to 
his  convictions.  He  had  never  been  so  moved  in  any  single 
utterance  since  the  days  of  the  civil  war.  Under  ordinary 
circumstances  he  would  have  taken  a  different  method  of  com- 
bating what  he  regarded  to  be  an  error,  admitting,  indeed, 
that  the  Episcopal  clergy  were  right  in  aspiring  to  claim  an 
apostolical  succession,  but  that  the  clergy  of  other  denomina- 
tions stood  upon  the  same  footing,  equally  entitled  to  the 
same  ambition,  nay,  that  every  man  and  woman,  imitating 
the  life  of  the  apostles,  as  the  apostles  imitated  Christ,  were 
truly  constituted  in  actual,  and  even  tangible,  apostolic  descent. 
Now  he  followed  the  opposite  method,  —  the  denunciation  of 
what  was  untrue  when  it  was  made  an  exclusive  claim.     He 


^T.  50]  THE  NAME  OF  THE  CHURCH      63  s 

believed  the  moment  had  come  which  called  for  the  courage 
of  a  reformer,  who  must  overthrow  before  he  could  rebuild. 
Under  this  conviction,  roused  to  moral  indignation,  he  became 
like  the  whirlwind  in  its  devastating  power. 

But  in  taking  this  attitude  he  felt  that  he  was  not  alone  ; 
that  he  was  supported  by  eminent  scholars  in  the  Anglican 
Church :  Dr.  Arnold  of  Rugby,  Bishop  Lightf oot  of  Durham, 
Dr.  Hatch  in  his  studies  of  early  Christian  organization. 
Such,  also,  he  knew  was  the  attitude  of  the  reformers  in  the 
English  Church  in  the  sixteenth  century.  In  the  American 
Episcopal  Church  there  had  been  many  bishops  and  clergy 
from  the  time  of  Bishop  White,  who  held  the  same  convic- 
tion, valuing  episcopacy,  regarding  it  as  having  apostolic 
sanction,  yet  as  not  essential  to  the  existence  of  a  Christian 
church.  Of  some  of  these  the  lives  have  been  written  and 
their  opinions  placed  on  record  :  Bishop  Griswold  of  Massa- 
chusetts,^ Bishop  Mcllvaine  of  Ohio,^  Bishop  Meade  of  Vir- 
ginia.^ Among  them  was  also  his  revered  teacher  in  Virginia, 
Dr.  Sparrow,  with  whose  more  outspoken  words  on  the  sub- 
ject he  was  in  sympathy.^     The  attempt  to  change  the  name 

1  Cf .  Life  of  Bishop  Griswold,  by  Rev.  John  S.  Stone,  D.  D.,  pp.  221,  343- 
345,  361-364. 

2  Cf .  Life  of  Bishop  Mcllvaine,  by  Cams,  p.  273  ;  also  Hall,  Works,  vi.  p.  56. 

3  Memoir  of  Bt.  Bev.  Win.  Meade,  D.  D.,  by  the  Rt.  Rev.  J.  Johns,  D.  D., 
pp.  175,  176. 

*  Cf.  Life  and  Correspondence  of  William  Sparrow,  D.  D.,  by  Cornelius 
Walker,  D.  D.  p.  155  :  — 

"  On  the  subject  of  the  Apostolic  Succession  I  am  clearer  than  ever ;  and  I 
do  not  think  that  a  man  can  logically  and  consistently  hold  to  that  as  an  essen- 
tial of  a  valid  ministry,  and  maintain  true  Protestant  principles.  That  was  the 
nov  aTw  on  which  the  Tractarians  planted  their  lever,  in  the  first  numbers  of 
their  series,  and  by  which  they  have  been  enabled  to  move  the  Church,  as  with 
an  earthquake.  And  so  long  as  a  man,  or  a  church,  holds  to  it,  he  is  liable,  or 
it  is  liable,  to  go  off  in  a  Romish  tangent,  further  and  further,  till  met  by  the 
secant  of  Romish  infallibility." 

"  The  doctrine  of  Apostolical  Succession  as  commonly  taught  is  the  back- 
bone of  both  systems  [Roman  and  High  Anglican].  Both  alike  resolve  the 
being  of  a  church  into  it.  Those  that  have  it,  no  matter  how  heretical  (I  had 
the  statement  alike  from  a  Catholic  and  a  Protestant  Bishop),  are  a  Church; 
those  who  have  it  not,  no  matter  how  orthodox  and  pious  and  outwardly  regu- 
lar, are  no  Church.  Good  Lord  deliver  me  from  such  a  caricature  of  the  sim- 
ple and  spiritual  Gospel  of  Christ."     Ibid.  p.  195. 


6^6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1886 

of  the  church  was  equivalent  to  the  condemnation  of  these 
and  many  other  honored  names.  Had  it  been  accomplished, 
he  himself  would  have  been  driven  from  the  Episcopal 
Church. 

From  this  time  Phillips  Brooks  never  ceased  to  hear  the 
renewing  echoes  of  his  utterance.  The  letters  poured  in 
upon  him  at  once  from  every  part  of  the  country  and  from 
England,  most  of  them  thanking  him  for  his  sermon. 
There  was  a  tone  of  excitement  in  them,  or  exhilarated 
gratitude.  Many  of  these  letters  came  from  persons  of 
distinction  or  of  high  social  position,  but  also  from  hum- 
ble women  and  inquiring  students,  who  thanked  him  for  his 
words.  It  was  the  laity  who  were  chiefly  moved  to  thank- 
fulness. It  is  not  without  its  pathos  and  its  deeper  mean- 
ing that  many  who  wrote  him  belonged  to  other  denomina- 
tions. It  was  clear  that  it  had  not  been  without  pain  that 
they  had  seemed  to  see  the  Episcopal  Church  withdrawing 
from  the  fellowship  of  the  other  Protestant  churches,  and 
erecting  an  impassable  barrier  between  them.  They  were 
loyal  to  their  own  communion,  but  they  also  loved  the  Epis- 
copal Church,  and  would  fain  have  had  the  privilege  of  its 
ministrations  whenever  convenience  allowed.  Phillips  Brooks 
had  spoken  to  them  with  authority  and  in  the  interest  of 
Christian  unity  and  fellowship.  His  name  now  became 
dearer  than  ever  to  those  who  professed  and  called  them- 
selves Christians,  to  whatever  denomination  they  belonged, 
and  to  those  unchurched  masses  who  looked  up  to  him  as 
their  teacher  and  spokesman. 

And  there  also  came  letters  of  another  kind,  some  of  them 
anonymous,  asking  him  to  confine  his  attention  to  preaching 
the  gospel  and  let  the  church  alone.  He  was  only  renewing 
old  controversies  which  would  otherwise  have  died  out,  and 
he  was  embittering  party  spirit.  Others  called  his  attention 
to  parts  of  the  Prayer  Book,  which  in  his  supposed  ignorance 
he  had  overlooked.  This  was  not  all.  An  aged  clergyman, 
who,  with  his  wife,  had  been  devoted  to  him,  finding  comfort 
and  inspiration  from  his  sermons,  wrote  to  him  in  great  dis- 
tress because  of  a  report  which  was  in  circulation,  and  had 


JET.  50]  THE  NAME  OF  THE  CHURCH     637 

found  its  way  into  the  newspapers,  to  the  effect  that  he  had 
become  an  "apostate,"  had  "denied  the  truth  of  the  Trin- 
ity, of  the  Incarnation,  and  of  apostolic  succession,  and  was 
about  to  leave  the  church  for  Unitarianism."  Others  still 
thought  it  was  not,  perhaps,  too  late  to  labor  with  him,  and 
to  give  him  some  light  on  the  origin  of  the  Christian  minis- 
try. 

The  disturbance  which  this  subject  brought  to  Mr.  Brooks 
did  not  at  once  subside.  In  proportion  to  his  depth  and 
intensity  of  his  feeling  was  the  inward  revolt  through  which 
he  was  passing.  It  required  time  before  he  could  again 
regard  the  future  of  the  Episcopal  Church  with  complacency 
and  hope.  Meantime  it  was  fortunate  that  immediately 
after  his  return  from  the  convention,  it  fell  to  him  to  take 
up  his  work  at  Harvard,  where  association  with  the  young 
life  brought  its  healing  balm  to  a  spirit  that  had  been 
wounded.  The  following  extracts  are  from  his  letters  writ- 
ten while  in  Chicago  :  — 

Chicago,  Illinois,  October  19,  1886. 

Mt  dear ,   Did  you  ever  get  a  letter  from  the  General 

Convention?  It  is  getting  pretty  dull.  The  long  debate  upon 
Appellate  Courts  has  just  got  decided,  and  they  are  talking  about 
some  useless  Canons,  in  a  very  helpless  way.  So  I  have  come 
out  into  the  lobby  here  to  write  and  tell  you  all  about  it.  There 
is  a  long  table  at  which  a  lot  of  black-coated  clergymen  are 
writing.  Some,  I  suppose,  are  writing  to  their  wives,  and  some  to 
their  senior  wardens.  .  .  .  The  people  of  Chicago  are  very  hos- 
pitable, and  I  have  had  a  first-rate  time.  Last  week  I  went  out 
to  dinner  every  day,  and  it  was  great  fun.  They  have  very  big 
houses  and  are  very  rich.  The  men  are  better  than  the  women, 
whom  I  do  not  like.  The  city  is  enormous,  and  when  they  take 
you  out  for  a  drive  there  is  no  knowing  when  you  will  get  back. 
But  the  convention  is  not  good.  The  great  debate  of  last  week 
was  upon  changing  the  Church's  name,  and  the  change  they 
wanted  to  make  would  have  left  no  chance  for  sensible  work  in 
the  Church,  nor  even,  as  it  seems  to  me,  for  sensible  men  to  con- 
tinue in  her  ministry.  Fortunately  it  was  defeated,  but  by  so 
small  a  majority  that  it  is  evidently  pretty  sure  to  come  some 
day.  But  I  must  go  back  to  my  seat.  Good-by,  my  love  to 
Gert,  and  I  shall  be  at  home  week  after  next. 


638  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1886 

Chicago,  October  27, 1886. 
Dear  Cooper,  —  You  were  a  very  good  man  to  write  me  a 
letter  which  broke  the  monotony  of  the  convention,  and  cheered 

my  soul  up  very  much  indeed.      W has  not  come  up  yet 

from  breakfast,  and  I  will  answer  your  note  before  he  gets  here 
and  wants  to  smoke.  The  convention  has  been  really  very  bad 
indeed.  No  spark  of  generous  or  noble  spirit  has  appeared  in 
its  debates.  The  crowding  forward  of  the  hard  formal  Ecclesi- 
astical spirit  has  been  evident  everywhere.  The  friends  of  the 
new  name  are  rejoiced,  as  they  have  reason  to  be,  and  confidently 
expect  to  carry  their  purpose  (as  they  will)  at  the  next  conven- 
tion, and  I  am  glad  that  we  are  going  home  to-morrow.  I  wish 
that  I  could  stop  on  the  way  and  see  the  big  statue  inaugurated 
in  New  York.  That  would  be  well  worth  while,  and  vastly 
more  interesting  than  the  convention.  But  I  shall  get  home  in 
time  for  the  great  festival  we  are  going  to  have  over  the  two 
hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  Harvard.  That  is  going  to 
be  the  big  Boston  sensation  of  the  autumn. 

To  Mr.  Brooks,  in  his  despondency,  there  came  letters 
of  reassurance,  telling  him  that  his  fears  were  groundless. 
Thus  an  eminent  lawyer  wrote  to  him :  — 

Boston,  November  1,  1886. 

Notwithstanding  your  apprehensions,  I  assure  you  that,  under 
no  possible  circumstances,  will  the  laity  of  our  Church,  who 
mingle  so  much  more  with  the  members  of  other  churches  than 
do  the  clergy,  ever  consent  to  adopt  any  such  name  as  "TAe 
Church  in  the  United  States,"  or  the  Holy  Catholic  Church,  or 
anything  like  it.      No  —  never ! 

One  reason  they  were  not  more  generally  heard  from  in  the 
late  convention,  I  doubt  not,  was  the  belief  that  no  such  absurd 
proposition  ever  could  pass.  In  looking  over  my  list  of  those 
who  voted  "Nay"  on  this  subject,  I  note  the  absence  of  many 
from  the  East  who  would  undoubtedly  have  voted  against  it, 
while  the  Western  dioceses  were  more  fully  represented. 

Mark  my  words,  they  will  never  come  so  near  passing  it  again ! 

A  prominent  layman  of  Boston  wrote  to  him :  — 

Boston,  November  2,  1886. 

Dear  Dr.  Brooks,  —  I  have  read  with  great  interest  the 
report  of  your  sermon  on  last  Sunday  morning,  and  I  want  to 
say  that  I  agree  to  every  word  of  it ;  and  further  wish  to  thank 
you  for  so  clear  and  positive  an  utterance.  It  is  high  time  that 
a  warning  voice  be  raised ;  at  the  same  time,  I  believe  that  the 


MT.  50]     HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY  639 

laity  of  the  country  are  overwhelmingly  of  your  way  of  thinking, 
and  they  will  never  consent  to  a  change  of  name  for  the  church,  nor 
approve  the  extremes  which  the  men  who  live  in  closets  advocate. 
In  my  opinion  there  will  always  be  a  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  regardless  of  any  action  that  may  be  taken  by  any  future 
convention.  And  should  these  matters  in  dispute  be  pressed  to 
a  division  of  the  Church,  the  advocates  of  a  new  name  will  be 
the  outsiders. 

Sincerely  yours,  — -■ — . 

This  letter  was  written  by  the  president  of  a  New  Eng- 
land college :  — 

I  cannot  refrain,  after  reading  the  report  in  yesterday's  "Trib- 
une "  of  your  sermon  on  Sunday  last,  from  expressing  to  you  my 
gratitude  at  your  frank  repudiation  of  a  doctrine  which  has  been 
a  great  hindrance  to  the  advance  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church,  and,  as  I  believe,  to  the  progress  of  the  kingdom  of  God 
in  America. 

Thousands  who  have  read  your  words  hitherto  with  the  deepest 
interest  will  henceforth  feel  towards  you  a  loving  loyalty  that 
knows  no  limit.  Not  that  before  I  have  really  believed  that  you 
held  such  a  doctrine  as  that  there  are  no  other  ministers  of  Christ 
but  those  in  the  supposed  direct  apostolic  descent,  but  the  frank 
rejection  of  this  belief,  and  the  loving  brotherhood  expressed  by 
you  for  others,  will  certainly  give  the  deepest  joy  to  a  great 
many. 

The  Harvard  festival,  commemorating  the  two  hundred 
and  fiftieth  anniversary,  began  on  the  5th  of  November,  the 
festivities  lasting  for  four  days.  Friday,  the  first  of  these 
days,  was  the  Day  of  the  Law  School;  Saturday  was  Under- 
graduates' Day;  Sunday  was  Foundation  Day,  and  Monday 
the  Day  of  the  Alumni,  when  the  honorary  degrees  were  con- 
ferred. Congratulations  came  from  Cambridge  University 
in  England,  and  from  the  Universities  of  Edinburgh  and 
Heidelberg.  Foreign  visitors  were  present  as  delegates  of 
these  universities:  Professor  Mandell  Creighton  (now  Lord 
Bishop  of  London)  with  a  message  from  Emmanuel  College, 
Cambridge,  of  which  John  Harvard  was  a  member;  Dr. 
Charles  Taylor,  Master  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge; 
and  Kt.  Hon.  Sir  Lyon  Playfair,  of  the  University  of  Edin- 
burgh.    The  President  of  the  United  States,  Grover  Cleve- 


640  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1886 

land,  honored  the  occasion  with  his  presence  on  Alumni  Day, 
and  the  festivities  culminated,  when  James  Russell  Lowell 
was  the  orator,  and  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  read  the  poem. 
A  large  number  of  the  alumni  were  there,  for  Harvard 
counted  among  the  living  graduates  of  the  College  alone 
4600  names.  Everything  was  done  which  could  give  pres- 
tige to  the  celebration. 

One  day,  Sunday,  the  7th  of  November,  was  consecrated 
to  religion,  when  alumni  of  the  College  who  were  in  the  min- 
istry had  been  requested  to  recall  in  their  respective  places 
the  history  of  Harvard.  The  sermon  in  the  morning  of  that 
day  was  preached  by  Professor  Francis  G.  Peabody,  at  Apple- 
ton  Chapel,  and  in  the  evening  came  the  sermon  by  Phillips 
Brooks.  His  subject  had  been  assigned  him,  the  religious 
history  of  Harvard.  He  took  for  his  text  the  words  of  St. 
Paul,  "Jesus  Christ,  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for- 
ever." The  changes  through  which  the  College  had  passed 
he  refused  to  look  upon  in  a  negative  way  as  a  mere  casting 
off  of  restraints,  but  rather  as  so  many  successive  enlarge- 
ments, wherein  the  partial  was  gradually  reconciling  itself  to 
the  universal,  the  temporary  fulfilling  itself  with  the  eternal. 
He  could  speak  but  briefly  of  these  religious  vicissitudes, 
in  a  history  which  covered  two  hundred  and  fifty  years.  But 
his  brief  summary  reviewed  the  ground  where  momentous 
controversies  had  been  waged :  — 

There  was  a  discipline  of  the  Christian  church  larger  than  the 
discipline  of  the  Puritans,  in  which  the  discipline  of  the  Puri- 
tans had  floated  as  the  part  floats  in  the  whole.  The  discipline 
of  the  Puritans  felt  that;  was  pressed  on,  was  tempted  by  it, 
and  at  last  broke  open  in  the  attempt  to  find  it.  Experience 
was  larger  than  "Whitfield,  dogma  was  larger  than  Calvin,  life 
was  larger  than  theology;  and  so,  one  after  another,  in  these 
which  are  the  concentric  spheres  within  which  human  nature  lives, 
the  successive  openings  of  the  partial  into  the  universal,  and  the 
temporary  into  the  eternal  came.  .  .  .  What  is  this  universal 
and  eternal  power  within  which  these  and  all  the  temporary 
struggles  of  mankind  are  included?  We  open  the  Sacred  Book, 
we  turn  to  the  majestic  letter  written  centuries  ago  to  members 
of  the  great  sacred  nation,  and  there  we  find  our  answer,  "Jesus 
Christ,  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever." 


^T.  50]      HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY  641 

He  was  thus  led  to  ask  the  question,  What  and  who  is 
Jesus  Christ?  At  this  point  in  his  sermon,  the  inextinguish- 
able theological  curiosity  was  alert  to  know  the  answer  he 
would  make.  The  mere  curiosity  would  have  been  satisfied 
had  he  announced  his  adherence  to  the  Athanasian  formula, 
as  given  in  the  Nicene  Creed,  carefully  discriminating  it 
from  Arian  or  Socinian  teaching.  This  formula  he  held  with 
mind  and  heart,  but  it  was  not  the  time  or  place  for  theo- 
logical discussion.  He  could  have  satisfied  curiosity,  but  he 
would  have  alienated  the  larger  part  of  his  audience  and 
killed  the  effect  of  his  utterance.  He  did  not  stand  there 
merely  for  the  purpose  of  putting  himself  on  record,  or  of 
"bearing  witness"  as  he  has  called  it  in  his  "Lectures  on 
Preaching,"  which  has  the  tendency  to  weaken  the  message. 
He  therefore  gave  the  conditions,  the  atmosphere,  out  of 
which  the  formula  had  originally  grown,  and  left  the  infer- 
ence to  his  hearers : — 

And  what  and  who  is  Jesus  Christ  ?  In  reverence  and  humility 
let  us  give  our  answer.  He  is  the  meeting  of  the  Divine  and 
Human,  — the  presence  of  God  in  humanity,  the  perfection  of 
humanity  in  God;  the  divine  made  human,  the  human  shown  to 
be  capable  of  union  with  the  divine ;  the  utterance,  therefore,  of 
the  nearness  and  the  love  of  God,  and  of  the  possibility  of  man. 
Once  in  the  ages  came  the  wondrous  life,  once  in  the  stretch  of 
history  the  face  of  Jesus  shone  in  Palestine,  and  His  feet  left 
their  blessed  impress  upon  earth;  but  what  that  life  made  mani- 
fest had  been  forever  true.  Its  truth  was  timeless,  the  truth  of 
all  eternity.  The  love  of  God,  the  possibility  of  man,  —  these 
two  which  made  the  Christhood,  —  these  two,  not  two  but  one, 
had  been  the  element  in  which  all  life  was  lived,  all  knowledge 
known,  all  growth  attained.  Oh,  how  little  men  have  made  it, 
and  how  great  it  is !  Around  all  life  which  ever  has  been  lived 
there  has  been  poured  forever  the  life  of  the  loving  deity  and  the 
ideal  humanity.  All  partial  excellence,  all  learning,  all  brother- 
hood, all  hope,  has  been  bosomed  on  this  changeless,  this  unchan- 
ging Being  which  has  stretched  from  the  forgotten  beginning  to 
the  unguessed  end.  It  is  because  God  has  been  always,  and  been 
always  good,  and  because  man  has  been  always  the  son  of  God, 
capable  in  the  very  substance  of  his  nature  of  likeness  to  and 
union  with  his  Father,  —  it  is  because  of  this  that  nobleness  has 
never  died,  that  truth  has  been  sought  and  found,  that  struggle 

VOL.  II 


642  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [i886 

and  hope  have  always  sprung  anew,  and  that  the  life  of  man  has 
always  reached  to  larger  and  to  larger  things. 

This  is  the  Christian  truth  of  Christ.  "In  Him  was  life,  and 
the  life  was  the  light  of  men."  This  is  the  truth  of  man's  re- 
demption. As  any  man  or  any  institution  feels  and  claims 
around  its  life,  as  the  element  in  which  it  is  to  live,  the  sympa- 
thy of  God  and  the  perfectibility  of  man,  that  man  or  institution 
is  redeemed;  its  fetters  and  restraints  give  way,  and  it  goes 
forward  to  whatever  growth  and  glory  it  is  in  the  line  of  its 
being  to  attain. 

On  December  15  Mr.  Brooks  took  part  in  the  commemo- 
ration of  the  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  King's  Chapel, 
making  an  address  which  was  felicitous  under  difficult  cir- 
cumstances. As  the  rector  of  Trinity  Church,  a  daughter 
of  King's  Chapel,  it  was  appropriate  that  he  should  be  pre- 
sent; but  recalling  the  theological  divergence  in  consequence 
of  which  King's  Chapel  had  been  lost  to  the  Episcopal 
Church,  the  occasion  called  for  wisdom  and  moderation. 
Under  these  conditions  he  spoke,  dwelling  on  the  civic  in- 
terests which  united  the  two  parishes,  on  their  common  rela- 
tion to  American  history,  on  the  deeper  issues  which  under- 
lay theological  discussion  and  religious  differences.  "The 
present  condition  of  the  religious  world  was  not  a  finality. 
There  was  to  be  a  future  for  the  Christian  church,  bringing 
richer  results  than  the  past  had  attained.  There  were  pro- 
blems which  had  not  yet  been  solved.  To  prepare  for  that 
future,  it  was  not  needful  to  revive  old  disputes,  but,  while 
recognizing  their  earnestness,  to  strive  for  a  deeper  consecra- 
tion to  Christ  in  personal  obedience." 

It  seems  to  me  that  any  one  who  looks  back  on  the  past  and 
recognizes  in  history  the  great  providence  of  God  in  His  dealings 
with  men  —  so  much  deeper  than  men  have  begun  to  compre- 
hend —  simply  wants  to  say  to  any  church,  speaking  for  his  own 
as  he  speaks  for  others:  Let  us  go  and  seek  that  Christ,  that  in- 
finite Christ,  whom  we  have  not  begun  to  know  as  we  may  know 
Him;  that  Christ  who  has  so  much  more  to  show  us  than  He 
has  shown ;  that  Christ  who  can  show  Himself  to  us  only  as  we 
give  ourselves  in  absolute  obedience  to  Him.  May  that  Christ 
receive  from  us,  in  each  new  period  of  our  history,  more  complete 
consecration,  more  entire  acceptance  of  Him  as  our  Master;  and 


^T.  50]     THE  CHRISTMAS  SERMON  643 

so  may  we  receive  from  Him  rich  promises  of  new  liglit,  new 
manifestations  of  His  truth,  new  gifts  of  His  Spirit,  which  He 
has  promised  to  bestow  upon  those  who  consecrate  themselves  to 
Him  in  loving  obedience,  unto  the  end  of  time  and  through  all 
eternity!  If  one  may  turn  a  greeting  to  a  prayer,  may  I  not 
ask  for  you,  as  I  know  you  ask  for  all  of  our  churches,  a  more 
profound  and  absolute  spirit  of  consecration  to  our  Master, 
Christ,  that  in  Him,  and  only  in  Him,  we  may  seek  after  and 
come  to  His  ever  richer  life  ? 

Among  the  books  he  was  reading  was  the  Life  of  Long- 
fellow. "How  charming  it  is!  What  a  bright,  happy, 
friendly  existence  he  had!"  The  approaching  Christmas 
brought  to  him,  as  usual,  an  inward  peace  and  delight.  He 
commemorated  it  this  year  by  going  to  a  Sunday-school  cele- 
bration of  poor  children,  where  a  stereopticon  exhibition  was 
to  be  given  to  which  he  had  been  invited  to  comment  on  the 
different  pictures.  But  on  the  Sunday  before  Christmas  he 
could  not  refrain  from  reverting  to  the  topic  which  had 
pained  him.  He  preached  a  sermon  on  the  apostolic  com- 
mission, from  the  text  St.  Matthew  xxviii.  20 :  "  Lo,  I  am 
with  you  alway,  even  unto  the  end  of  the  world,"  and  brought 
out  in  more  positive  form  the  truth  whose  denial  seemed  to 
him  to  be  fraught  with  grave  danger.  The  sermon  was 
heard  from  by  an  anonymous  letter,  reproaching  him  for 
higgling  about  a  name  and  talking  of  a  danger  which  no  one 
saw  but  himself. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

1887 

INCIDENTS  IN  PARISH  LIFE.  INVITATION  TO  DELIVER  THE 
BAMPTON  LECTURES.  EXTRACTS  FROM  NOTE-BOOKS. 
SERMON  AT  FANEUIL  HALL.  ST.  ANDREW'S  MISSION 
CHURCH.  TENTH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  CONSECRATION 
OF  TRINITY  CHURCH.  SERMON  AT  ANDOVER.  SUMMER 
IN   EUROPE.      ILLNESS.      CORRESPONDENCE 

The  events  described  in  the  last  chapter  are  important, 
but  the  most  important  features  in  the  life  of  Phillips 
Brooks  baffle  description.  It  defies  the  imagination  when 
we  attempt  to  reproduce  the  scene  at  Trinity  Church  on 
successive  Sundays  in  each  revolving  year,  when  every  Sun- 
day seemed  like  the  bridal  of  earth  and  sky.  Of  any  one 
of  these  years  the  same  story  may  be  told.  There  was  no 
diminution  in  the  power  of  the  preacher,  but  rather  an  in- 
crease in  the  mystic  potency  of  his  appeal.  There  was  no 
decline  in  the  people's  interest.  What  a  newspaper  writer 
says  of  the  Sundays  in  1887  was  true  of  the  preceding  and 
of  the  following  years:  "Every  Sunday  crowds  are  to  be 
seen  packing  the  vestibules  and  the  corridors  of  Trinity  in 
vain  efforts  to  enter."  Whatever  might  be  the  subject  of 
the  sermon,  it  was  impossible  for  the  preacher  to  be  dull  or 
uninteresting;  it  was  impossible  to  be  present  and  not  to 
listen.  No  theatre  could  compete  for  interest  or  fascination 
with  Trinity  Church,  where  religion  was  invested  with  per- 
petual freshness,  as  if  therein  lay  the  charm  of  living.  One 
Sunday  a  stranger  was  observed,  who,  after  the  service  was 
over,  seemed  to  be  confused,  looking  about  in  a  distracted 
way.  He  was  asked  if  he  had  lost  anything.  He  replied : 
"I  feel  as  if  the  gods  had  come  down  again  to  the  earth.  I 
have  come  all  the  way  from  Canada  just  to  hear  him  preach, 


^T.  5i]      HENRY   WARD   BEECHER  645 

and  I  would  come  again."  A  person  wlio  went  to  Trinity 
for  the  purpose  of  studying  the  congregation  as  well  as  the 
preacher,  looked  about  him  for  a  moment  to  find  every  face 
upturned  to  the  pulpit,  and  was  unable  to  cast  more  than 
this  furtive  glance  for  fear  he  would  lose  what  the  preacher 
was  saying.  We  must  not  attempt  to  describe  these  occa- 
sions, or  even  to  enumerate  the  sermons  still  remembered  by 
those  who  heard  them.  But  the  mind  seeks  points  on  which 
to  rest  in  a  bewildering  environment  of  wealth,  as  in  a  pic- 
ture gallery  where  nothing  is  seen  if  the  attempt  is  made  to 
look  at  everything.  In  the  midst  of  this  distraction  let  a 
few  incidents  be  taken  as  types  of  the  rest. 

It  was  a  custom  of  Mr.  Brooks  through  many  years  to 
speak  in  his  sermons  of  eminent  persons  who  had  died, 
whether  in  church  or  state.  One  of  his  favorite  hymns 
was,  "Who  are  these  in  bright  array?"  When  he  an- 
nounced it,  the  people  knew  that  he  had  lost  some  friend,  or 
was  about  to  commemorate  the  departure  of  some  one  known 
for  distinguished  services.  On  the  Sunday  after  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  died,  he  took  for  his  text,  "He  that  over- 
cometh  shall  inherit  all  things."  "It  seems  very  strange," 
said  some  one  who  was  present,  "that  no  daily  paper  of  the 
following  Monday  contained  any  report  of  that  sermon." 
This  was  in  substance  what  was  said  of  Mr.  Beecher  at  the 
close  of  the  sermon,  as  it  is  recalled  by  an  interested  lis- 
tener :  — 

I  know  that  you  are  all  thinking  as  I  speak  of  the  great  soul 
that  has  passed  away,  of  the  great  preacher,  for  he  was  the 
greatest  preacher  in  America,  and  the  greatest  preacher  means 
the  greatest  power  In  the  land.  To  make  a  great  preacher,  two 
things  are  necessary,  the  love  of  truth  and  the  love  of  souls ;  and 
surely  no  man  had  greater  love  of  truth  or  love  of  souls  than 
Henry  Ward  Beecher.  Great  services,  too,  did  he  render  to  the- 
ology, which  Is  making  great  progress  now.  It  Is  not  that  we  are 
discovering  new  truths,  but  that  what  lay  dead  and  dry  In  men's 
souls  has  awakened.  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  has  been  poured 
Into  humanity,  and  no  one  more  than  Mr.  Beecher  has  helped  to 
this,  pouring  his  great  Insight  and  sympathy  and  courage  out  upon 
the  truths  which  God  gave  him  to  deliver.     A  great  leader  in 


646  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1887 

the  theological  world,  believing  in  the  Divine  Christ  and  in  eter- 
nal hope  for  mankind,  foremost  in  every  great  work  and  in  all 
progress,  one  of  that  noble  band  of  men  whose  hands  clutched 
the  throat  of  slavery,  and  never  relaxed  their  hold  till  the  last 
shackle  fell  off;  inspiring  men  to  war,  speaking  words  of  love 
and  reconciliation  when  peace  had  come,  standing  by  the  poor 
and  oppressed,  bringing  a  slave  girl  into  his  pulpit  and  making 
his  people  pay  her  ransom.  A  true  American  like  Webster,  a 
great  preacher,  a  great  leader,  a  great  patriot,  a  great  man. 

We  feel  sure  that  Mr.  Beecher  knew  these  Revelation  pro- 
mises. Wonderful  was  the  vitality  given  him.  Surely  he  had 
inner  communion  with  God.  Truly  was  he  a  pillar  of  the  tem- 
ple. Rejoice  in  the  dead  who  die  in  the  Lord.  They  have 
overcome  and  shall  inherit  all  things. 

Part  of  the  impressiveness  of  the  moment  lay  in  the  feel- 
ing which  all  shared,  that  it  was  the  greatest  of  living 
preachers  who  was  paying  this  tribute,  and  in  so  doing  was 
unconsciously  describing  himself.  Phillips  Brooks  had  often 
listened  to  Mr.  Beecher  in  the  pulpit  or  on  the  platform  of 
the  lecturer,  but  the  two  men  had  never  met.  An  extract 
from  a  letter  to  Dr.  Brooks  is  here  given,  which  describes 
a  scene  worth  remembering,  —  a  picture  of  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  visiting  Trinity  Church :  — 

New  York,  March  27,  1887. 

I  regret  very  much  that  you  did  not  know  him  [Beecher]  per- 
sonally. He  was  an  admirer  of  yours.  He  was  very  fond  of 
the  Episcopal  Church.  His  mother  was  of  that  denomination. 
One  forenoon  he  and  I  visited  your  Church.  No  one  but  the 
janitor  was  there.  We  spent  three  hours  there.  His  admiration 
of  the  architecture  and  of  the  decorations  was  great.  He  went 
so  far  as  to  carry  out  the  unfinished  decorations,  and  made  many 
suggestions  as  to  what  he  would  put  in  such  and  such  panels  and 
niches  and  arches.  He  said  there  that  he  wished  to  know  you. 
It  was  there  he  told  me  about  his  mother,  and  took  from  his 
pocket  a  lock  of  her  hair  and  showed  me.  As  he  related  the 
history  of  her  saintly  life  he  wept.  He  never  knew  his  mother; 
but  few  men  ever  loved  more  deeply  a  mother's  memory. 

There  was  one  sermon  most  characteristic,  which  for  some 
reason  was  made  the  occasion  of  criticism  in  the  daily 
papers.  The  text  was  from  the  words  of  the  children  of 
Israel  to  Moses ;  "  Speak  thou  to  us ;  let  not  God  speak  to 


JET.  si^        RELIGIOUS  TEACHING  647 

us,  lest  we  die."  One  of  those  who  heard  the  sermon,  and 
commented  on  it,  thought  that  "he  did  not  sufficiently  ap- 
peal to  the  understanding,  but  stirred  the  emotions  beyond 
all  precedent."  Another  critic  of  the  same  sermon  thought 
that  he  magnified  the  understanding  at  the  expense  of  the 
emotions.  Another  remarked  that  he  did  not  make  a  prac- 
tical application;  that  after  a  sermon  of  thirty  minutes,  in 
which  he  had  said  as  much  as  most  preachers  would  require 
forty -five  minutes  to  utter,  he  closed  too  abruptly,  before  he 
had  a  chance  for  the  familiar  exhortation.  Some  of  his  hearers 
said  that  he  underrated  the  power  of  sin  and  worldliness  in 
individual  lives,  but  the  general  impression  was  to  the  effect 
that  sin  and  worldliness  were  never  so  forcibly  exposed  and 
tracked  to  their  inmost  lairs.  This  is  a  report  of  the  sermon 
by  a  listener  who  was  asked  for  his  opinion :  — 

There  was  a  profound  spiritual  morality  in  the  sermon.  God 
was  so  presented  that  you  felt  as  if  to  live  unto  God  and  to  allow 
Kim  to  live  in  you  was  the  first  and  only  thing  to  be  thought  of. 
There  were  times  when  the  preacher  presented  this  truth  so 
strongly  that  you  felt  as  if  God  had  come  to  live  in  each  separate 
soul  in  the  congregation.  You  felt  intensely  the  smallness  of 
the  lives  of  those  who  fear  to  have  God  speak  with  them  lest  the 
enjoyment  of  life  should  cease. 

Mr.  Brooks  was  reappointed  a  preacher  to  Harvard  Uni- 
versity for  the  year  1887-88,  as  indeed  he  continued  to  be 
reappointed  until  1891.  The  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity 
was  conferred  upon  him  by  Columbia  University  at  its  one 
hundredth  anniversary.  He  declined  a  request  from  the 
editor  of  the  "Contemporary  Eeview,"  asking  him  to  de- 
scribe the  working  of  religion  in  America,  about  which  the 
English  mind  was  not  clear.  Any  one  who  knew  Phillips 
Brooks  will  be  amused  at  an  invitation  he  received  to  meet 
the  late  Mr.  IngersoU  in  joint  debate  on  some  question  touch- 
ing the  essentials  of  the  Christian  religion.  To  enumerate 
the  many  invitations  to  occasions  outside  of  his  ministerial 
life  is  needless,  but  among  them  may  be  mentioned  a  speech 
which  he  made  in  1887  before  the  insurance  societies,  where 
he  turned  over  the  principle  of  "safety"  in  its  relations  to  a 


648  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1887 

man's  work  in  the  world  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  an  inval- 
uable advertisement  if  it  could  have  been  utilized  for  that 
purpose.  He  went  to  a  meeting  of  Methodist  ministers, 
where  the  subject  of  Christian  Unity  was  to  be  discussed. 
His  address  deepened  the  conviction  that  Christian  unity 
already  existed.  During  Lent  he  took  for  his  subject  with 
his  Bible  class  the  Apostles'  Creed.  The  course  was  one  of 
great  interest,  and  was  largely  attended.  He  treated  his 
theme  in  the  manner  of  a  conventional  systematic  theologian, 
making  formal  definitions,  stating  objections  and  meeting 
them,  dealing  with  modern  theories.  It  was  unlike  his 
method  in  the  pulpit  and  it  may  not  have  been  wholly  con- 
genial to  him,  but  no  one  could  surpass  him  in  this  line 
when  he  chose  to  undertake  it.  The  very  full  analysis  made 
for  each  lecture  is  so  admirable  that  one  regrets  he  did  not 
put  his  work  in  permanent  form. 

In  April  he  received  an  invitation  from  Dr.  Jowett,  of 
Balliol  College,  Oxford,  to  deliver  the  Bampton  Lectures, 
with  the  assurance  that  if  he  would  comply  with  the  terms 
of  candidacy  by  sending  in  a  schedule  of  the  lectures  he  pro- 
posed to  give,  there  was  no  doubt  of  his  appointment.  He 
seems  to  have  considered  the  request  for  some  time  before  he 
dismissed  it,  as  is  shown  by  his  note-book,  where  he  went  so 
far  as  to  write  out  an  analysis  for  five  of  the  lectures.  There 
is  a  certain  pathos  and  an  illumination  of  his  whole  career 
in  the  subject  which  he  was  proposing  to  himself.  He  enti- 
tled the  projected  lectures,  the  "Teaching  of  Religion,"  or 
"On  the  Philosophy  of  Religious  Teaching."  But  he  did 
not  complete  the  schedule,  and  finally  wrote  declining  to  be- 
come a  candidate.  Years  later  he  worked  up  some  of  the 
points  in  his  mind  in  an  address  before  the  Twenty  Club 
(1892).! 

The  following  extracts  are  from  his  note-book,  written  while 
he  was  contemplating  the  possibility  of  accepting  Dr.  Jowett' s 
invitation :  — 

The  true  symmetry  of  the  Intellectual  and  Spiritual  in  the 
1  Cf.  atae,  p.  537. 


^T.  5i]        RELIGIOUS  Ti;ACHING  649 

religious  teacher.  The  Seminary  is  the  place  to  produce  it. 
One-sidedness  of  College  and  other-sidedness  of  much  popular 
religious  life ;  the  minister  to  restore  the  balance  and  to  learn 
how  in  the  Seminary. 

The  relation  of  religious  teaching  to  the  hard,  knowing  man. 

One  suggestion  about  style.  Never  allow  the  desire  to  es- 
cape awkwardness  or  secure  grace  to  interfere  a  moment  with  the 
purpose  of  it  all,  the  making  of  the  people  understand  and 
feel. 

Like  an  ivy  that  has  been  for  years  growing  on  a  wall,  that  is 
breaking  the  wall  down,  but  that  has  grown  so  completely  a  part 
of  the  wall  that  it  cannot  be  taken  down  without  destroying  the 
wall  another  way,  —  of  excrescent  doctrines  which  have  fastened 
themselves  on  to  religion. 

The  present  tendency  to  reduce  doctrinal  demands.  Shall  we 
insist  on  full  requirements  for  the  sake  of  consistency,  or  reduce 
faith  to  its  barest  terms  for  the  sake  of  peace  and  conciliation  ? 
Either  implies  a  power  over  truth  which  we  do  not  possess.  No, 
the  duty  of  such  times  as  these  is  to  go  deeper  into  the  spiritual- 
ity of  our  truths.  Instance  the  Everlasting  Punishment  Discus- 
sion not  to  cut  off  the  hard  corners,  but  to  make  them  soft  with 
life. 

The  tendency  of  good  people  to  object  more  to  a  dissenter  than 
to  an  infidel ;  to  hate  another  shade  of  truth  more  than  error. 
(See  Lord  Falkland's  Speech  in  Rushworth,  vol.  iii.) 

The  parental  character  of  all  teaching.  The  parents'  teaching 
is  the  type  of  it. 

The  sense  of  sadness  in  life  as  one  grows  older,  not  wholly  a 
sign  of  the  badness  and  unsatisfactoriness  of  the  world;  partly 
a  mere  regret  at  leaving  what  is  pleasant  even  for  something 
pleasanter.  Landing  from  a  steamer.  Partly  the  sense  of  vast- 
ness,  which  is  always  sad. 

Do  not  make  Heaven  attractive  merely  by  deposing  Earth. 
A  cheap  expedient.  Make  earth  its  richest  and  best,  and  then 
be  able  to  make  heaven  still  higher. 

The  need  of  teaching  sure  religion;  something  definite.  The 
fallacy  of  hoping  to  teach  religion  in  general,  to  inspire  mere 
devotional  feeling. 

Danger  of  disparaging  the  teaching  of  Theology  in  favor  of 
the  teaching  of  religion,  so  called.  It  concentrates  men's 
thoughts  on  man,  and  what  he  is,  not  on  what  God  is.  (Cf. 
Mysticism.)  The  old  question  about  being  damned  for  God's 
glory,  debated  by  Catholics  as  well  as  Puritans.  (Cf.  Fdnelon, 
vol.  vi.  pp.  249,  250,  etc.) 


650  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1887 

Study  the  way  in  which  deliberate  beliefs  of  the  cultivated 
pass  into  the  opinions  of  the  people,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  how 
the  common  opinions  are  made  systematic  and  finished  with 
reasons  by  the  learned. 

The  different  temperaments,  intellectual,  mystic,  and  practi- 
cal; the  different  ways  in  which  each  receive  truth.  The  real 
Church  comprehends  all.  Dangers  of  asserting  either  solely  as 
the  oflBce  of  the  Church. 

The  need  often  of  approaching  the  practical  side.  First  soft- 
ening the  ground  with  duty.  Both  ways  are  possible.  Only 
always  the  connection  must  be  natural. 

The  place  of  Ecclesiasticism  in  the  Truth.  Teaching  the  way 
in  which  Partisanship  comes  in.  The  words  of  Sir  T.  Browne 
about  "Founding  a  Heresy."  The  impulse  to  claim  one's  own 
pet  ideas  as  ours,  not  God's.  Paul's  "my  gospel."  The  death, 
then,  of  proportion  in  your  teaching.  Oh,  how  frequent  this  is 
in  ministers !  The  teaching  of  Truth,  of  Truths,  of  The  Truth. 
The  moral  preparation  for  every  spiritual  truth. 

The  vague  talk  about  the  good  in  other  religions  as  if  it  de- 
tracted from  the  value  of  Christ's  teaching. 

The  insincerity  of  method  which  may  go  with  the  most  com- 
plete sincerity  of  idea  and  plan:  "I  believe  this  thoroughly,  and 
would  not  preach  it  a  moment  if  I  did  n't,  but  I  will  let  myself 
tell  it  in  false  ways  for  these  people's  sake,  — ways  that  I  donH 
believe  in." 

"  The  ink  of  the  learned  is  as  precious  as  the  blood  of  the  mar- 
tyrs." 

God  keeping  some  hemispheres  of  opinion,  as  He  kept  His  half- 
world  of  America  vacant  till  the  old  should  overflow,  —  vacant 
till  it  should  be  needed  by  human  growth. 

It  is  the  clear  and  constant  feeling  and  presentation  of  the 
personality  of  the  gospel  that  prevents  its  becoming  monotonous. 
A  person  is  endlessly  interesting.  You  can  tell  men  of  him  for- 
ever, men  who  care  for  him.  But  a  truth  once  stated  is  not  to 
be  forever  repeated.  The  two  things  this  leads  to  in  different 
believers  and  preachers,  —  in  one  dulness ;  in  another,  as  an 
escape  from  that,  fantasticalness. 

Teaching  by  Parables.  That  and  the  God-revelation,  the  points 
of  contact  between  spiritual  and  natural  worlds. 

The  faculty  of  perceiving  what  is  needed ;  the  way  in  which  it 
belongs  to  some  men  and  not  to  others.  The  presence  of  it 
makes  the  good  preacher,  the  lack  of  it  shown  in  men  who  argue 
endlessly  for  nothing.  This  is  the  fault  of  many  preachers. 
Hammering  on  the  iron  for  the  fun  of  the  blows. 


^T.  51]         RELIGIOUS   TEACHING  651 

Use  of  mlstakable  and  undefined  words,  as  "coining  to 
Jesus,"  "being  in  Christ,"  or  "out  of  Christ." 

Overstatement  of  experience. 

Relation  of  general  teaching  of  religion  to  advocacy  of  some 
special  hobby,  correcting  of  some  special  evil,  etc.  Danger  of 
relapsing  into  this,  yet  necessity  of  something  of  the  kind. 

The  relation  between  the  whole  and  the  part,  between  religion 
and  our  doctrine,  between  God's  kingdom  and  our  sect.  The 
need  of  a  special  place,  but  of  a  wide  belonging.  The  part 
treated  as  a  part  is  all  right,  as  a  whole  it  is  all  wrong. 

A  thought  provoked  is  worth  ten  thoughts  imparted.  The 
impossibility  of  teaching  religion  in  one  sense.  Religion  as  a 
life,  a  character,  is  to  be  evolved.  The  broader  use  of  the  word 
that  is  regained. 

The  teaching  of  religion  by  art.  Its  history,  its  imperfections 
and  essential  limitations.      Its  need  to-day. 

Jesus  taught  —  by  personal  presentation,  awaking  conscience, 
reaching  truth  on  moral  side,  and  establishing  church  (John  vi.). 
Paul  taught  by  starting  from  old  knowledge.  Address  at  Athens. 
How  many  loaves  ?  John  Baptist  taught  by  convicting  of  sin  and 
arousing  hope.  They  all  went  to  work  to  break  up  dead  satisfac- 
tion, and  create  lively  desire. 

The  way  in  which  people  listen.  We  say  they  listen  stupidly, 
but  really  what  they  want  is  Religion.  The  sifting  power  of  a 
congregation.  It  takes  what  it  comes  for:  if  poetry,  or  science, 
then  that ;   if  religion,  then  that,  throwing  all  else  aside. 

The  way  in  which  means  are  always  healthy  only  with  relation 
to  ends.  Don't  preach  that  people  ought  to  go  to  church;  if  you 
do,  when  they  have  gone  to  church  they  '11  think  that  they  have 
done  everything.  But  make  religion  so  great  and  attractive  that 
they  '11  want  to  go  to  its  headquarters. 

We  have  seen  that  Mr.  Brooks  had  been  interested  by  the 
effort  to  import  into  the  Episcopal  Church  the  methods 
known  as  evangelistic,  giving  his  sanction  to  "  holding  mis- 
sions." When,  therefore,  the  invitation  came  to  him  from 
the  young  men  of  the  Trinity  Club,  an  organization  connected 
with  his  parish,  to  preach  on  Sunday  evenings  at  Faneuil 
Hall  to  the  unchurched  classes,  he  welcomed  the  invitation 
and  prepared  himself,  but  with  inward  perturbation  for  the 
result.  There  was  the  possibility  of  failure,  and  it  might  be 
the  verdict  that  he  could  preach  a  comfortable  gospel  to  those 


652  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1887 

in  easy  circumstances,  who  knew  nothing  of  the  darker,  sadder 
side  of  life,  but  could  not  reach  the  masses  of  men.  The 
experiment  was  hazardous,  for  he  was  putting  his  theology, 
his  religion,  his  life,  to  the  final  test.  Before  and  after  his 
sermons  he  walked  the  streets  of  old  Boston,  where  he  had 
grown  up,  for  inspiration  and  encouragement,  and  then  for 
relief,  —  High  Street,  where  he  was  born,  and  Rowe  Street 
(Chauncy  Street),  where  he  had  grown  from  youth  to  man- 
hood. 

The  first  of  these  Sunday  evening  services  at  Faneuil  Hall 
was  held  on  January  23.  It  had  been  the  task  of  the  Trin- 
ity Club,  of  which  Mr.  Lorin  F.  Deland  was  the  president, 
to  do  all  in  their  power  to  make  the  experiment  successful. 
And  it  required  no  slight  effort  to  prepare  the  way,  to  get 
access  to  the  people  at  the  North  End  in  Boston,  and  make  it 
known  that  Phillips  Brooks  was  to  preach.  They  were  care- 
ful to  have  it  understood  that  it  was  the  Trinity  Club  which 
initiated  the  movement  and  secured  the  preacher;  that  the 
object  in  view  was  not  a  religious  revival,  but  simjjly  to  in- 
crease the  range  of  Mr.  Brooks's  influence,  and  to  give  those 
an  opportunity  to  hear  him,  who  were  unable  for  whatever 
reason  to  listen  to  him  at  Trinity  Church.  The  services  were 
announced  some  time  in  advance,  tickets  were  distributed  in 
order  that  those  for  whom  the  services  were  intended  should 
not  be  crowded  out,  as  there  was  danger  might  be  the  case. 
The  presence  of  a  brass  band  was  announced  as  an  attraction, 
as  well  as  the  circumstance  that  there  would  be  "no  collec- 
tion ; "  and  a  large  voluntary  choir  was  secured,  including  the 
Harvard  Glee  Club.  So  the  announcement  was  altogether 
a  sensation  ;  the  experiment  was  anticipated  with  unusual 
interest  as  an  event  in  the  ecclesiastical  life  of  Boston. 

We  may  linger  a  moment  on  the  picture  of  these  services 
where  Faneuil  Hall  is  associated  with  the  memory  of  Phillips 
Brooks :  — 

The  sound  of  sacred  chant  [said  the  Boston  Journal]  echoed 
last  night  through  the  streets  around  Faneuil  Hall,  which  the 
hush  of  marketing  had  left  in  lonely  stillness,  and  a  scene  en- 
grossed the  auditorium  which  was  unique  even  in  a  place  that  has 


^T.  51]      FANEUIL   HALL   SERMON  653 

furnished  the  setting  for  so  many  and  varied  pictures.  On  the 
historic  platform,  surrounded  by  a  hundred  singers  and  musicians, 
and  confronted  by  a  strangely  commingled  gathering,  stood  for 
once  a  man  who  was  not  dwarfed  by  the  colossal  impression  of 
Webster  in  the  painting  overhead,  the  notable  rector  of  Trinity 
Church,  Dr.  Phillips  Brooks.  Beyond  a  comparatively  limited 
element,  the  congregation  was  largely  made  up  of  persons  who 
claim  no  church  and  are  claimed  by  none,  —  men  and  women  on 
whom  the  heavy  hands  of  spiritual  and  temporal  asperities  have 
been  laid.  It  was  the  meeting  of  the  Back  Bay  and  the  North 
End.  .  .  .  Religious  services  with  such  surroundings  and  with 
helmeted  policemen  in  conspicuous  force,  as  if  the  menace  of 
civil  authority  was  necessary  to  supplement  the  persuasiveness 
of  the  moral,  presented  a  curious  study ;  but  it  must  be  said  that 
the  secular  guardians  were  not  needed,  as  no  more  attentive  or 
appreciative  congregation  could  have  been  gathered  in  any  church 
in  Boston.  Here  were  pale-faced  men,  with  unkempt  locks  and 
manifest  indications  of  failure  in  life's  high  purposes;  here  indi- 
viduals whose  aspect  bespoke  frequent  relapsing ;  young  men  and 
women  who  form  the  floating,  unchurched,  and  aimless  elements 
of  a  large  city;  .  .  .  the  rector  of  Trinity  conducting  a  service 
which  had  no  trace  of  rubric  or  ritual,  and  preaching  in  an  every- 
day garb,  with  no  aid  from  alb  or  stole  or  ecclesiastical  insignia 
whatever.  His  was  manifestly  a  personality  that  needed  none, 
and  as  he  came  forward  upon  the  platform  with  no  manuscript, 
book,  or  pulpit  to  come  between  him  and  his  hearers,  and  spoke 
with  all  the  fervor  and  impetuous  utterance  which  seems  to  be 
a  part  of  his  nature,  there  was  something  in  his  commanding  pre- 
sence that  bespoke  his  hold  upon  their  deferential  attention.  The 
only  question  by  those  who  came  to  study  the  working  out  of  the 
undertaking  was  as  to  whether  he  would  touch  their  feelings  by 
heartfelt  expressions  as  fully  as  he  would  gain  their  admiration 
by  his  eloquence.  But  as  he  proceeded,  all  doubt  on  this  ground 
was  dispelled,  and  the  upturned  and  sympathetic  faces  before  him 
indicated  that  his  searching  appeal  to  the  kindly  and  hopeful  ele- 
ments in  their  nature,  together  with  his  picturing  of  God's 
fatherly  pity  for  the  lowliest  and  most  downcast  of  His  chil- 
dren, had  wrought  an  effect  that  was  worthy  the  effort  and  the 
theme. 

The  text  of  the  sermon  was  a  verse  from  the  Psalms; 
"Like  as  a  father  pitieth  his  own  children,  so  the  Lord  pitl- 
eth  them  that  fear  him."  The  sermon  meant  so  much  to 
Phillips   Brooks    that   a   few   extracts  from   it   are   given, 


654  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1887 

although  they  must  fall  short  of  revealing  the  power  infused 
with  tenderness  and  love  which  went  into  his  appeal :  ^  — 

When  fatherhood  is  spoken  of,  it  means  this  love  which  takes 
the  child  simply  because  it  is  the  child ;  not  because  of  what  the 
child  has  done,  or  what  the  child  is  in  its  character,  but  simply 
because  it  has  been  cradled  in  these  arms  in  its  infancy,  and  all 
the  hopes  and  affections  of  the  parent  have  gathered  around  that 
little  life. 

Underneath  all  the  approbation  or  disapprobation  of  God,  under- 
neath His  approval  or  disapproval  of  what  we  do,  there  is  the 
great,  patient,  indestructible  love  of  God  for  us  because  we  are 
His  children,  the  wickedest  of  us  as  well  as  the  best  of  us,  those 
who  are  living  the  most  upright  life  as  well  as  those  who  are 
living  the  most  profligate  life,  — they  are  all  God's  children. 

If  you  are  ever  going  to  understand  or  to  get  any  conception 
of  that  great  enfolding  life  which  lies  all  around  us,  to  rest  on 
it  and  to  trust  in  it  and  test  its  consolations,  its  encouragements, 
and  its  supports,  the  first  picture  of  it  must  be  in  your  own  house. 
I  almost  hesitate  when  I  talk  to  a  multitude  of  people  such  as 
this,  and  ask  them  to  consider  their  relations  with  regard  to  God 
from  the  way  in  which  their  own  families  are  living.  I  hesitate 
and  draw  back  and  say,  "Do  these  people  want  me  to  talk  to 
them  in  this  way,  to  ask  them  to  understand  that  God  is  to  them 
just  exactly  what  they  are  to  their  own  children  ?  "  I  should 
have  to  look  round  and  think  that  I  saw  better  men  and  women 
than  I  know  that  I  do  see  here  to-night.  Where  is  the  father 
who  is  willing  to  let  his  child  draw  his  idea  of  God  from  the  way 
in  which  his  fatherly  life  is  related  to  his  child's  life? 

I  am  struck,  and  I  am  sure  you  have  been,  by  the  way  in  which 
people  think  the  basest  moments  of  their  lives  the  real  and  true 
moments,  and  are  not  willing  to  think  of  the  grandest  moments 
in  their  lives  as  the  true  ones.  The  noblest  thing  you  ever  did, 
the  noblest  emotion  you  ever  felt,  the  deepest  and  tenderest  and 
most  self-sacrificing  love  ever  in  your  soul,  that  is  your  true  self 
still,  through  all  the  baser  life  into  which  you  have  fallen. 

Men  are  continually  preached  to  that  they  are  a  great  deal 
wickeder  than  they  think  they  are,  that  they  must  not  value 
themselves  so  much,  that  they  must  not  put  so  high  a  worth  on 
their  humanity.  We  want,  along  with  that,  another  kind  of 
preaching.  Men  are  nobler  than  they  think  themselves  to  be. 
There  is  in  every  man  something  greater  than  he  has  begun  to 

^  Cf.  The  Spiritual  Man,  and  other  Sermons,  London,  1895,  for  a  report  of  the 
sermon. 


^T.  51]      FANEUIL   HALL   SERMON  6ss 

dream  of.  When  he  gives  himself  to  Jesus  Christ  in  consecra- 
tion, then  that  begins  to  come  forth.  Break  through  the  cross 
of  your  despair  and  ask  Christ  to  let  you  see  yourself  as  He  sees 
you,  all  stained  with  sin  but  with  the  Divine  image  in  you  all 
the  time. 

The  comments  of  those  present  indicate  that  they  had  been 
surprised  at  the  fine  congregation  of  non-churchgoers  that  had 
assembled  to  hear  Phillips  Brooks.  One  young  man,  not  in 
the  habit  of  going  to  church,  said :  "  These  people,  and  I  live 
among  them,  have  not  been  approached  in  the  right  way,  and 
been  made  to  know  the  true  meaning  of  religion  and  its  place 
in  their  lives  and  homes.  A  preacher  like  Mr.  Brooks  will 
inaugurate  a  new  era  in  their  lives."  An  elderly  man,  who 
confessed  that  he  did  but  "little  in  wearing  out  the  carpets 
in  church  aisles,"  had  gone  for  the  purpose  of  seeing  how 
Mr.  Brooks  would  take  hold  of  workingmen  and  their  fami- 
lies.    This  was  his  verdict :  — 

He  is  in  no  sense  a  revivalist.  He  will  not  excite  the  emo- 
tions of  people,  but  gives  them  a  great  many  sound  things  to 
think  about.  He  gives  practical  religion.  That  is  what  every- 
day men  and  women  want.  That  was  a  very  beautiful  thought 
of  his  that  men  are  apt  to  think  that  they  are  worse  than  they 
are,  and  that  they  should  see  that  the  true  gauge  of  their  char- 
acter is  the  best  that  is  in  them.  This  is  what  shows  a  man  his 
own  possibilities;  and  the  way  in  which  Dr.  Brooks  spoke  of  the 
pity  of  God  for  those  who  had  fallen  short  of  the  glorious  possi- 
bilities of  their  natures  was  a  helpful  lesson ;  it  kindled  ambition, 
inspired  hope,  and  warmed  the  heart  with  the  love  of  God  for 
His  children.  This  is  what  people  ought  to  hear,  and  this  is  what 
he  is  telling  them. 

Mr.  Brooks  was  inwardly  moved  when  a  man  approached 
liim  after  the  service,  thanked  him  for  coming,  and  asked  if 
he  could  recommend  anything  for  his  wife's  rheumatism.  It 
was  the  human  side  of  religion,  as  the  people  in  the  days 
when  Christ  was  on  the  earth,  after  hearing  the  gospel, 
brought  their  sick  to  Him  to  be  healed.  He  promised  the 
man  to  attend  to  his  request. 

On  the  30th  of  January  and  on  the  6th  of  February  Phil- 
lips Brooks  met  the  same  great  audience,  with  no  diminution 


6sS  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1887 

in  attendance  or  interest.  He  preached  great  sermons  also ; 
one  from  the  text,  "He  shall  drink  of  the  brook  in  the  way; 
therefore  shall  he  lift  up  the  head"  (Ps.  ex.  7),  where  he 
dwelt  on  the  sense  of  responsibility  and  the  power  of  the  for- 
giveness of  sins;  and  another  sermon  from  the  text,  "Lord,  if 
thou  wilt,  thou  canst  make  me  clean  "  (Matt.  viii.  2),  when 
the  familiar  words  of  Evangelical  hymns  were  sung  with 
which  both  sermons  were  in  deep  accord,  "Come,  ye  sinners, 
poor  and  needy,"  and  "  Just  as  I  am,  without  one  plea." 
There  were  other  efforts  at  this  time  to  reach  the  people,  as 
at  the  Globe  Theatre.  To  these  services  Phillips  Brooks 
went  with  the  same  message  that  he  had  given  in  Faneuil 
Hall,  and  always  met  the  same  large  concourse  of  the  un- 
churched classes,  anxious  and  eager  to  hear  him.  It  seemed 
as  if  a  strong  religious  wave  were  passing  over  Boston. 

During  the  weeks  that  cover  the  sermons  at  Faneuil  Hall, 
Trinity  Church  and  its  rector  were  absorbed  in  efforts  for 
the  extension  of  the  parish  life.  There  had  been  a  mission 
chapel  of  Trinity  from  an  early  period  in  Mr.  Brooks's  min- 
istry in  Boston,  situated  on  Charles  Street,  called  the  Chapel 
of  the  Evangelists.  Municipal  improvements  in  1886  had 
required  the  removal  of  the  building  elsewhere,  and  for  a 
year  the  Mission  had  occupied  rented  rooms  on  Chambers 
Street.  The  Rev.  Reuben  Kidner,  the  assistant  minister  of 
Trinity  Church,  was  demonstrating  by  his  successful  work 
the  need  of  a  permanent  home,  adapted  to  the  growing  neces- 
sities and  opportunities  before  him. 

On  Sunday  morning,  January  9,  1887,  in  Trinity  Church, 
Mr.  Brooks  made  an  appeal  for  $50,000,  to  meet  the  cost  of 
this  project.  For  five  successive  Sundays  he  spoke  of  this  subject 
from  the  pulpit,  mentioning  each  time  the  amount  to  which  the 
subscription  had  risen.  The  people  entered  with  enthusiasm  into 
the  project,  the  interest  of  the  whole  parish  was  engaged,  and 
contributions  came  in  in  sums  varying  from  one  dollar  to  five 
thousand.  Friendly  notes  accompanied  the  gifts,  all  of  which 
Mr,  Brooks  answered  with  his  own  pen,  remarking  that  it  was 
"rather  difficult  to  find  a  new  form  of  words  for  each  note." 

February  the  9th  that  year  fell  on  a  Wednesday,  and  a  spe- 
cial service  to  commemorate  the  consecration  of  Trinity  Church 


^T.  51]       TENTH  ANNIVERSARY  657 

had  been  appointed  for  the  evening  of  that  day.  The  church  was 
crowded.  The  rector  reached  the  robing-room  some  time  before 
the  service,  to  learn  if  the  full  amount  desired  had  been  received. 
Several  hundred  dollars  were  still  needed,  and  some  prominent 
members  of  the  parish  came  in  and  expressed  their  readiness  to 
make  up  the  full  amount.  But  messages  and  telegrams  kept 
arriving,  and  before  the  service  began  it  was  found  that  the 
$50,000,  with  a  balance  over,  had  been  subscribed. 

This  was  one  of  the  occasions  in  the  life  of  a  parish  which 
bring  before  it  the  work  it  is  doing,  when  minister  and  peo- 
ple feel  more  keenly  the  bond  that  unites  them.  It  was  a 
moment  of  enthusiasm  when  Mr.  Brooks  announced  to  his 
congregation  that  the  amount  called  for  had  been  subscribed. 
Just  as,  ten  years  before,  they  had  built  and  paid  for  the 
most  costly  church  yet  erected  in  New  England,  so  now, 
with  promptness,  they  had  responded  to  his  wish  that  the 
most  elaborate  mission  church  yet  planned  in  this  part  of  the 
country  should  be  their  offering  of  commemoration.  He 
spoke  of  the  work  of  the  parish  during  the  ten  years  in  the 
new  edifice.  His  pride  and  joy  in  Trinity  Church  were  evi- 
dent as  he  reviewed  its  long  history  under  former  rectors, 
until  the  new  edifice  was  built ;  or  as  he  described  the  bright 
day  of  consecration,  how  the  long  procession  of  clergy  came 
up  the  aisles,  the  eloquent  sermon  of  Dr.  Vinton,  and  how 
on  the  Sunday  following,  when  they  had  the  church  to  them- 
selves for  the  first  time,  it  seemed  as  though  they  had  been 
worshipping  there  for  years :  — 

I  do  not  come  to  you  to-night  with  statistics.  I  have  not 
even  counted  how  many  have  been  baptized  in  these  ten  years, 
how  many  times  the  marriage  service  has  been  performed,  how 
many  times  the  beautiful  burial  service  has  been  read  over  the 
dead,  how  many  of  you  have  been  confirmed.  I  have  not  looked 
to  see ;  I  do  not  care.  I  care  more  for  what  these  services  have 
been  to  you  and  to  many  souls.  I  do  know  that  some  have  come 
in  to  them  and  have  gone  out  with  no  change  in  their  faces ;  but 
there  has  been  a  change ;  there  is  something  which  they  have  got 
which  they  did  not  have  before  they  came.  I  know  that  many 
of  you  have  been  helped,  that  many  of  you  are  the  better  for 
these  years  of  services  in  this  church.  There  is  one  thing  which 
I  will  tell  you  of,  which  has  been  done  in  these  years.  The  trea- 
voL.  n 


658  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1887 

surer  o£  the  church  has  given  me  the  amount  which  has  been  con- 
tributed during  the  past  ten  years  for  charitable  and  missionary- 
purposes,  including  the  contribution  for  the  new  St.  Andrew's 
Church.  It  is  $365,000.  It  is  a  large  amount,  and  a  small 
amount,  — small  when  we  think  of  the  means  which  God  has 
given  us,  and  the  work  to  be  done.  But  it  has  accomplished 
good  in  different  parts  of  the  world,  and  from  time  to  time  we 
hear  of  the  good  that  has  been  wrought. 

It  has  been  our  grief  that  the  great  architect  who  built  our 
church  died  before  it  was  completed.  The  time  will  come  when 
money  will  be  given  to  finish  the  towers  of  the  fagade  according 
to  his  plan.  I  am  in  no  hurry  for  it;  other  work  must  be  done 
first,  but  this,  too,  will  come  in  time.  Far  be  it  from  us  to 
boast  of  what  our  church  has  done,  but  for  some  things  we  can 
be  thankful  that  they  have  been  done  right.  We  welcome  all 
those  who  come  to  worship  with  us.  I  know  how  heartily,  and 
often  at  no  little  inconvenience  to  yourselves,  this  welcome  has 
been  given.  There  has  not  yet  been  turned  away  a  person  from 
our  doors  when  there  was  a  seat  for  him  to  occupy. 

And  as  your  minister,  may  I  thank  you  for  your  help  and 
sympathy  during  these  years  ?  You  have  made  my  task  anything 
but  a  burden.  As  our  church  has  grown  and  duties  have  in- 
creased, it  has  been  impossible  to  keep  up  the  personal  inter- 
course which  we  had  together  in  the  first  years.  I  appreciate 
the  patience  which  you  have  shown  to  me.  When  a  person  gives 
up  his  whole  life  to  such  work,  trying  not  to  refuse  to  any  the 
aid  which  he  may  be  able  to  give,  I  think  he  may  still  ask  for 
continued  patience.  I  ask  that  you  will  bear  with  me  in  the 
future.  We  are  thankful  for  the  past  years,  but  we  want  to 
make  the  coming  years  fuller  and  better,  to  consecrate  ourselves 
more  fully  to  God,  and  do  more  earnest  work  for  Him. 

Everything  that  Phillips  Brooks  now  did  or  wrote  was 
permeated  with  an  increasing  depth  of  tender  feeling.  He 
was  illustrating  the  truth  of  the  remark  that  no  one  can 
think  profoundly  who  does  not  feel  deeply.  This  was  shown 
alike  in  his  sermons  and  in  his  letters.  He  was  still  despond- 
ent about  the  church,  for  he  had  been  inwardly  hurt  by  the 
movement  to  change  its  name.  This  despondency,  it  will  be 
seen,  appears  in  his  letters.  When  he  went  to  Andover,  on 
January  4,  to  preach  the  sermon  at  the  consecration  of  the 
new  Episcopal  Church,  he  made  it  an  opportunity  for  assert- 
ing more  positively  the  faith  that  was  in  him.     Throughout 


^T.  51]        SERMON  AT   ANDOVER  es9 

the  sermon  glowed  the  intensity  of  his  emotions.     He  spoke 
of  the  place  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  the  Puritan  town :  — 

Long  before  our  Church  came  here  this  was  a  distinctly  reli- 
gious town.  The  Church  of  Christ  in  other  forms,  the  experience 
of  Christ  in  other  forms,  in  deep  reality  was  here.  ...  It  is 
not  in  arrogant  presentation  of  herself  as  the  only  Church  of 
Christ  to  which  this  old  religiousness  must  conform  before  it  can 
be  really  churchly.  God  forbid!  It  is  as  one  distinct  and  valu- 
able form  of  Christian  thought  and  life  —  as  one  contribution  to 
the  Church  of  the  future  which  is  to  be  larger,  deeper,  wiser, 
holier,  than  any  Church  existing  in  the  land  to-day. 

The  subject  of  the  sermon,  and  the  occasion,  led  to  char- 
acteristic utterances  regarding  the  nature  of  the  Church,  its 
worship  and  ordinances :  — 

The  Church  is  no  exception  and  afterthought  in  the  world, 
but  is  the  survival  and  preservation  of  the  world's  first  idea,  — 
the  anticipation  and  prophecy  of  the  world's  final  perfectness. 
The  Church  of  Christ  is  the  ideal  humanity.  Say  not  that  it 
leaves  out  the  superhuman.  I  know  no  ideal  humanity  that  is 
not  filled  and  pervaded  with  the  superhuman.  God  in  man  is 
not  unnatural,  but  the  absolutely  natural.  That  is  what  the 
Incarnation  makes  us  know. 

The  Church  is  the  most  truly  human  institution  in  the  world, 
—  the  Church  building  is  the  most  human  institution  in  the 
town.  Here  in  Andover,  your  shops,  your  houses,  your  stables, 
your  taverns,  your  library,  your  girls'  school,  your  boys'  school, 
your  seminary,  — they  all  mean  something  human.  But  the 
Church  has  the  best  reason  for  being  of  them  all.  It  means  the 
most  human  thing  of  all,  the  truest  human  fact  of  all  facts,  that 
man  intrinsically  and  eternally  belongs  to  God. 

This  strong  conception  of  its  life  must  pervade  its  architecture. 
No  heavy  and  oppressive  darkness,  overwhelming  the  soul  with 
fear,  and  making  it  want  to  lose  itself  in  the  unearthly  gloom; 
but  broad  simplicity  and  ample  light,  and  all  the  freshness  and 
sweetness  of  the  beautiful  world,  taken  up,  glorified,  and  trans- 
lated. 

And  so  of  the  Church's  services.  They  must  be  human.  Tliey 
must  be  uttered  in  the  vernacular,  not  merely  of  the  local  speech, 
but  of  the  human  soul.  They  must  be  full  of  hope,  not  of  dread. 
They  must  make  man  respect  and  not  despise  his  essential  self. 
They  must  show  him  his  sin  by  making  him  see  the  glory  of  his 
intention  and  his  destiny.     They  must  humiliate  his  intellect  by 


66o  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1887 

displaying  the  infiniteness  of  truth,  and  not  by  declaring  the 
sinfulness  of  error. 

Whatever  mystic  richness  must  belong  to  the  Church's  two 
perpetual  sacraments,  warm  forever  with  the  touch  of  the  very 
hands  of  the  dear  Lord,  deepened  and  filled  with  the  countless 
holy  experiences  of  countless  souls,  they  must  be  ever  pervaded, 
not  in  contradiction  or  in  diminution,  but  in  increase  of  their 
sacredness,  by  the  simplicity  and  humanity  which  is  in  their  very 
essence.  The  elemental  substances,  —  water  and  bread  and 
wine,  —  these  keep  the  two  sacraments  forever  broad  and  true. 
It  is  through  earth's  most  common  substances  that  Christ,  the 
Son  of  man,  symbolically  gives  Himself  to  man.  The  stream, 
the  field,  the  vineyard,  have  their  essential  sacredness  declared 
in  those  deep,  venerable  words,  "Baptize  all  nations."  "This  is 
My  Body. "      "  This  is  My  Blood. " 

The  Church  whose  fundamental  truth  is  the  essential  sacred- 
ness of  man  must  hold  its  doctrines  humanly.  ...  It  will  be- 
lieve that  no  doctrine  has  been  truly  revealed  until  the  human 
consciousness  has  recognized  its  truth.  It  will  have  nothing  to 
do  with  the  false  awe  of  the  Credo  quia  impossibile.  The  truths 
of  heaven  and  the  truths  of  earth  are  in  perfect  sympathy;  every 
revelation  of  the  Bible  is  clearer  the  more  it  is  to  be  found  in  the 
speaking  conscience,  or  in  the  utterance  of  history,  or  in  the 
Tocal  rocks. 

The  real  authority  of  man  to  speak  to  brother  man  must  rest 
in  personal  qualities  and  conditions.  It  is  truth  which  cannot  be 
carried  save  by  the  believing  soul.  It  is  fire  which  can  only  be 
carried  by  the  lighted  torch.  It  is  God  who  can  only  shine 
through  a  soul  luminous  and  transparent  with  His  own  divinity. 
Behind  all  other  authorities  lies  forever  the  first  authority  of 
intelligence  and  sympathy  and  consecration.  Without  that  all 
other  authorities  are  worthless.  With  that,  no  man  may  dispar- 
age any  ministry,  however  simple  and  unelaborate  that  ministry 
may  be  in  other  things. 

To  the  Rev.  W.  N.  McVickar,  who  was  going  abroad, 
he  writes :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  January  8,  1887. 

It  is  sad  enough  to  think  that  before  another  Saturday  a  big 
piece  of  the  ocean  will  be  between  us,  and  that  for  months  there 
will  be  no  chance  of  setting  eyes  on  you.  My  heart  will  be  on 
board  the  Eider  with  you  next  Wednesday.  You  will  not  see  it, 
but  it  will  be  there.  It  will  climb  the  Pyramids  with  you  (if 
you  really  do  go  up  to  the  top).     It  will  sit  with  you  on  the 


^T.  51]       EXTRACTS   FROM   LETTERS     661 

Mount  of  Olives,  and  wander  with  you  through  the  bazaars  of 
Damascus.  Be  kind  to  the  old  thing  (I  mean  my  heart),  and 
give  it  now  and  then  a  greeting,  and  tell  it  sometimes  what  a 
good  time  you  are  having. 

Sometimes  upon  the  ocean  think  of  the  happy  days  in  which 
we  stared  together  at  the  waste  of  waters.  Let  the  Servia  come 
up  to  you  out  of  the  dim  j^ast,  with  all  its  ghosts  on  board,  and 
say  something  cheerful  to  them  to  show  them  that  they  are  not 
forgotten  in  your  present  joy. 

How  we  shall  miss  you!  When  Quinquagesima  arrives,  re- 
member Cooper  and  me,  sitting  on  your  doorstep. 

Good-by,  dear  fellow,  and  may  the  God  who  has  been  so  good 
to  us  keep  us  both  until  we  meet  again.      Good-by,  good-by. 

Ever  and  ever  yours,  P.  B. 

To  the  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks,  who  was  making  the  tour  of 
Palestine,  he  writes :  — 

New  York,  Sunday  (Sexagesima),  February,  1887. 
When  you  get  this  we  shall  be  in  the  thick  of  Lent.  Where 
will  you  be  ?  Perhaps  almost  ready  to  keep  Easter  in  Jerusalem 
when  this  arrives.  It  is  good  indeed  to  know  how  much  you  must 
be  enjoying.  Forty  centuries  are  looking  down  upon  you  from  the 
Pyramids  this  blessed  Sunday.  I  wish  I  were  one  of  them,  and 
then  you  could  come  up  my  pyramid  and  we  could  sit  and  talk  it 
all  out,  and  you  could  tell  me  all  that  you  have  done.  I  can 
imagine  something  of  what  has  happened  since  then,  but  at  Cairo 
I  lose  you,  for  I  have  never  been  up  the  Nile,  and  it  is  a  mysteri- 
ous jumble  of  tombs  and  sphinxes  and  pyramids  to  me.  If  you 
see  the  veritable  Rameses,  with  the  magnificent  head,  tell  him  I 
salute  him,  and  am  quite  sure  that  those  Hebrews  must  have  been 
terribly  exasperating  and  disagreeable  people.  How  strange  it 
does  seem  that  out  of  them  should  have  come  the  world's  religion! 

A  new  pulpit  was  at  this  time  placed  in  Trinity  Church,  in 
order  that  Mr.  Brooks  might  be  better  heard  in  some  parts  of 
the  building.  He  had  hitherto  preached  from  a  lecturn,  the 
same  that  he  had  used  in  Huntington  Hall,  originally  asso- 
ciated with  Holy  Trinity  Chapel  in  Philadeljjhia,  whence 
it  had  been  sent  to  him  as  a  gift,  at  his  own  suggestion. 
What  importance  he  attached  to  the  associations  connected 
with  it  is  evident  from  the  circumstance  that  the  upper  part 
of  this  lecturn  was  fitted  to  the  new  pulpit,  for  a  sermon 
board.     So  he  preserved  the  connection  of  his  years. 


662  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1887 

To  the  Rev.  Charles  D.  Cooper  he  writes  with  reference 
to  the  "Mind  Cure,"  in  regard  to  which  his  opinion  had 
been  misrepresented :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  25, 1887. 
My  dear  Coopee,  —  I  never  heard  of  these  people  who  are 
disturbing  Albany,  and  I  have  no  sympathy  with  their  kind. 
There  is  a  truth  in  the  midst  of  the  fantastic  performances  and 
the  confused  philosophy  of  the  "Mind  Cure,"  but  it  and  the 
notions  which  are  related  to  it  are  capable  of  vast  mischief  in 
the  hands  of  ignorant  and  self-seeking  men  and  women.  Such 
seem  to  be  the  folks  of  whom  you  speak.  May  those  for  whom 
you  care  be  saved  from  them.  I  assure  you  they  have  no  right 
to  quote  me  as  their  endorser. 

An  incident  occurred  at  the  diocesan  convention  in  May 
which  is  characteristic.  In  1886  it  had  been  voted  to  change 
the  rule  of  order  requiring  a  sermon  at  the  opening  of  the 
convention.  When  Mr.  Brooks  heard  of  it  he  was  indignant 
at  the  idea  of  taking  away  the  one  chance  which  a  man  had 
of  preaching  to  his  brethren;  it  seemed  like  abolishing  the 
first  function  of  the  ministry.  At  the  convention  in  1887 
he  moved  that  the  words  be  restored  calling  for  a  sermon 
by  the  appointed  preacher.  He  made  a  short  and  vigorous 
speech  in  behalf  of  his  motion,  and  carried  the  convention 
with  him.  A  member  of  the  convention  writes:  "The  ease 
with  which  he  swung  the  convention  back  to  the  sermon  was 
striking.  I  think  no  debate  followed  his  speech.  We  all  let 
him  have  his  way." 

On  the  8th  of  June  Mr.  Brooks  sailed  in  the  Adriatic  for 
England,  accompanied  by  his  sister-in-law,  Mrs.  William  G. 
Brooks,  and  her  daughter,  Miss  Gertrude  Brooks.  Only  in 
this  respect  did  his  visit  differ  from  previous  ones,  that  he 
was  mainly  concerned  to  put  himself  at  the  disposal  of  the 
ladies,  and  share  in  their  pleasure  at  seeing  what  was  now  so 
familiar  to  him.  That  there  was  no  abatement  of  the  enthu- 
siasm among  his  English  friends  and  admirers  was  evident 
from  the  rush  to  be  early  in  the  field  of  the  candidates  claim- 
ing his  services  as  a  preacher.  One  event  in  England,  the 
Queen's  Jubilee,  now  eclipsed  every  other  in  national  interest 


^T.  51]  IN  ENGLAND  663 

and  importance,  till  it  seemed  almost  natural  to  his  English 
friends  that  Phillips  Brooks  should  be  there  as  "  a  loyal  sub- 
ject."    Thus  a  friend  writes  to  him :  — 

The  Queen  will  come  in  great  state  to  the  Abbey.  It  will  be 
a  ceremony  such  as  has  only  occurred  three  times  in  nine  hundred 
years  (Henry  III.,  Edward  III.,  George  III.),  and  will  be  a 
reminiscence  of  the  coronation.  Tickets  of  admission  will  be 
very  hard  to  get.  They  are  given  to  very  few  except  the  Houses 
of  Lords  and  Commons,  courtiers,  and  the  great  ones  of  the 
earth.  But  you  shall  have  a  seat;  I  pledge  myself  to  get  you 
one. 

The  promise  was  kept,  and  on  the  21st  of  June  Mr. 
Brooks  was  present  in  an  eligible  place  in  the  Abbey  to  wit- 
ness the  imposing  and  gorgeous  scene. 

An  English  lady  writes  to  him  this  anecdote  of  childhood 
which  she  thought  would  amuse  him :  — 

A  little  girl,  eight  years  old,  where  I  was  staying  a  short  time 
ago,  observed  to  me  one  day,  — 

"Nearly  all  America  belongs  to  England,  doesn't  it,  Mrs. 
W ?" 

"I  am  afraid  not,  dear." 

"I  mean,  nearly  all  the  States  do.  "Well,  if  they  don't,  then 
they  ought  to." 

Mr.  Brooks  preached  but  a  few  times,  for  his  stay  in 
England  was  short,  —  at  St.  Margaret's,  Westminster,  as 
usual,  for  Archdeacon  Earrar;  at  St.  Mark's,  Kennington, 
for  Mr.  Montgomery;  at  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  where  he  met 
Dean  Church,  He  also  preached  at  Crosthwaite  Church,  in 
Keswick,  —  "  the  greatest  sermon  Crosthwaite  ever  listened 
to,"  writes  the  vicar.  He  went  down  to  the  East  End  and 
made  a  speech  to  the  workingmen.  Among  the  attractive  invi- 
tations he  was  obliged  to  decline  was  one  from  the  chaplain 
of  the  Royal  Dockyard  Church,  with  its  large  number  of 
English  soldiers  and  their  officers.  He  met,  through  the 
kindness  of  Archdeacon  Farrar,  the  best  men  of  England, 
and  a  large  number  of  the  clergy.  The  Nonconformists  gave 
him  a  warm  welcome,  as  if  he  were  of  their  number.  But  the 
rector  of  a  large  London  church  also  writes  to  him :  "  The 


664  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1887 

secret  by  whieli  you  make  us  High  Churchmen  enthusiastic 
about  you  remains  unexplained  to  me." 

After  a  few  weeks  in  London,  he  went  with  his  companions 
for  a  journey  in  rural  England,  visiting  cathedrals  and  other 
objects  of  interest,  and  on  the  19th  of  July  left  England,  as 
he  writes,  "for  the  old  commonplace  Continental  journey,  — 
Brussels,  Cologne,  the  Rhine,  Heidelberg,  the  Tyrol,  Venice, 
Milan,  Switzerland,  Paris,  —  all  old  and  delightful,  but  no 
longer  with  the  charm  of  novelty."  He  continued  to  show 
himself  a  restless  traveller,  impatient  to  be  moving,  unwilling 
to  be  idle  when  there  was  anything  to  be  done ;  but  chiefly 
anxious  for  the  friends  who  were  with  him,  giving  them  no  rest 
in  his  desire  to  show  them  what  ought  to  be  seen.  Among 
his  few  letters,  this  one  to  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine  tells 
that  the  new  St.  Andrew's  was  uppermost  in  his  mind:  — 
ScHLOss   Hotel,  Heidelbekg,  July  24,  1887. 

My  dear  Bob,  —  Here  we  are  for  another  Sunday,  where  the 
great  party  spent  the  larger  part  of  a  Sunday  now  two  years  ago. 
Do  you  remember  it  ?  It  all  comes  back  most  vividly  here,  as 
indeed  it  has  all  along  the  route.  I  expect  to  hear  scraps  of 
George's  Journal  lingering  among  the  echoes  of  the  corridors, 
and  to  meet  Ethel  coming  out  of  a  mediaeval  doorway,  and  to 
find  Lily  wherever  there  is  a  stray  dog.  I  wish  indeed  that  I 
could  call  you  all  up  in  actual  presence  as  well  as  in  imagination. 
What  a  Sunday  we  would  have !  For  the  day  is  perfection,  and 
the  great  outlook  was  never  lovelier. 

Your  letter,  which  I  was  very  glad  indeed  to  get  this  week, 
made  me  see  you  all  at  home,  dining  on  the  terrace,  and  keeping 
the  Fourth  of  July.  It  was  a  pretty  picture.  I  wish  I  had 
been  there.  And  then  came  your  very  interesting  account  of 
the  discussions  about  the  new  chapel,  and  your  delightful  archi- 
tectural drawings,  which  gave  me  such  a  clear  idea  of  how  it 
ought  to  be  done  and  how  it  ought  not  to  be  done.  It  would 
have  made  a  very  interesting  summer  if  I  could  have  been  at 
home  and  talked  all  these  things  over  with  you  all.  I  need  not 
tell  you  that  I  like  the  largeness  of  your  ideas.  Many  a  time, 
in  these  last  twenty  years,  you  have  saved  us  from  doing  things 
on  a  small  scale,  and  kept  us  large.  We  never  shall  forget  —  I 
hope  history  will  not  let  it  be  forgotten  —  that  we  owe  it  to  you 
that  Trinity  Church  is  big  and  dignified,  and  not  a  little  thing  in 
a  side  street,  which  one  must  hunt  to  find,  and  think  small  things 
of  when  he  has  found  it. 


From  Mrs.  Wliitman-s  Portrait 


/v.  .0^' 


^T.  5i]  CORRESPONDENCE  665 

And  now,  St.  Andrew's.  Let  that  be  conceived  as  generously 
as  possible.  Let  there  be  nothing  mean  about  it.  If  we  need 
more  money  let  us  get  it.  Let  us  make  it  a  home  of  which 
neither  rich  nor  poor  need  be  ashamed.  Let  us  anticipate  vastly 
more  of  work  and  life  than  we  at  present  have  to  put  in  it.  In 
all  this  I  am  with  you  heartily.  The  main  hall  of  the  parish 
building,  I  believe,  will  be  above  all  our  expectations  in  its  use- 
fulness, —  a  sort  of  Palace  of  Delight,  like  the  one  we  read 
about  in  London  four  years  ago,  and  which  I  saw  in  its  partial 
realization  the  other  day.  It  may  be  made  the  centre  of  all 
sorts  of  good  influences  for  that  whole  region.  Oh,  that  I  could 
see,  on  the  18th  of  September,  as  I  turn  into  Chambers  Street, 
the  chaste  and  elegant  fagade  of  a  finished  building  all  ready 
for  its  work,  with  Kidner  waving  a  St.  Andrew's  flag  upon  the 
doorstep,  and  the  crowd  waiting  for  the  blessing  at  the  open  win- 
dows! I  shall  not  quite  see  that,  but  something,  I  am  sure,  will 
have  been  done,  and  there  is  time  left  yet  before  we  die  and  other 
people  are  to  follow  us  and  take  up  what  we  leave  undone. 

I  only  wish  I  felt  more  sure  about  this  Church  of  ours,  the 
Episcopal  Church,  I  mean.  I  wish  it  looked  more  as  if  it  meant 
to  be  sensible  and  simple  and  rational  and  ready  for  the  best  sort 
of  work.  It  looks  to  me  now  very  much  as  if  it  meant  to  go  on 
to  stiffer  and  stronger  ecclesiasticism,  and  might,  in  time,  become 
a  place  in  which  it  would  be  difficult  if  not  impossible  to  work. 
Perhaps  not;  and  meanwhile,  I  see  nothing  to  do  except  to  press 
on  and  keep  her  as  good  and  strong  and  sensible  as  we  can,  but 
there  would  be  a  stronger  confidence  about  it  all  if  she  would 
only  behave  better.  There  seemed  to  me  to  be  very  much  in 
England  which  looked  the  same  way. 

But,  however  that  may  be,  there  will  be  some  good  result 
somewhere  of  all  good  work.  That  is  the  comfort  which  one 
falls  back  on  more  and  more,  and  I  begrudge  all  the  time  now 
that  I  take  out  of  the  few  years  which  remain  for  work  at  home. 
Even  when  it  brings  one  to  Heidelberg,  which  is  as  beautiful  as 
a  dream  this  hot  Sunday  afternoon.  The  music  of  a  profane 
band  comes  floating  through  the  trees,  and  there  are  those  deli- 
cious old  red  walls,  with  the  breaks  in  them  just  at  the  right 
places,  and  down  below  the  brown-roofed  town,  and  the  silver 
Neckar  wandering  through  it.  You  know  it  all,  and  it  is  so  full 
of  the  associations  of  '85  that  I  feel  as  if  you  all  were  here. 
Would  that  you  were! 

I  hope  you  all  are  well  and  happy.  To  know  that  any  of  your 
flock  were  unhappy  would  make  me  so,  too.  I  shall  track  your 
footprints  in  the  waters  of  the  Grand  Canal,  and  on  the  rocks  of 


666  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1887 

Wengern  Alp,  and  it  will  be  pleasant  when  I  take  you  by  the 
hand  again  on  your  own  porch.  I  send  my  love  to  Mrs.  Paine 
and  Edith  and  John  and  Emily  and  Robert  and  Ethel  and  Georg3 
and  Lily,  and  am,  ever  and  ever, 

Affectionately  yours,  P.  B. 

"When  the  party  of  travellers  reached  Geneva,  Phillips 
Brooks  was  called  to  know  personally  what  physical  suffer- 
ing meant  in  one  of  its  most  intense  forms,  in  consequence 
of  a  felon  which  had  formed  on  the  thumb  of  his  right  hand. 
It  indicated  some  weakness  in  his  constitution,  —  a  physical 
correspondent,  perhaps,  to  the  inward  depression  which  hung 
about  him.  From  the  conscious  knowledge  of  pain  he  had 
hitherto  been  exempt  through  all  his  years  beyond  an  occa- 
sional headache  in  his  youth.  To  his  friends  who  accompa- 
nied him  he  now  seemed  to  bear  it  with  heroic  patience.  Pain 
is  a  great  leveller,  yet  despite  well-nigh  unendurable  agony 
he  preserved  his  integrity.  For  weary  days  and  sleepless 
nights  he  continued  to  suffer  and  endure.  He  was  besought 
to  call  in  a  physician,  but  he  persistently  refused,  waiting  in 
the  vain  hope  that  the  throbbing  pain  would  subside,  reluctant, 
indeed,  to  admit  that  he  could  not  overcome  by  strength  of 
will  an  aberration  of  nature  which  by  the  divine  order  should 
be  subject  to  man.  At  last  he  had  almost  waited  too  long. 
When  the  physician.  Dr.  Binet,  of  Geneva,  was  summoned, 
he  was  alarmed  as  he  looked  at  the  finger,  and  at  once,  exam- 
ining the  arm,  found  that  it  contained  symptoms  of  disease  so 
dangerous  that  he  despaired  of  saving  it.  Just  before  the 
finger  was  cut  open,  Dr.  Binet  advised  him  to  take  chloroform ; 
he  declined  it ;  to  his  request  that  he  might  light  a  cigar  the 
physician  consented,  and  he  held  the  cigar  in  his  mouth  dur- 
ing the  operation:  "There  was  a  moment,"  said  Dr.  Binet, 
"when  he  did  n't  draw."  These  incidents  were  communi- 
cated to  the  Kev.  Leighton  Parks  by  Dr.  Binet  himself. 
When  Phillips  Brooks  was  asked  afterwards  about  the  extent 
of  his  suffering,  he  would  say  that  he  knew  of  no  standard 
by  which  the  relative  degrees  of  pain  could  be  measured. 
He  only  knew  that  "it  throbbed."  Hitherto  disease  had 
been  something  so  far  away  that  it  seemed  at  times  to  those 


JET.  51]  CORRESPONDENCE  667 

who  heard  him  refer  to  the  subject  as  if  he  scorned  it  for  a 
personal  infirmity.  He  was  quoted  as  saying  that  he  hated 
sickness.  "All  the  sickness  that  I  see  does  not  make  sick- 
ness seem  a  bit  easier  or  more  natural,  and  my  wonder  at 
the  patience  of  sick  people  grows  with  every  day  of  my  life." 
The  injury  to  his  hand  prevented  Mr.  Brooks  for  some 
time  from  the  use  of  his  pen,  and  no  letters  record  his  move- 
ments. On  the  18th  of  September,  he  was  again  at  his  post 
in  Trinity  Church,  and  had  resumed  his  connection  with 
Harvard  University.  In  October  he  went  to  the  Church 
Congress  at  Louisville,  Kentucky,  where  he  made  a  sensa- 
tion by  his  speech  on  the  apostolical  succession,  stating  his 
position  with  the  emphasis  and  vigor  which  church  congresses 
are  apt  to  engender.  There  were  hisses  in  the  hall  as  he 
spoke.  It  shows  the  ecclesiastical  ire  he  aroused,  that  a 
prominent  layman  who  heard  him  remarked  it  would  have 
been  a  pleasure  to  assist  in  throwing  him  into  the  Ohio 
River.  Again  the  speaker's  words  were  caught  up  and  car- 
ried throughout  the  country.  No  record  of  the  speech 
remains,  however,  for  the  records  of  this  congress  perished 
by  some  accident  in  the  flames.  There  is  one  brief  allusion 
to  the  subject  in  a  letter  written  by  Mr.  Brooks  after  his 
return  to  Boston,  October  27,  1887 :  — 

Only  last  night  did  I  get  back  from  this  ecclesiastical  junket, 
which  began  with  the  Congress  in  Louisville,  and  ended  with  the 
ministerial  council  in  Philadelphia.  The  congress  was  ugly,  but 
the  saints  had  good  rooms  at  the  hotels,  and  there  were  enough 
of  them  to  praise  each  other's  speeches. 

With  one  other  letter  this  phase  in  the  life  of  Mr.  Brooks 
comes  to  an  end,  and  he  no  longer  felt  it  incumbent  on  him 
to  pursue  the  subject.  Three  times  he  had  spoken  his  mind 
with  all  the  fiery  energy  of  his  nature,  —  at  the  General 
Convention  in  1886,  at  Trinity  Church,  and  in  the  Church 
Congress.  He  had  made  his  position  known,  so  that  there 
could  be  no  doubt  where  he  stood.  In  this  letter  to  Dr. 
Dyer,  for  many  years  the  trusted  and  honored  leader  of  the 
Evangelical  school  in  the  Episcopal  Church,  he  shows  him- 
self still  despondent,   and   expresses  his  misgivings.     The 


668  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1887 

letter  is  of  further  importance  because  he  avows  that  he  no 
longer  holds  the  dogmatic  theology  known  as  Evangelical. 

233  CiiAKENDON  Street,  Boston,  November  19,  1887- 
Dear  Dr.  Dyer,  —  It  does  me  good  to  hear  your  blessed 
voice  again.  Old  scenes  come  trooping  up  with  the  sight  of  your 
handwriting,  and  I  am  a  youngster  again,  sitting  at  the  feet  of 
my  elders  and  betters.  Yes,  I  will  be  an  officer  of  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  if  they  want  me  to,  — most  of  all,  if  you 
want  me  to,  — but  it  will  not  save  the  Church.  Nothing  will 
save  it,  I  fear.  It  is  fast  on  the  way  to  become  a  small,  fantas- 
tic sect,  aping  foreign  ways,  and  getting  more  and  more  out  of 
sympathy  with  the  great  life  of  the  country.  I  am  sorry  indeed, 
but  I  cannot  think  anything  else.  Look  at  the  West  and  see 
what  our  Church  means  there.  Where  are  the  dioceses  that  you 
strove  to  build  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago?  Well,  well,  the 
work  will  be  done  by  somebody,  even  if  our  Church  refuses  to  do 
it.      But  what  a  chance  we  had! 

I  know  no  better  place  to  work,  and  so  I  work  on  still  in  the 
old  Church,  growing  more  and  more  out  of  conceit  with  organi- 
zations, —  more  and  more  sure  that  the  dogmatic  theology  in 
which  I  was  brought  up  was  wrong,  ^  but  more  and  more  anxious 
for  souls  and  eager  to  love  God  every  year.  The  old  days  when 
we  haunted  Dr.  Vinton's  study  and  hammered  out  Constitutions 
for  the  Divinity  School  in  Philadelphia,  and  took  breakfast  with 
the  Volanses,  look  very  bright,  but  far  away  and  very  young. 
Those  days  were  earlier,  but  these  are  happier,  —  and,  on  the 
whole,  the  larger  hopes  which  live  on  Christ  and  expect  Him  to 
do  His  work  in  His  own  way  are  more  inspiring  even  than  the 
hopes  we  used  to  have  for  E.  K.  S.  and  E.  E.  S. 

^  The  points  on  which  Mr.  Brooks  recognized  his  divergence  from  the  dog- 
matic theology  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up  were  these  :  1.  Its  view  of 
baptism  as  a  covenant.  2.  Its  Kteral  theory  of  inspiration  and  its  conception  of 
Scripture  as  a  whole.  3.  Its  separation  between  things  secular  and  sacred ; 
its  failure  to  recognize  truth  in  other  religions  and  in  non-Christian  men ;  its  in- 
difference to  intellectual  culture.  4.  Its  tendency  to  limit  the  church  to  the 
elect.  5.  Its  view  of  salvation  as  escape  from  endless  punishment.  6.  Its  in- 
sistence upon  the  necessity  of  acknowledging  a  theory  of  the  Atonement  in 
order  to  salvation.  7.  Its  insufficient  conception  of  the  Incarnation  and  of  the 
Person  of  Christ.  8.  Its  tendency  to  regard  religion  too  much  as  a  matter  of 
the  emotions  rather  than  of  character  and  will.  And  yet  he  regarded  these 
divergences  as  the  accidents  of  the  Evangelical  theology,  not  its  essence,  which 
lay  in  devotion  to  the  Person  of  Christ.  In  his  deep  harmony  with  this  feature 
of  Evangelical  teaching,  he  seemed  to  remain  at  heart  an  Evangelical  to  the 
end. 


^T.  5i]  CORRESPONDENCE  669 

I  am  glad,  indeed,  to  know  you  are  so  strong  and  well.  How 
I  would  like  to  see  you  again.      God  help  you  always. 

Affectionately  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

To  the  Et.  Eev.  Henry  C.  Potter  he  writes,  expressing  his 
dislike  in  a  satirical  way  for  the  over-valuation  of  ecclesiasti- 
cal domesticities :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  November  26, 1887. 

No,  my  dear  Henry,  I  will  not  go  back  on  what  I  wrote,  op 
what  the  "Evening  Post "  says  that  I  wrote,  which  is  the  same 
thing. 

I  conceive  the  trimming  of  the  altar,  the  cleaning  of  the  can- 
dlesticks, the  cutting  out  of  artificial  flowers,  and  the  darning  of 
the  sacramental  linen  to  be,  on  the  whole,  the  noblest  occupation 
of  the  female  mind,  the  very  crown  and  glory  of  the  parish  work 
of  women.  They  correspond  exactly  to  the  sublime  work  of 
showing  strangers  to  seats  and  playing  checkers  with  loafers  at 
the  reading  room,  which  is  what  we  have  canonized  as  men's 
work  in  the  same  parish.  How  beautiful  they  both  are !  How 
worthy  of  the  male  and  female  topstones  of  Creation! 

And  will  you  stay  with  me  when  you  come  on  January  22,  to 
preach  for  Parks  and  at  Cambridge?  I  shall  be  very  glad  and 
grateful  if  you  will. 

Ever  faithfully  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

On  November  26  Mr.  Brooks  laid  the  corner  stone  of  the 
new  St.  Andrew's  Church,  in  the  presence  of  a  large  number 
of  people.  He  followed  at  this  time  with  deep  interest  the 
task  of  Eamabai,  then  in  this  country,  in  behalf  of  her 
Hindu  sisters.  He  had  the  pleasure  of  welcoming  as  his 
guest  Professor  James  Bryce,  for  whose  work  he  had  great 
admiration.  On  his  fifty-second  birthday  he  wrote  this  let- 
ter to  Mrs.  Kobert  Treat  Paine:  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  December  13,  1887. 
Dear  Mrs.  Paine,  —  I  want  to  write  a  word  before  the 
birthday  closes,  to  thank  you  for  your  kind  word  and  the  bright 
flowers  which  made  the  birthday  possible  to  bear.  You  and  yours 
will,  I  know,  stand  by  me  to  the  end,  and  give  me  your  friend- 
ship till  I  get  safely  through. 

God  bless  you  for  all  you  have  been  to  me  all  these  years. 
Affectionately  yours, 

Phillips  Brooks. 


CHAPTER  XX 

1888 

EAILWAY  ACCIDENT  IN  PHILADELPHIA.  INCIDENTS  OF 
PARISH  LIFE.  LENTEN  SERVICES.  CORRESPONDENCE. 
SENTIMENT  AND  SENTIMENTALITY.  COMMENTS  ON  "ROB- 
ERT ELSMERE."      THANKSGIVING   SERMON 

In  the  summer  of  the  previous  year  Phillips  Brooks  had 
experienced  the  intensity  of  physical  pain.  In  the  first 
month  of  this  new  year  he  encountered  the  vision  of  sudden 
death.  This  was  the  report  which  startled  Boston  on  the 
morning  of  January  27,  as  it  was  read  in  the  newspapers :  — 

The  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks,  of  Boston,  the  Rev,  William  N. 
McVickar,  rector  of  Holy  Trinity  Church,  the  Rev.  C.  D. 
Cooper,  rector  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Apostles,  and  Miss 
McVickar,  sister  of  Dr.  McVickar,  narrowly  escaped  being  killed 
last  evening. 

Dr.  Brooks  had  come  on  from  Boston  to  visit  his  many  friends 
in  this  city  [Philadelphia],  and  to  assist  at  the  opening  of  the  new 
chapel  of  the  Holy  Communion,  at  Twenty- seventh  and  Wharton 
streets.  He  was  at  the  residence  of  Rev.  Dr.  Cooper,  No.  2026 
Spruce  Street,  during  the  afternoon,  and  later  in  the  evening  Rev. 
Dr.  McVickar,  with  his  sister,  called  in  a  carriage  for  the  reverend 
gentlemen  to  convey  them  to  the  chapel. 

So  bad  was  the  condition  of  the  icy  streets  that  the  driver  had 
difficulty  in  keeping  his  horses  on  their  feet.  It  was  just  7.45 
o'clock  when  they  got  to  Greenwich  Street,  and  the  driver  turned 
his  horses'  heads  to  cross  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad.  The  spot 
is  one  of  the  most  dangerous  in  the  city,  the  high  walls  of  the 
Arsenal  building  almost  shutting  the  trains  from  the  view  of 
drivers  of  vehicles.  The  safety  gate  was  not  shut  in  consequence 
of  its  being  so  encrusted  with  ice  that  it  could  not  be  worked. 
The  driver,  seeing  that  the  gate  was  open,  and  not  seeing  or 
hearing  an  approaching  train,  drove  upon  the  tracks.  Hardly 
had  those  in  the  carriage  seen  the  dazzling  headlight  of  the  engine 
before  it  was  upon  them,  catching  up  the  heavy  carriage  like  an 


^T.  52]         RAILWAY   ACCIDENT  671 

eggshell,  overturning  it  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  and  crushing 
a  great  hole  in  the  side  where  it  had  struck. 

The  occupants  were  thrown  headlong  to  one  side  of  the  car- 
riage. Dr.  Brooks  was  partly  covered  by  the  debris.  Along 
the  track  for  fifty  yards  the  engine  pushed  the  cab  and  its  af- 
frighted occupants  before  it  could  be  stopped.  The  engineer  had 
seen  the  carriage  before  the  locomotive  struck  it,  and  he  at  once 
reversed  the  lever.  Had  not  this  been  done  it  is  probable  that 
some  if  not  all  of  the  occupants  would  have  been  killed. 

Ready  hands  came  to  the  rescue  and  helped  the  members  of 
the  party  out  of  their  perilous  position.  Rev.  Dr.  Cooijer  and 
Miss  McVickar  had  been  thrown  violently  against  the  side  of  the 
cab.  Dr.  McVickar  was  covered  with  broken  glass  and  wood, 
and  across  Dr.  Brooks's  breast  rested  a  heavy  axletree.  All 
considered  their  escape  from  instant  death  as  marvellous.  The 
driver  fared  worst.  He  was  hurled  from  his  box  to  the  ground, 
and  lay  last  night  in  a  semi-conscious  condition. 

The  delay  in  the  arrival  of  the  party  at  the  chapel  caused  some 
alarm,  and  a  carriage  was  sent  in  search  of  them.  The  searchers 
found  the  clergymen  by  the  railroad  tracks,  and  conveyed  them 
to  the  chapel,  where  the  services  proceeded  as  if  nothing  had 
happened. 

A  lady  in  Philadelphia,  upon  whom  Mr.  Brooks  was  call- 
ing the  day  after  the  accident,  took  down  the  words  in  which 
he  referred  to  it.  He  rose  from  his  chair,  paced  the  floor, 
and,  with  his  face  aglow  with  deep  emotion,  said :  "  I  was  not 
the  least  afraid  to  go ;  I  know  there  are  beautiful  things  God 
has  to  show  us  in  the  other  world;  but,  I  want  to  live  to 
see  what  He  has  to  show  us  that  is  beautiful  and  wonderful 
in  the  coming  century  in  this  world." 

The  foUowins:  letters  of  Mr.  Brooks  relate  to  the  accident, 
written  to  his  friends  McVickar,  Cooper,  and  Strong :  — 

233  Clarenbon  Street,  Boston,  January  31, 1888. 
Oh,  my  dear  William,  you  do  not  know  the  good  which  your 
letter  has  done  me.  If  you  did,  you  would  be  glad  all  your  life 
for  the  blessed  hour  in  which  you  wrote  it.  I  have  had  all  my 
share  of  happiness,  and  more.  I  have  had  friends  such  as  are 
given  to  few  men,  and  they  have  been  constant  and  faithful  to 
me  in  a  way  that  fills  me  with  gratitude  and  wonder  when  I  think 
of  it;  but  life  is  pretty  lonely,  after  all,  and  so,  when  one  of  the 
oldest  of  the  oldest  of  one's  friends  says  kind,  good  things  like 


672  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1888 

this,  it  sort  of  breaks  me  down,  and  I  am  glad,  like  a  true  awk- 
ward Bostonian,  that  you  are  not  here  to  see  how  much  I  feel  it ; 
but  you  must  know  how  much  you  have  been  to  me  all  these  long 
years,  and  how  much  it  is  to  me,  even  although  I  see  you  so 
seldom,  to  know  that  you  give  me  a  thought  sometimes,  and  care 
how  I  am  faring. 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  February  1, 1888. 

Dear  Cooper,  —  I  got  to  New  York  safe,  and  found  Arthur 
interested  in  the  accident  and  told  the  story  there,  and  the  next 
morning  took  the  train  here,  and  arrived  home  last  night,  or 
rather  in  the  afternoon  at  three  o'clock.  James  Franks  was  wait- 
ing at  the  train,  and  he  and  Sallie  and  I  dined  at  William's, 
where  we  told  the  tale  again,  and  gave  thanksgiving  round  the 
family  table.  This  morning  lots  of  people  called,  and  I  felt 
amazed  and  overcome  to  find  how  much  people  cared  whether  I 
lived  or  died. 

And  so  the  thing  goes  into  history,  and  we  are  safe  for  some 
years  more  of  work.  God  knows  how  many!  The  more  the 
whole  event  takes  possession  of  me,  the  more  I  am  willing  to 
leave  it  all  to  Him,  sure  that  it  would  have  been  all  right  if  He 
had  called  us  then,  and  sure,  too,  that  every  week  of  work  He 
still  allows  us  is  a  privilege. 

I  think  of  you  constantly ;  may  you  be  richly  helped  and  sup- 
ported in  your  loneliness.  Let  me  hear  from  you  when  you  can. 
God  keep  you  safe.  Yours  lovingly, 

P.  B. 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  February  2,  1888. 
Dear  George,  —  A  thousand  thanks  for  your  good  letter.  I 
knew  you  would  be  glad  I  was  not  dead,  but  yet  it  was  a  joy  to 
hear  you  say  so,  and  I  read  your  kind  words  more  than  once,  and 
found  great  pleasure  in  them.  Think  of  poor  Cooper,  with  his 
seventy-four  years'  old  bones  and  muscles,  getting  turned  over 
and  over  by  a  locomotive  and  coming  out  marvellously  safe  and 
well,  and  going  on  and  making  his  little  speech  just  as  if  nothing 
had  happened!  Awful  as  it  was,  I  think  the  accident  will  serve 
for  a  diversion  which  will  distract  his  thoughts.  But  no  more 
such  diversions  for  me  in  this  short  life,  please  God ! 

This  marvellous  escape  left  its  uneffaceable  impression 
upon  Phillips  Brooks.  An  era  in  his  life  seemed  to  date 
from  this  moment,  as  he  gave  himself,  even  more  unre- 
servedly, to  the  demands  of  the  people.  The  Eev.  Leighton 
Parks,  who  spent  several  weeks  with  him  at  the  rectory  in 


^T.  52]  PARISH   INCIDENTS  673 

1888,  relates,  that,  astonished  at  the  frequency  with  which 
the  door  bell  rang,  from  an  early  hour  in  the  morning,  he 
determined  to  keep  a  record,  and  found  that  it  averaged  once 
for  every  five  minutes.  But  Mr.  Brooks  steadfastly  declined 
to  seclude  himself,  or  appoint  hours  when  he  would  be  at 
home  to  callers.  They  wanted  to  see  him,  he  would  answer, 
and  it  might  not  be  possible  or  convenient  for  them  to  come 
at  the  hours  which  he  might  fix.  Any  one  who  went  to  call 
upon  him  at  this  time  would  be  apt  to  find  such  a  situation 
as  this,  —  some  one  waiting  for  him  in  the  reception  room, 
another  in  the  dining  room,  while  he  was  closeted  with  a 
third  in  the  study. 

There  were  fears  lest  his  health  would  suffer;  indeed  there 
were  symptoms  that  it  had  already  been  impaired,  but  he 
continued  to  give  himself,  as  if  with  the  desperation  of  a 
man  who  felt  that  his  time  was  short,  that  he  must  work 
while  the  day  lasted.  And  there  was  nothing  that  was  so 
much  wanted  of  him  now  as  the  man  himself.  The  Rev. 
Leighton  Parks  further  relates  that  he  had  an  appointment  to 
meet  him  at  the  rectory  at  eight  o'clock  one  evening,  whence 
they  were  to  go  to  a  reception  at  the  house  of  Mr.  Robert 
C.  Winthrop.  Not  till  nearly  eleven  o'clock  did  Mr.  Brooks 
return  to  his  house  to  keep  the  api:»ointment.  He  had  been 
detained  at  a  hospital  by  a  colored  man  who  had  been  in- 
jvired  in  some  affray  and  had  sent  for  him.  A  physician 
whom  they  met  at  Mr.  Winthrop 's  expressed  some  surprise 
that  Mr.  Brooks  should  not  have  sent  his  assistant,  as  any 
physician  would  have  done.  But  in  spiritual  things  it  must 
be  otherwise,  and  Mr.  Brooks's  reply  was  that  the  man  had 
sent  for  him. 

Another  incident  is  told  by  the  Rev.  Roland  Cotton 
Smith.  A  colored  girl  who  was  dying  sent  for  him  with  a 
verbal  message  through  her  sister.  It  was  Sunday  morning, 
just  as  the  service  at  Trinity  was  beginning.  In  this  case 
Mr.  Brooks  sent  his  assistant,  explaining  why  he  was  unable 
to  come.  But  the  assistant  returned  with  the  message  that 
the  girl  had  declared  she  would  not  die  until  he  came. 
When  the  service  was  over  Mr.  Brooks  himself  went  accord- 


674  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1888 

ing  to  the  request,  with  the  intention  of  administering  the 
Communion.  The  sequel  of  the  story  was  this,  —  he  found 
that  the  two  sisters,  fearing  he  might  not  come,  had  con- 
cluded to  keep  the  Communion  for  themselves,  imitating  the 
sacred  rite,  as  far  as  they  could,  with  bread  and  water. 

Still  another  incident  is  communicated  by  Rev.  E.  W. 
Donald,  the  present  rector  of  Trinity,  which  also  belongs  to 
these  years.  A  workingman,  living  in  one  of  the  suburbs  of 
Boston,  was  told  at  the  hospital  that  he  must  undergo  a 
dangerous  surgical  operation ;  that  he  could  not  live  unless  it 
were  performed;  that  it  was  doubtful  even  then  if  his  life 
could  be  saved,  but  there  might  be  a  chance.  He  returned 
with  the  information  to  his  home  and  his  wife.  The  opera- 
tion was  to  take  place  the  next  day.  They  had  the  evening 
before  them,  and  they  proposed  to  spend  it  in  a  call  on 
Phillips  Brooks  whom  neither  of  them  knew,  or  had  the 
slightest  claim  on  his  interest  or  attention.  Only,  as  they 
faced  the  crisis,  it  seemed  as  if  a  call  on  Phillips  Brooks  was 
adequate  to  its  portentousness  for  them  both.  Mr.  Brooks 
received  them  as  they  had  expected  he  must,  talked  with 
them  and  soothed  them,  and  promised  to  be  with  them  at  the 
hospital  on  the  following  day.  All  which  their  imagination 
had  conceived  of  what  he  might  be  to  them  in  their  emer- 
gency was  fulfilled  to  the  letter. 

There  are  many  other  instances  of  a  similar  kind  to  be 
told  of  Mr.  Brooks  at  this  stage  of  his  life,  upon  which 
he  was  now  entering.  Some  of  them  are  known  in  all  the 
fulness  of  their  pathos,  others  are  unknown  because  he  kept 
the  details  of  his  kindness  to  himself.  It  is  not  that  inci- 
dents of  this  kind  are  peculiar  in  his  experience  as  a  pastor, 
though  there  is  this  peculiarity,  that  they  are  calls  from  out- 
side his  parish,  unless  we  take  his  parish  to  be  Boston  and 
its  vicinity.  But  what  strikes  the  imagination  in  them  is 
the  contrast  they  suggest,  that  the  preacher  who  moved  the 
admiration  of  the  world  and  had  received  its  honors,  the 
scholar  who  could  have  done  so  much  in  theology  and  in 
literature  if  his  time  had  been  at  his  disposal,  the  man  of 
cultured  artistic  sense,  with  social  gifts,  sought  for  every- 


MT.  52]  PARISH   INCIDENTS  675 

where  as  the  ornament  of  social  functions,  where  society 
put  on  its  beauty  and  its  glory,  —  that  such  a  man  should 
have  been  claimed  as  their  own  and  as  if  existing  for  them- 
selves alone,  by  the  poorest,  the  humblest,  the  lowest,  the 
outcast,  and  the  sinner.  He  evidently  was  moved  to  the 
lowest  depths  of  his  being  by  these  appeals,  allowing  nothing 
to  interfere  with  these  demands,  which  rested  upon  the  claim 
of  a  simple  humanity.  It  would  have  been  easy  enough,  if 
he  had  been  so  minded,  to  have  withdrawn  himself,  pleading 
before  his  own  conscience  — and  who  could  have  said  he 
would  have  been  wrong  had  he  done  so  ?  —  that  he  was  en- 
gaged in  a  higher  work,  imperatively  demanding  his  time  if 
it  were  to  be  successfully  done;  that  he  had  no  right  to  be 
giving  his  days  to  such  ministrations  which  others  could  per- 
form as  well,  while  no  one  could  do  the  greater  work  he  was 
accomplishing;  that  in  this  effort  to  minister  to  one  soul  in 
trouble  he  might  diminish  his  power  of  ministering  to  the 
thousands  who  flocked  to  hear  him.  He  might,  at  any  rate, 
have  laid  down  the  limits  to  Trinity  Parish,  or  tried  to  do 
so,  —  for  Trinity  now  almost  seemed  to  have  no  limits,  — 
beyond  which  he  would  not  go.  It  must  have  been  that  out 
of  these  things  there  came  a  yet  more  powerful  motive  to 
feed  his  soul  for  its  greater  utterances.  He  might  not  have 
time  to  read  learned  books  any  longer,  but  he  was  reading 
more  closely  than  ever  the  book  of  life.  Some  might  have 
gone  to  the  opposite  extreme  of  asceticism  and  have  reasoned 
that  the  joy  of  social  life  was  incompatible  with  daily  minis- 
trations to  human  sorrow  and  sufferings.  But  he  did  not. 
Life  in  itself  was  never  richer  or  more  attractive  to  him; 
culture  and  wealth  and  refinement,  a  social  function,  still  had 
for  him  a  charm. 

And  yet  even,  in  the  midst  of  many  engagements,  and 
when  life  was  at  its  fullest,  we  begin  to  have  occasional  com- 
plaints from  him  that  he  is  lonely.  It  may  be  owing  to  some 
consciousness  of  isolation,  or  lack  of  complete  sympathy;  or 
may  come  from  the  unique  position  he  occupied.  It  may  have 
been  that  his  large  nature  made  demands  for  human  love 
which  no  friendships  could  satisfy.    Certainly  he  now  became 


676  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1888 

more  than  ever  dependent  upon  his  friends.  He  grew  hungry 
for  their  companionship,  entreating  them  to  come  to  see  him. 
It  was  strange  that  with  a  world  full  of  friends  he  should 
ever  find  himself  alone.  What  he  suffered  from  and  even 
dreaded  at  times  was  the  return  to  the  house,  where  there 
was  no  one  to  welcome  him.  His  face  would  light  up  in 
the  evenings  if  fortunately,  at  ten  o'clock,  he  found  some 
friend  awaiting  in  the  study  his  return.  But  the  dominant 
note  of  his  life  was  one  of  hope  and  cheer  for  the  world. 
"  The  richest  gifts  of  God  cannot  be  imparted  at  once,  and 
man  must  wait  in  patience  until  the  inward  preparation  to 
receive  them  is  completed."  "Life  in  the  individual  or  the 
race  foUows  the  analogy  of  education  where  the  best  is  held 
in  reserve."  About  this  time  was  written  the  sermon  en- 
titled "The  Good  Wine  at  the  Feast's  End."  It  was  born 
of  an  inward  conflict  in  the  adjustment  of  the  changes  of 
life. 

Christianity  is  full  of  hope.  It  looks  for  the  ever  richer  com- 
ing of  the  Son  of  Man.  It  lives  in  sight  of  the  towers  of  the 
New  Jerusalem  which  fill  the  western  sky.  Therefore  it  has  been 
the  religion  of  energy  and  progress  always  and  everywhere. 

There  are  ways  in  which  the  world  grows  richer  to  the  grow- 
ing man,  and  so  the  earliest  years  cannot  be  meant  to  be  the  full- 
est or  the  most  glorious,  but  that  privilege  must  belong  rather  to 
the  ripest  and  the  last. 

When  what  we  vaguely  call  this  life  is  done,  there  is  to  come 
the  fulfilment  of  those  things  of  which  we  have  here  witnessed 
the  beginnings.  This  is  the  sublime  revelation  of  the  Christian 
faith.  The  words  of  Christ  reach  forward.  They  all  own  pre- 
sent incompleteness.  The  soul  which  uses  them  is  discontented 
and  lives  upon  its  hope. 

Christ  will  take  you,  if  you  let  Him,  into  his  calm,  strong 
power,  and  lead  you  on  to  ever  richer  capacity  and  ever  richer 
blessing,  till  at  last  only  at  the  end  of  eternity  shall  your  soul  be 
satisfied  and  be  sure  that  it  has  touched  the  height  and  depth  of 
His  great  grace  and  say,  "Now  I  know  Thy  goodness  wholly. 
Thou  hast  kept  the  good  wine  until  now. "  * 

The  accident  at  Philadelphia  left  no  visible  traces  on  his 

1  Cf.  The  Good  Wine  at  the  Feast's  End,  New  York,  1893.  The  sermon  was 
preached  in  May,  1888,  at  the  Chnrch  of  the  Incarnation  in  New  York. 


^T.  52]  LENTEN   SERVICES  677 

physical  system.  He  took  up  his  work  as  if  nothing  had 
happened.  In  the  early  part  of  the  year  he  was  making 
many  addresses  outside  of  his  parish :  at  the  Groton  School, 
the  Boston  Latin  School,  the  Little  Wanderers'  Home,  the 
Harvard  Vespers,  the  Workingmen's  Club,  and  St.  Mary's 
Church  for  Sailors,  in  East  Boston,  —  a  diversified  list  of 
calls  upon  his  sympathy. 

Lent  came  in  on  February  15.  He  commented,  as  it  be- 
gan, on  "the  change  to  the  great  shadow."  "There  is  much 
foolish  talk  about  optimism  and  pessimism,  but  the  highest 
and  deepest,  the  brightest  and  darkest  thoughts  of  life  must 
go  together."  His  sermon  for  Ash  Wednesday  was  on  the 
"Sin  that  doth  so  easily  beset  us."  Another  sermon  is  re- 
membered on  "David  and  the  Shewbread,"  where  he  dwelt 
on  the  freedom  of  the  Bible,  the  freedom  of  great  men  like 
David.  "The  needs  of  human  nature  are  supreme,  and  have 
a  right  to  the  divinest  help.  The  little  tasks  need  divinest 
impulses.  The  secular  woes  are  only  to  be  relieved  by  God. 
In  this  use  the  shewbread  is  most  honored." 

In  a  sermon  at  Harvard  Vespers,  March  8,  he  spoke  on 
the  text,  "God's  judgments  are  far  above  out  of  his  sight." 
"  There  are  judgments  of  our  lives  of  which  we  are  unaware, 
which  we  are  not  fine  enough  to  feel.  But  the  order  of  the 
universe  feels  the  judgment  as  a  jar  between  its  wheels. 
Essential  righteousness  is  busy  condemning  us  and  setting 
right  the  wrong  which  we  are  doing.  It  is  awful  to  be  thus 
judged  at  judgment  seats  too  high  for  us  to  know.  Our 
brother  beside  us  is  being  judged  at  them  and  knows  it; 
therefore  the  restless  disturbance  of  his  life.  As  we  grow 
stronger  we  come  into  ever  higher  and  higher  judgments. 
Christ  judged  by  them  all :    '  This  is  My  beloved  Son.'  " 

In  his  Bible  class  on  Saturday  evenings,  he  commented 
on  the  Psalms.  He  preferred  those  which  he  could  associate 
with  the  experience  of  David,  for  David  was  to  him  one  of 
the  few  to  be  accounted  great  in  the  world,  and  the  Psalms 
gained  in  vividness  when  associated  with  a  great  personality. 
"Only  the  experiences  of  a  great  soul  accounted  for  such 
great  utterances." 


678  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1888 

Very  faithful  and  searching  were  the  sermons  dwelling  on 
human  sinfulness;  one  from  the  text,  "He  putteth  his  mouth 
in  the  dust,  if  so  be  there  may  be  hope;  "  another,  on  the 
words  of  Jesus,  "Neither  do  I  condemn  thee.  Go,  and  sin 
no  more,"  where  he  dwelt  on  the  dilemma  in  which  sin  places 
those  who  would  fain  dwell  with  it.  "How  difficult  it  is  to 
meet  it  rightly !  The  fear  of  cruelty  and  fear  of  feebleness ; 
the  sense  of  one's  own  sinfulness;  the  danger  of  being  supe- 
rior and  patronizing;  the  fear  of  exasperating  and  condon- 
ing. So  we  keep  out  of  the  way.  The  first  thing  about 
Christ  is  that  He  never  kept  out  of  the  way." 

The  prominence  of  Christ  in  these  Lenten  services  over- 
shadows all  the  utterances.  It  seemed  as  if  the  speaker 
had  known  Him  in  the  flesh,  or  had  other  conversations  with 
Him  in  the  spirit,  enlightening  him  as  to  the  deeper  mean- 
ing of  the  Saviour's  words.  Two  sermons  were  given  to 
the  "loneliness  of  Christ."  On  Wednesday  evenings  he  took 
up  the  relations  of  Jesus  to  some  of  the  problems  of  society 
and  life.  Of  special  interest  were  the  lectures  on  the  Litany 
given  on  Friday  afternoons.  He  analyzed  its  structure  and 
the  significance  of  its  various  divisions,  the  variety  of  its 
appeal,  the  value  of  its  emphasis  in  repetitions,  its  unvary- 
ing uniform  cry  for  deliverance.  The  invocation  of  the 
Trinity  in  its  opening  clauses  was  not  intended  to  shut  out 
and  restrict  its  use,  but  rather  to  expand  the  grounds  and 
motives  of  the  infinite  appeal.  He  dwelt  especially  on  the 
phrase  "miserable  sinners,"  as  representing  the  human  soul 
standing  in  its  emptiness  and  waiting  to  be  filled  with  the 
profusion  of  God. 

On  the  threshold  of  the  Litany  sinfulness  is  encountered,  as  in 
actual  life,  —  the  hindrance  of  sin.  Its  sources,  —  the  very  sub- 
stance of  our  own  nature ;  the  remoter  sources,  —  the  offences 
of  our  forefathers.  The  double  cry  to  escape  the  punishment  and 
to  be  delivered  from  these  palsying  consequences,  the  guilt  and 
power  of  sin.  (1)  The  sense  of  a  universe  against  us,  of  external 
foes,  the  assaults  of  the  devil,  and  the  feeling  of  the  wrath  of 
God;  (2)  the  defects  within  the  soul,  the  passions  and  mean- 
nesses, the  spites  and  hatreds,  —  the  soul  deceitful  and  corrupt ; 
(3)  the   triple    agency   of  evil,  —  the  world,  the  flesh,  and   the 


^T.  52]  LENTEN   SERVICES  679 

devil;  (4)  the  dangers  of  the  physical  life, —  the  cry  to  be  spared 
from  "  sudden  death ;  "  (5)  the  evils  of  corporate  life,  heresy  and 
schism. 

One  lecture  was  devoted  to  "The  Great  Appeals  of  the 
Litany,"  —  "by  the  mystery  of  Thy  Holy  Incarnation,  Thy 
passion,  Thy  resurrection,  and  ascension."  Then  he  turned 
to  the  public  means  of  grace,  the  Church,  the  Ministry,  the 
Sacraments,  the  State  also,  and  suggested  a  new  petition  for 
"the  world  of  nations."  He  closed  with  an  impressive  sum- 
mary :  "  We  sinners,  what  right  —  and  yet  what  a  right  we 
have  to  pray !  " 

The  Good  Friday  sermon  was  from  Hebrews  x.  20.  "By 
a  new  and  living  way  which  He  hath  consecrated  for  us 
through  the  veil,  that  is  to  say,  His  flesh." 

It  is  strange  how  the  great  critical  event  of  the  world's  life  is 
a  Death ;  not  a  battle,  nor  a  coronation,  nor  a  new  institution, 
nor  a  birth,  but  yet  all  these  summed  up  in  this  dying. 

Obedience  unto  death.  This  the  only  real  approach  to  God. 
You  may  crowd  upon  Him  any  other  way  and  you  do  not  reach 
Him.  Only  the  great  submission  of  the  Vill  blends  our  life  with 
His. 

The  great  silent  bliss  as  soul  joins  soul, —  the  Son  and  the 
Father !  But  surely  also  those  whose  life  He  had  gathered  up  into 
His  own!  He  carried  them  through  and  in  His  obedience.  Can 
we  understand  that  ?  The  human  flesh  has  been  always  an  obstacle  ; 
Christ  made  it  a  channel  between  God  and  man. 

The  sermon  for  Palm  Sunday  was  on  the  cry  of  the  multi- 
tudes that  went  before  and  followed  after  Christ  as  He  en- 
tered Jerusalem.  "The  great  future  for  the  world  and  for 
the  personal  life"  was  the  subject:  "Up  the  broad  pathway, 
lo,  He  comes  rejoicing  in  the  solemn  crisis  and  the  awful 
acquisition  of  life." 

On  Easter  Even  was  revealed  "  the  history  that  pauses. 
Here  and  there  it  seems  to  wait  a  moment.  So  with  the 
world's  history;  so  with  a  life's.  There  are  moments  when 
greater  powers  are  more  forceful  than  we  can  feel;  greater 
truths  are  true  for  us  than  we  can  know." 

Exhausting  as  the  Lenten  services  might  be,  Mr.  Brooks 
came  to  Easter  Day  with  the  culmination  of  his  powers.    The 


68o  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1888 

morning  service  at  Trinity,  said  the  newspaper  reporter,  was 
attended  by  the  largest  congregation  ever  gathered  within 
its  walls.  The  sermon  was  only  another  variation  of  the 
endless  theme,  — 

the  value  and  sacredness  of  life,  the  impossibility  of  man's  cre- 
ating it,  the  tremendous  power  with  which  man  clings  to  life, 
and  the  imperishable  hope  with  which  man  looks  forward  to  the 
perpetuation  of  life. 

No  matter  what  crazy  sorrow  saith, 

No  soul  that  breathes  with  human  breath, 

Has  ever  truly  longed  for  death. 

In  Christ  there  came  rolling  back  the  great  flood  of  life,  and 
into  the  harbor  of  life  a  flood  of  vitality.  The  thought  of  Easter 
is  the  Sea  of  Life,  the  ocean  without  bounds,  flowing  all  ways 
and  overflowing  all,  the  Divine  existence  in  its  ocean-like  exten- 
sion. 

In  the  correspondence  of  Mr.  Brooks  there  is  to  be  ob- 
served a  change  in  his  mode  of  reference  to  the  Lenten  sea- 
son. Hardly  a  year  had  passed  since  his  ordination  when 
he  does  not  refer  with  some  misgivings  to  the  multiplication. 
Thus,  in  1882,  he  had  written:  — 

I  can't  help  doubting  whether  it  is  an  unmixed  good,  though 
I  know  there  is  a  great  deal  of  good  about  it,  this  sudden  and 
tremendous  access  of  churchgoing.  There  is  no  way  of  drawing- 
back  and  retrenching  the  multitude  of  services  without  seeming 
to  discourage  people's  worshipping.  But  I  think  the  old  Lents 
of  my  earlier  ministry,  with  two  or  three  good  solid  services  in 
a  week,  were  probably  quite  as  blessed  as  these  with  their  services 
every  day,  and  sometimes  twice  a  day.  So  you  see,  here  I  am, 
at  forty-six,  already  Laudator  temporis  acti. 

But  the  scene  at  Trinity  Church  during  Lent,  beginning 
with  this  year,  1888,  was  one  never  to  be  forgotten.  The 
newspapers  called  attention  to  the  services.  It  seemed  as  if 
the  only  parallels  were  "in  the  flood  of  fiery  eloquence 
poured  forth  by  Savonarola,  or  the  matchless  eloquence  of 
Lacordaire."  As  evidence  of  the  change  the  note-books 
may  be  mentioned  for  the  year  1888,  and  the  following  years 
to  1891.  Each  year  he  filled  a  large  note-book  with  his 
plans  of  daily  addresses,  or  of  Wednesday  or  Friday  evening 


JET.  s^]  LENTEN  SERVICES  68 1 

lectures,  or  of  Bible  class  studies.  The  people  went  to  these 
services  in  constantly  increasing  numbers  and  with  an  ever 
deepening  interest.  A  new  phase  of  his  ministry  seemed  to 
have  begun,  marked  by  deeper  solemnity  and  an  ineffable 
tenderness  of  spirit,  as  though  his  heart  alone  were  speaking, 
and  every  one  in  the  congregation  were  his  dearest  friend. 
The  expansion  of  the  man  and  the  fuller  revelation  of  his 
soul  made  every  service  deeply  impressive. 

The  Lenten  lectures,  delivered  from  year  to  year  in  Trinity 
Church,  Boston,  are  made  so  interesting,  so  helpful,  so  memor- 
able, that  vast  throngs  are  always  in  attendance  at  their  delivery, 
that  whenever  reported  and  published  they  are  eagerly  read  in  all 
parts  of  the  country,  and  that  their  influence  outreaches  and  out- 
lasts the  immediate  occasion.  The  lectures  are  full  of  both  doc- 
trinal and  practical  theology,  but  always  of  the  kind  that  springs 
with  seeming  spontaneity  out  of  the  theme  and  out  of  living 
present  human  interests.^ 

The  writer  of  the  above  paragraph  was  struck  with  one 
statement  of  Mr.  Brooks's  when  speaking  of  the  Litany:  "It 
is  significant  that  not  in  her  creeds,  but  in  her  prayers,  the 
Church  most  clearly  states  her  dogmas."  The  remark  is, 
indeed,  significant  as  showing  how  far  Phillips  Brooks  had 
departed  from  the  spirit  and  method  of  the  New  England 
theology,  which  had  terminated  in  a  scholasticism  like  that 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  built  upon  dialectic,  glorying  in  its  in- 
tellectual supremacy,  in  the  victory  it  had  achieved  over  the 
theology  of  the  feelings.  Phillips  Brooks  had  gone  back  to 
the  theology  of  life.  He  accepted  the  feeling  as  the  charac- 
teristic and  decisive  element  in  religious  faith.  There  was 
an  intellectual  element  in  the  process  of  faith;  but  it  was 
not  that  which  constituted  its  foundation.  In  the  feeling  for 
the  worth  of  things,  reason  possesses  as  true  a  revelation  as 
experience  has  in  the  principles  of  scientific  investigation. 
In  a  passage  in  one  of  his  sermons,  written  about  this  time 
(1889),  he  took  occasion  to  refer  to  the  New  England  theol- 
ogy and  to  the  arrested  development  of  religious  life  out  of 
which  it  had  sprung :  — 

^  Cf .  Phillips  Brooks  in  Boston,  by  M.  C.  Ayer,  editor  of  the  Boston  Daily 
Advertiser,  p.  26. 


682  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1888 

You  all  know  something  of  what  a  confusion  of  intricate,  com- 
plicated, and  practically  incomprehensible  dogma  the  New  Eng- 
land theology  became.  The  endless  discussion  of  fantastic  ques- 
tions occupied  a  large  part  of  the  people's  thoughts.  The  minute 
and  morbid  study  of  their  spiritual  conditions  distorted  and  tor- 
mented anxious  souls.  Strange  theories  of  the  atonement  grew 
like  weeds.  .  .  .  Heresies  sprang  out  of  the  soul  where  ortho- 
doxy lay  corrupt  and  almost  dead.  It  was  the  sad  fate  of  a 
religious  life  denied  its  due  development  and  shut  in  on  itself.^ 

In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Cooper  there  is  an  allusion  to  the  season 
of  Lent,  showing  the  pleasure  he  took  in  the  frequent  ser- 
vices. But  he  bemoans  the  changes  which  life  is  bringing. 
In  the  midst  of  his  engagements  he  had  been  shocked  and 
saddened  by  the  death  of  Mrs.  Leighton  Parks  in  Italy. 
She  had  entered  with  her  husband  into  the  circle  of  his  more 
intimate  friends,  —  a  woman  who  possessed  a  beautiful  and 
stately  presence,  combining  with  it  a  gracious  charm  of  man- 
ner and  power  of  pleasing,  but  also  strength  of  character, 
self-possession,  devotion,  and  a  true  woman's  insight  and  wis- 
dom. In  her  youth  she  was  suddenly  called,  leaving  sorrow 
and  mourning  behind  her. 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  7,  1888. 

My  dear  Cooper,  —  It  seems  to  me  as  if  Lent  had  lasted  six 
months,  and  had  had  ten  thousand  services  already,  but  I  never 
liked  it  so  much,  I  think,  and  the  habits  which  it  makes  of  going 
to  the  church  and  thinking  and  talking  about  the  best  things  were 
never  so  welcome.  I  hope  it  does  the  people  as  much  good  as  it 
does  the  minister.  It  has  been  saddened  for  us  here  by  the 
melancholy  tidings  from  Parks  of  Emmanuel  Church.  He  is 
abroad  for  a  winter's  rest,  and  has  been  for  weeks  at  death's  door 
in  an  hotel  at  Pisa.  And  in  the  midst  of  his  illness,  his  wife, 
who  was  with  him,  died.  He  is  going  to  get  well,  but  what  a 
dreary  life  he  will  come  back  to.  He  has  three  little  children. 
It  is  the  breaking  up  of  one  of  the  happiest  and  brightest  homes 
I  ever  knew. 

And  is  the  shoulder  all  right  ?  And  have  you  got  your  sleep- 
ing powders  yet  ?  And  has  William  Bembo  got  his  head  again  ? 
And  has  the  railroad  given  him  a  thousand  dollars?  How  long 
ago  it  all  seems,  and  yet  what  a  shudder  it  sends  through  one's 
bones  to  think  of  it !  Mr.  Morrill  sent  to  New  York  and  got 
^  Sermons,  vol.  vi.  p.  352. 


^T.  52]  CORRESPONDENCE  683 

me  a  magnificent  and  mighty  stick  to  replace  the  one  that  van- 
ished on  that  awful  night,  so  that  I  carry  a  memorial  of  the 
great  accident  on  all  my  walks. 

The  following  letters  belong  to  this  period :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  9,  1888. 

Oh,  if  things  would  not  so  be  breaking  to  pieces  all  the  while ! 
Nothing  stays  put.  Here  is  our  little  ecclesiastical  teapot  all  in 
a  bubble.  Courtney  goes  this  way  and  Greer  goes  that,  and  who 
knows  what  will  happen  to  Percy  or  whether  Father  Hall  will  be 
spared!  The  Bishop  looks  very  ill.  It  must  all  be  that  the 
things  which  cannot  be  shaken  may  remain. 

Good-by.      Bless  God  you  are  safe  and  well. 

233  CiiAKBNDON  Street,  Boston,  March  13,  1888. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  Now  in  these  idle  days  of  Lent  it  is  a  good 
time  for  a  small  piece  of  extra  work.  Professor  Jacks,  of  Lon- 
don, has  sent  me  these  copies  of  the  addresses  to  be  made  to 
James  Martineau,  and  asked  whether  a  few  of  the  representative 
men  of  our  church  would  like  to  sign  it.  I  think  that  some  of 
them  would.  Certainly  I  shall  sign  it.  Will  you?  And  will 
you  ask  four  or  five  others  of  the  New  York  men?  You  will 
know  whom  it  is  best  to  ask.  But  I  wish  you  would  ask  Bishop 
Potter,  and  I  would  venture  to  name  Huntington,  Tiffany,  Don- 
ald, and  Heber  Newton. 

Surely  this  is  a  proper  chance  to  do  one  of  these  natural  and 
pleasant  things  which  make  us  feel  the  unity  of  the  search  for 
truth  under  all  our  divisions.  I  thought  of  sending  it  to  Har- 
wood,  and  Bishop  Harris,  and  Professor  Allen.  Do  you  think  of 
any  one  besides,  whose  name  would  be  desirable? 

The  blessed  Lenten  days  are  fast  slipping  away  from  us,  and 
before  we  know  it  we  shall  come  out  of  the  golden  gate  of  Easter 
into  that  bewildering  world  where  we  do  not  go  to  church  every 
day.  How  strange  it  will  all  be !  But  to-day,  Winter  is  in  our 
faces,  and  Lent  is  in  our  hearts. 

Ever  affectionately  yours,  P.  B. 

P.  S.  There  can  be  no  harm  in  a  lay  signature  or  two,  if  the 
right  men  occur  to  you.      How  about  President  Barnard  ? 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  22,  1888. 
My  dear  W.,  — On  the  morning  of  the  23d  I  start  for  Hali- 
fax, that  is,  if  I  go  to  Courtney's  consecration,  as  he  has  asked 
me  to  do,  and  as  it  seems  to  me  that  somebody  from  his  old  home 
here,  where  he  has  been  for  so  long,  ought  to  do,  but  you  shall 


684  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1888 

have  the  welcomest  of  welcomes,  and  I  will  do  all  that  it  is  in 
my  power  to  do  for  your  blessed  Baptist.  This  shifting  from 
denomination  to  denomination,  either  of  lay  folk  or  of  clergy, 
has  little  in  it  to  stir  one's  soul,  but  let  us  take  the  little  Baptist 
in  and  teach  him  all  our  beautiful  ways,  and  he,  too,  will  soon 
be  prating  about  unity. 

How  the  parsons  are  jumping  about !      What  a  dance  it  is,  — 

A and  B ,  and  now  there  are  faint  signs  of  agitation 

in  C .      May  they  all  find  the  peace  they  seek. 

Your  old  friend  and  brother,  Phillips  Brooks. 


Mr.  Brooks  was  projecting  a  larger  work  for  Trinity,  and 
seems  to  have  felt  the  necessity  also  of  arranging  that  some 
share  in  the  preaching  should  be  borne  by  his  assistants. 
The  vestry  of  Trinity  responded  to  his  request  for  relief, 
instructing  the  clerk  of  the  vestry  "to  communicate  to  our 
beloved  rector  the  grateful  acknowledgments  of  the  Pro- 
prietors for  his  untiring  and  devoted  services  during  the 
past  autumn  and  winter,  and  to  make  arrangements  with 
him  for  his  relief  from  labor  and  care  during  the  proposed 
absence  of  the  assistant  minister."  At  this  time  he  re- 
signed his  position  as  trustee  on  the  Slater  Foundation,  which 
he  had  held  since  1882,  having  been  appointed  by  Mr.  John 
F.  Slater  when  he  made  his  gift  of  one  million  dollars  for 
Christian  education  in  the  Southern  States. 

To  Rt.  Rev.  H.  C.  Potter,  he  wrote:  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  June  5,  1888. 

Dear  Henry,  — I  did  not  read  Dr.  Harris's  excellent  pam- 
phlet. Can  you  really  care  about  the  infinitesimal  question  of 
"non-communicating  attendance"?  It  seems  to  me  to  be  the 
very  end  and  exhaustion  of  religion,  a  toy  for  the  intel- 
lect to  play  with,  but  profoundly  unworthy  the  consideration  of 
any  reasonable  man. 

And  then  the  way  the  Disputants  deal  with  it !  The  appeals 
to  authority !  The  eager  interest  in  the  question  whether  the 
Early  Fathers  "stayed  to  Communion  "!      Who  cares? 

Are  all  the  hard  questions  answered  and  the  great  wrongs  set 
right  that  men  are  able  to  find  time  for  things  like  these  ? 

I  hope  that  you  are  well  and  idle. 

Affectionately  yours,  P.  B. 


^T.  52]  MEMORIAL   SERMON  685 

At  Trinity  Church,  on  Sunday,  the  10th  of  June,  Phillips 
Brooks,  in  the  course  of  his  sermon,  spoke  of  the  death  of 
Rev.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  a  Unitarian  minister  who  for 
many  years  had  been  held  in  the  highest  respect  and  rever- 
ence in  Boston,  for  his  intellectual  and  moral  force  and  his 
saintly  character :  — 

I  cannot  stand  here  to-day  without  a  tribute  of  affectionate 
and  reverent  remembrance  to  Dr.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  the 
minister  of  the  Church  of  the  Disciples,  the  friend  and  helper  of 
souls.  How  much  that  name  has  meant  in  Boston  these  last 
forty  years !  When  I  think  of  his  long  life ;  when  I  remember 
what  identification  he  has  had  with  all  that  has  been  noblest  in 
every  movement  of  the  public  conscience  and  the  public  soul; 
when  I  see  how  in  the  days  of  the  great  national  struggle,  from 
first  to  last,  he  was  not  only  true  to  Freedom,  but  a  very  captain 
in  her  armies  and  a  power  of  wisdom  and  inspiration  in  her  coun- 
cils; when  I  think  what  words  of  liberty  the  slave  and  the  bigot 
have  heard  from  his  lips ;  when  I  think  how  his  studies  have 
illuminated  not  merely  our  own  faith,  but  all  the  great  religions; 
when  I  see  how  much  of  Christ  was  in  his  daily  walk  among  us, 
in  his  unswerving  truthfulness,  his  quiet  independence,  his  ten- 
derness and  strength,  his  pity  for  the  sinner,  and  his  hatred  of 
the  sin ;  when  I  think  how  he  loved  Christ,  —  when  all  this  gathers 
in  my  memory  at  the  tidings  of  his  death,  the  city,  the  country, 
the  Church,  the  world,  seem  emptier  and  poorer.  He  belonged 
to  the  whole  Church  of  Christ.  Through  him  his  Master  spoke 
to  all  who  had  ears  to  hear.  Especially  he  was  a  living  epistle 
to  the  Church  of  Christ  which  is  in  Boston.  It  is  a  beautiful, 
a  solemn  moment  when  the  city,  the  Church,  the  world,  gather 
up  the  completeness  of  a  finished  life  like  his,  and  thank  God 
for  it,  and  place  it  in  the  shrine  of  memory  to  be  a  power  and 
a  revelation  thenceforth  so  long  as  city  and  Church  and  world 
shall  last.  It  is  not  the  losing,  it  is  rather  the  gaining,  the 
assuring  of  his  life.  Whatever  he  has  gone  to  in  the  great  mys- 
tery beyond,  he  remains  a  word  of  God  here  in  the  world  he 
loved.  Let  us  thank  our  Heavenly  Father  for  the  life,  the  work, 
the  inspiration,  of  his  true  servant,  his  true  saint,  James  Free- 
man Clarke. 

Part  of  this  tribute,  beginning  with  the  words  "  He  belonged 
to  the  whole  Church  of  Christ,"  is  now  an  autograph  beneath 
the  portrait  of  James  Freeman  Clarke  in  the  church  where 
he  ministered. 


686  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [i 

Letters  were  constantly  sent  to  Phillips  Brooks,  telling 
him  what  his  published  sermons  were  doing  to  strengthen 
faith  and  inspire  hope.  This  letter  is  from  a  person  in  Eng- 
land unknown  to  him,  and  represents  the  feeling,  almost  the 
expressions,  of  the  many  others  who  wrote  to  him :  — 

May  14,  1888. 
For  the  last  five  years  I  may  say  that  I  have  read  one  of  your 
sermons  every  Sunday,  and  the  help  and  spiritual  nourishment 
I  get  from  them  has  been  a  very  real  source  of  strength  and 
happiness  in  my  life.  .  .  .  Often  and  often  have  I  opened  a 
volume  of  your  sermons  in  hours  of  despondency  and  gloom,  when 
the  Unseen  has  seemed  to  be  the  non-existent,  when  all  high 
ideals  were  slipping  away,  and  the  actual  was  pressing  out  faith 
and  courage ;  and  never  did  the  reading  of  your  words  fail  to 
encourage  and  strengthen  me  and  send  me  back  to  suffering  or 
action  with  fresh  force  and  energy.  I  have  been  through  the 
various  phases  of  intellectual  doubt  and  skepticism,  and  you  have 
helped  me  out  on  the  right  side.  The  absence  of  all  dogmatism 
and  sectarian  narrowness,  combined  with  so  inspiring  a  belief  in 
God's  revelation  of  Himself  to  us  and  of  the  Divine  in  us,  is 
what  I  find  so  helpful  in  your  books ;  and  the  large  views  you 
take  of  life  are  to  me  most  educative  and  elevating. 

There  is  a  letter  from  Dr.  Holmes,^  which,  although  it  has 
been  published,  is  so  interesting  and  representative  that  an 
extract  from  it  may  be  given  here :  — 

296  Beacon  Stkeet,  May  2:3,  1888. 

My  dear  Mb.  Brooks,  —  I  had  the  privilege  of  listening  to 
your  sermon  last  Sunday  forenoon.  I  was  greatly  moved  and 
impressed  by  it,  and  I  came  away  very  thankful  that  so  divine 
a  gift  of  thought  and  feeling  had  been  bestowed  upon  one  who 
was  born  and  moves  among  us. 

My  daughter  would  be  glad  to  have  me  as  her  constant  com- 
panion, and  of  course  it  would  be  a  delight  to  listen  to  such 
persuasive  and  inspiring  exhortations  as  those  which  held  your 
great  audience  last  Sunday.    .    .    . 

I  am  ashamed  to  ask  you  to  pardon  this  letter.  You  know 
the  language  of  sincerity  from  that  of  flattery,  and  will  accept 
this  heartfelt  tribute  in  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  given. 

Sincerely  and  respectfully  yours,  0.  W.  Holmes. 

Mr.  Brooks  was  to  spend  the  summer  at  home  preaching 

1  Cf.  Life  and  Letters  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  vol.  L  p.  280. 


^T.  52]  CORRESPONDENCE  687 

at  Trinity  and  at  St.  Andrew's  (when  it  slioidd  be  ready). 
Nominally  he  was  residing  on  his  ancestral  acres  in  North 
Andover,  but  he  made  many  visits.  One  was  to  Pittsfield, 
where  he  spent  a  week  with  Kev.  W.  W.  Newton,  from 
whence  he  visited  Williamstown  to  preach  before  the  stu- 
dents in  the  Congregational  Church.  He  writes  to  Mr. 
Newton  after  his  return,  and  speaks  of  Commencement  at 

Harvard :  — 

July  4, 1888. 

The  Commencement  went  off  bravely.  President  Eliot  gave 
us  a  fine  panegyric  on  Democracy,  and  the  boys  will  talk  and 
behave  better  for  it  in  the  future,  and  we  of  '55  played  the  old 
graduate  with  dignity  and  credit,  so  I  hope,  but  the  youngsters 
were  too  busy  admiring  themselves  to  care  how  we  played  it. 
Never  mind,  we  have  each  other,  and  the  world  is  rich  in  recol- 
lections. 

There  came  letters  to  him  from  India,  from  the  Rev.  G.  A. 
Lefroy,  of  the  Delhi  Mission,  and  from  Mr.  Robert  Macona- 
chie,  of  the  Indian  Civil  Service,  showing  that  he  was  still 
held  in  affectionate  remembrance  after  the  lapse  of  five  years. 
To  these  letters  in  his  leisure  at  North  Andover  he  re- 
sponded :  — 

July  5,  1888. 

My  dear  Mr.  Lefroy,  —  It  made  me  glad  and  proud  to  get 
your  letter,  now  a  long  time  ago.  To  be  remembered  for  five 
years  by  one  whose  life  is  as  full  as  yours  is  indeed  something 
to  be  proud  of,  and  to  have  the  pleasant  days  which  we  spent  at 
Delhi  so  pleasantly  recalled  is  truly  a  delight. 

How  long  ago  it  seems,  and  what  a  host  of  things  have  hap- 
pened since,  and  yet  how  clear  it  all  is.  I  had  a  delightful  let- 
ter from  Maconachie  the  other  day,  which  was  like  the  thinning 
of  a  cloud  which  was  very  thin  already.  I  saw  the  old  scene 
perfectly,  and  could  hear  the  tones  of  voices  which  I  have  not 
heard  for  five  busy  years.  And  that  you  and  the  friends  I  saw 
with  you  have  been  bravely  and  patiently  going  on  at  the  good 
work  ever  since  fills  me  with  admiration.  Do  you  still  have 
your  noon  service  in  your  chapel-room  as  you  used  to  ?  That 
seemed  to  me  always  beautiful.  And  do  the  brown  boys  play 
cricket  ?  And  do  you  have  school  feasts  and  prizes  ?  And  is  that 
region  of  the  Kuttab  as  fascinating  as  it  was  when  we  drove  out 
there  one  bright  morning?     I  can  hear  the  cool  splash  of  that 


688  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [i 

boy  now,  as  he  jumps  down  into  the  pool.  It  is  a  picture  which 
never  grows  dim,  and  only  needs  the  touch  of  a  letter's  wing  to 
scatter  the  dust  which  lay  collected  on  it. 

That  you  in  your  good  work  should  care  anything  about  my 
books  touches  me  very  much  indeed.  They  were  written  for  my 
people  here,  and  nothing  was  farther  from  my  thought  than  that 
they  should  be  read  by  the  Jamna  and  the  Ganges.  But  how 
simple  it  all  grows  as  we  get  older!  The  whole  of  what  we  per- 
sonally have  to  live  and  what  we  go  out  to  preach  is  loyalty  to 
Christ.  It  is  nothing  but  that.  All  truth  regarding  Christ  and 
all  duty  towards  His  brethren  is  involved  in  that  and  flows  out 
from  it.  To  teach  Him  to  any  one  who  never  heard  of  Him  is 
to  bring  a  soul  into  the  sight  of  Him  and  His  unspeakable  friend- 
ship. To  grow  stronger  and  better  and  braver  ourselves  is  to 
draw  nearer  to  Him  and  to  be  more  absolutely  His. 

And  this  seems  to  take  off  the  burden  of  life  without  lessening 
the  impulse  of  its  duties.  He  is  behind  all  our  work.  It  is  all 
His  before  it  is  ours  and  after  it  is  ours.  We  have  only  to  do 
our  duty  in  our  little  place,  and  leave  the  great  results  to  Him. 
We  are  neither  impatient  nor  reluctant  at  the  thought  of  the  day 
when  we  shall  have  finished  here  and  go  to  higher  work. 

But,  dear  me !  what  right  have  I  to  say  all  this  to  you,  who 
know  it  so  much  better,  who  are  putting  it  so  constantly  and 
richly  into  your  life  and  work?  I  grow  stronger  for  Boston 
when  I  think  of  Delhi.  I  hope  that  Allnut  will  come  back  to 
you  mightily  refreshed.  Give  my  best  love  to  Carlyon,  and  tell 
him  how  well  I  remember  all  his  kindness.  Your  other  mates 
I  do  not  know,  but  venture  to  send  them  my  greeting  as  their 
brother  in  the  work.  Be  sure  that  I  shall  always  delight  to  hear 
from  you.  How  hot  you  must  be  to-day !  Would  that  you  were 
here  in  our  New  England  coolness.      God  bless  you  always ! 

Your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

July  6,  1888. 
Dear  Mr.  Maconachie,  —  It  is  long  since  anything  has 
made  me  so  glad  as  your  letter.  That  you,  with  all  your  busy 
life,  should  think  still  of  those  two  weeks  which  are  an  unfading 
picture  in  my  memory  is  indeed  wonderful  to  me.  I  greet  you 
and  your  wife  as  if  it  were  only  yesterday  instead  of  five  long  years 
since  we  parted.  What  a  life  God  has  given  you !  To  be  His 
minister  to  millions  of  His  children,  to  touch  their  lives  with 
the  new  sense  of  justice  and  mercy  which  must  bring  them  some 
revelation  of  Him,  and  at  the  same  time  to  care  for  the  real  life 
which  is  the  spiritual  life  of  some  of  your  fellow  workers,  who  is 


^T.  52]  CORRESPONDENCE  689 

there  that  has  greater  privilege?  All  that  you  say  about  your 
friend  touches  me  deeply.  God  help  him !  The  great  assuring 
certainty  is  that  God  is  helping  him.  I  think  we  should  all  of 
us  long  ago  have  given  up  trying  to  do  anything  for  our  friends 
if  we  had  not  been  spiritually  sure  of  that.  The  things  we  do 
are  so  out  of  proportion  to  what  is  to  be  done.  But  he  is  doing 
it,  and  our  work  may  well  be  content  to  be  a  bit. 

Since  I  saw  you  life  has  gone  on  with  me  in  very  pleasant 
monotony.  I  came  back  to  my  work  in  the  autumn  of  1883. 
Twice  since  then  I  have  made  summer  visits  to  England  and  the 
Continent.  The  winters  have  been  given  to  preaching  and  work- 
ing. I  hope  it  has  not  been  without  result.  But  I  grow  less 
and  less  inclined  to  ask.  The  work  itself  is  delightful,  and,  if 
it  is  faithfully  done,  it  must  do  good.  That  is  enough.  Every 
year  it  seems  to  me  as  if  not  merely  the  quantity  but  the  quality 
of  Christian  life  grew  better.  Never  was  there  an  age  when  so 
many  men  had  so  high  thoughts  of  God  as  now.  And  this  I  say 
in  clear  sight  of  the  perplexing  problems  and  discouraging  spec- 
tacles to  which  no  man  can  shut  his  eyes.  We  see  dimly  what 
your  anxieties  are.  We,  with  our  country  swarming  with  the 
disturbed  elements  of  all  the  world,  have  our  anxieties  and  mis- 
givings, which  are  yet  not  too  much  for  faith.  Is  it  not  just  in 
our  two  countries,  yours  and  mine,  India  and  America,  that  the 
meeting  of  strange  races  with  one  another  is  taking  place,  and  so 
that  the  issues  of  the  greater  day  of  Christ  are  being  mysteriously 
made  ready  ?  Would  that  we  could  sit  either  in  your  bungalow 
or  in  my  study  and  talk  of  all  these  things !  But  this  letter- 
writing  is  poor  work.  It  is  only  like  ships  hailing  each  other  at 
sea.  But  it  is  better  than  nothing.  Your  letter  brought  me 
the  Indian  sunshine  and  color  and  strength,  and  Boston  for  a 
moment  seemed  the  unreal  thing.  Now  I  am  reading  it  again, 
and  answering  it  under  my  ancestral  trees  in  the  country,  twenty- 
five  miles  from  Boston,  where  my  forefathers  have  lived  for  a 
century,  and  where  I  retreat  for  summers.  It  is  the  very  glory 
of  a  summer  day.  The  trees  are  chattering  Puritan  theology, 
and  I  am  rejoicing  that  the  world  is  larger  than  they  know,  and 
that  afar  off  in  the  Punjab  there  is  some  one  who  cares  how  it 
fares  with  me.  May  God  bless  him  and  his  wife  and  his  boys, 
—  so  prays  his  friend, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

On  Sunday,  the  15th  of  July,  Dr.  Brooks  preached  at 
Trinity  Church  before  the  National  Prison  Congress.  The 
sermon  was  noteworthy  apart  from  its  eloquence,  for  it  con- 

VOL.  u 


690  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1888 

tained  the  assertion  of  profound  theological  and  humanita- 
rian principles,  and  as  such  was  immediately  published  by 
the  National  Prison  Association  for  gratuitous  distribution. 
The  text,  "I  was  in  prison  and  ye  came  unto  me,"  led  him 
to  take  up  the  deeper  meaning  of  the  words  of  Christ,  who 
had  suffered  no  imprisonment  and  yet  had  been  in  prison. 
"  It  must  have  been  the  deeper  Christ,  —  the  Christ  which 
the  theologies  have  tried  to  express  when  they  have  made 
Jesus  the  head  of  humanity,  —  Christ  the  typical  manhood, 
Christ  the  divine  and  universal  man,  —  this  was  the  Christ 
who  had  lain  in  the  prison  awaiting  the  visitation  of  pitiful 
and  sympathetic  hearts."  The  great  human  sympathy  of  the 
preacher  flowed  through  the  sermon  like  a  river.  It  closed 
with  a  fine  passage  drawing  sharply  the  distinction  between 
sentiment  and  sentimentality. 

I  know  how  weak,  in  many  people's  minds,  are  my  positions, 
because  they  rest  on  sentiment.  I  know  how  weak,  in  many 
minds,  seems  the  whole  cause  of  prison  improvement,  because  of 
the  element  of  sentiment  which  is  in  it.  But  there  is  nothing 
stronger  than  a  true  sentiment  for  any  policy  or  plan  of  action  to 
start  from  and  to  rest  upon.  The  great  human  sentiments  are 
the  only  universal  and  perpetual  powers.  Creeds,  schemes  of 
government,  political  economies,  philosophies,  are  local,  are  tem- 
porary; but  the  great  human  sentiments  are  universal  and  per- 
petual. Upon  them  rests  religion.  In  their  broadening  move- 
ment moves  the  progress  of  mankind.  It  is  not  sentiment,  but 
sentimentality,  which  is  weak  and  rotten.  Sentiment  is  alive, 
and  tense,  and  solid;  sentimentality  is  dead,  and  flaccid,  and 
corrupt.  Sentiment  is  just ;  sentimentality  has  the  very  soul  of 
injustice.  Sentiment  is  kind;  sentimentality  is  cruel.  Senti- 
ment is  intelligent;  sentimentality  is  senseless.  Sentiment  is 
fed  straight  out  of  the  heart  of  truth;  sentimentality  is  distorted 
with  the  personal  whims  and  preferences.  Sentiment  is  active; 
sentimentality  is  lazy.  Sentiment  is  self-sacrificing;  sentimen- 
tality is  self-indulgent.  Sentiment  loves  facts;  sentimentality 
hates  them.  Sentiment  is  quick  of  sight ;  sentimentality  is  blind. 
In  a  word,  sentiment  is  the  health  of  human  nature,  and  senti- 
mentality is  its  disease.  Disease  and  health  often  look  strangely 
alike,  but  they  are  always  different.  He  who  would  escape  sen- 
timentality must  live  in  sentiment.  He  who  would  keep  senti- 
ment true  and  strong  must  fight  against  sentimentality,  and  never 


^T.  52]  CORRESPONDENCE  691 

let  himself  accept  it  for  his  ally.  In  these  days,  when  many 
men  are  disowning  sentiment  because  they  confound  it  with  sen- 
timentality, and  many  other  men  are  abandoning  themselves  to 
sentimentality  because  they  confound  it  with  sentiment,  do  not 
all  men  need  to  learn,  and  never  to  forget,  their  difference?  Do 
any  men  need  more  to  learn,  and  to  remember  it  than  they  who 
have  to  deal  with  prisoners  and  prisons  ? 

To  the  Rev.  George  A.  Strong  he  writes  in  response  to  an 
invitation  that  he  would  deliver  a  lecture :  — 

Trenton  Falls,  July  22, 1888. 
Dear  George,  —  Your  letter  of  last  Wednesday  has  found 
me  at  this  pleasant  place,  where  I  am  spending  a  peaceful  Sun- 
day without  preaching  or  any  other  clerical  performance,  only 
looking  at  the  pretty  falls,  and  going  this  morning  to  a  little 
village  Methodist  meeting,  where  the  sermon  was  very  good  in- 
deed. And  here  comes  your  request  to  lecture  in  your  course 
next  winter!  Dear  George,  if  it  were  only  anything  but  lectur- 
ing! If  you  had  only  asked  me  to  give  a  concert,  or  a  ballet, 
or  any  of  those  things  which  are  quite  in  my  line !  But  I  have 
never  lectured,  and  don't  believe  I  can.  I  have  not  a  rag  of 
preparation  to  cover  the  nakedness  of  my  incompetence.  Will  it 
not  be  enough  if  I  come  to  hear  Charles?  He  never  thought  the 
rest  of  us  had  any  manners.  How  he  will  give  them  to  us  when 
he  gets  us  in  his  helpless  audience !  As  to  lecturing  after  him, 
I  am  hopeless,  — but  I  will  do  it  for  you,  George.  I  will  do 
anything  for  you.  I  will  disgrace  myself  to  any  extent,  if  only 
I  don't  disgrace  you!  So,  if  I  may  come  and  talk  extempora- 
neously, out  of  an  idle  brain,  and  do  not  have  to  write  a  beautiful 
lecture  on  paper  to  be  read  with  feeling  and  expression,  I  will 

come,  —  that   is,    if  you  and  M will  come  and  see  me  at 

North  Andover  some  time  between  the  15th  and  the  30th  of  Au- 
gust, and  tell  me  all  about  it.  Do  not  deny  me  this.  But  send 
me  word  immediately  to  Boston,  will  you?  when  it  shall  be.  I 
shall  go  up  each  Monday  afternoon,  and  you  will  come  from  New 
Bedford  in  the  morning  and  go  up  with  me.      Say  you  will  do 

this,  and  I  will  be  most  happy.      Tell  M to  tell  you  to  say 

"Yes  "  for  yourself  and  her,  I  hope  to  hear  this  week.  Good-by. 
I  think  I  shall  lecture  on  "Matters." 

Ever  yours,  P.  B. 

St.  Andrew's  Church  was  opened  for  worship  on  Sunday, 
July  29,  1888,  and  in  the  evening  Mr.  Brooks  preached  to 
an  overflowing  congregation  on  the  fatherly  care  of  God  for 


692  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1888 

all  his  universe,  and  showed  that  the  church  was  established 
to  set  forth  that  divine  love  and  care.  He  continued  to 
preach  at  St.  Andrew's  every  Sunday  evening  for  the  rest 
of  the  summer.  To  the  Rev.  W.  Dewees  Roberts,  he  wrote 
asking  him  to  be  one  of  the  assistant  ministers  at  Trinity 
Church.  How  he  regarded  the  work  of  an  assistant,  or,  in 
other  words,  how  he  administered  the  affairs  of  a  large  par- 
ish, is  evident  from  the  following  passage :  — 

I  cannot  specify  in  detail  what  would  be  your  duties  in  the 
parish.  In  general,  I  should  like  to  have  you  help  at  the  Parish 
Church  and  at  St.  Andrew's,  as  it  might  be  required;  and  I 
should  be  glad  of  every  effort  of  your  own  enterprise  and  origi- 
nality, in  devising  new  work,  and  extending  the  good  influence 
of  the  Church  in  every  direction. 

An  English  novel,  "Robert  Elsmere,"  was  the  chief  sen- 
sation of  the  summer.  Mr.  Brooks  alludes  to  it  in  the  fol- 
lowing letter :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  September  1,  1888. 

My  dear  Miss  Merkdith,  —  I  must  beg  you  to  excuse  my 
delay  in  sending  you  these  Literatures  and  Lives  which  I  now 
most  gladly  enclose.  I  was  absent  when  your  note  arrived,  and 
when  I  did  receive  it,  it  was  in  the  country  where  I  could  not  lay 
my  hand  at  once  upon  the  interesting  documents.  But  here  they 
are,  and  I  am  very  glad  to  send  them. 

I  have  finished  "Robert  Elsmere,"  and  found  it  very  interest- 
ing, mainly,  however,  with  that  secondary  interest  which  belongs 
to  the  circumstances  of  a  book  and  its  relation  to  its  time,  rather 
than  to  its  substance  and  absolute  contents.  It  is  a  curious  mix- 
ture of  strength  and  weakness.  It  has  the  sharp  definitions  of 
spiritual  things,  the  fabrication  of  unreal  dilemmas  and  alterna- 
tives in  which  the  English  mind,  and  especially  the  English  cleri- 
cal mind,  delights.  It  is  as  unintentionally  unfair  as  a  parson, 
only  on  the  other  side.  It  seems,  as  Matthew  Arnold  used  to 
seem,  to  be  entirely  unaware  of  the  deeper  meanings  of  Broad 
Churchmanship,  and  to  think  of  it  only  as  an  effort  to  believe 
contradictions,  or  as  a  trick  by  which  to  hold  a  living  which  one 
ought  honestly  to  resign. 

It  is  not  good  to  name  a  doctrine  by  a  man's  name,  but  there 
is  no  sign  that  this  writer  has  ever  heard  of  the  theology  of 
Maurice.  But  how  interesting  it  is !  what  charming  pictures  of 
English  life !   and  what  description  of  mental  conditions  and  evo- 


^T.  52]  CORRESPONDENCE  693 

lutions,  whose  real  source  and  true  issue  we  must  still  feel  that 
she  misses ! 

I  am  very  glad  indeed  to  know  that  your  anxiety  is  in  some 
degree  relieved  regarding  Mrs.  Norris. 

Ever  faithfully  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

Among  the  papers  of  Mr.  Brooks  there  are  rough  notes 
which  seem  to  indicate  that  he  had  been  asked  for  some  more 
formal  expression  of  his  opinion.  For  the  book  had  been  so 
real  in  its  portraiture  that  it  had  thrown  people  into  mental 
and  religious  confusion.  This  was  his  more  complete  judg- 
ment :  — 

Thoroughly  English. 

Weakness  of  the  orthodox  people.  Preconceived  idea  that 
they  must  not  think. 

Perhaps  a  return  to  the  human  Christ  from  which  the  disciples 
began.  Thence  to  be  led  on  through  the  mystery  of  manhood 
into  His  complete  life. 

The  whole  question  what  is  to  become  of  his  Brotherhood. 
Not  be  contemptuous  about  the  new,  extemporized,  experimental 
character  of  it.  By  such  experiments  the  great  eternal  stream  of 
effort  is  constantly  reinforced. 

The  Christ-miracle ;   and  then  all  else  believable. 

Broad  Churchmanship  is  not  explaining  away,  but  going  deeper, 
embracing  all  nature. 

This  is  Matthew  Arnold  turned  to  prose. 

The  incomplete  story  of  the  reasons  of  the  change  in  Elsmere. 

The  nineteenth  century  in  the  book. 

Elsmere  between  the  Squire  and  Catharine. 

The  necessary  struggle  of  the  new  coming  forth  from  the  old, 
its  exaggerations  and  distortions. 

The  attitude  of  Phillips  Brooks  in  rejecting  the  tenet  of 
apostolical  succession,  and  his  bold  insistence  on  recogniz- 
ing the  Christian  character  and  work  of  Unitarian  ministers 
such  as  his  friend  the  Rev.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  was 
followed  by  hostile  criticism  in  Episcopal  Church  news- 
papers, which  continued  through  the  summer,  and  indeed 
from  this  time  was  never  intermitted.  He  had  evidently 
counted  the  cost  when  he  took  his  ground,  discounting  the 
ecclesiastical  criticism  which  was  sure  to  follow.  The  sum- 
mer, on  the  whole,  had  been  an  agreeable  one,  broken  up 


v/ 


694  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1888 

with  short  visits,  but  with  no  intermission  of  preaching.  He 
started  into  the  work  of  the  fall  with  his  usual  apparent 
vigor. 

To  the  proposal  of  some  of  his  friends  to  nominate  him  for 
the  presidency  of  Columbia  University,  in  New  York,  he 
refuses  to  listen.     To  Rev.  W .  R.  Huntington  he  writes :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  October  29,  1888. 

Dear  Huntington,  —  I  thank  you  heartily  for  your  friendly 
note  sustaining  Tiffany's  kind  but  somewhat  wild  suggestion.  I 
have  had  to  write  him  that  it  must  not  be.  My  only  ambition 
is  to  be  a  "Parish  Priest.''  I  am  not  much  of  a  P.  P.,  but  as 
a  College  President  I  should  be  still  less.  It  would  be  good  to 
be  where  I  should  see  you  all,  and  run  perpetually  in  and  out  as 
seems  to  be  you  New  York  men's  way.  But  it  would  not  be 
Boston,  and  I  should  be  lost  in  your  vast  town.  So  leave  me 
here,  and  let  another  hold  the  college  sceptre.  Both  you  and 
Tiffany  are  only  too  good  to  think  the  nomination  would  not  be 
absurd. 

The  cards  which  came  to-day  tell  me  how  near  draws  the 
change  in  your  household  which  will  make  life  different  to  you. 
I  am  rejoiced  to  know  that  it  will  only  make  it  happier  and  richer. 
I  wish  I  knew  your  daughter  well  enough  to  send  her  word  by 
you  how  truly  she  has  the  best  of  good  wishes  from  her  father's 
friend.  May  the  marriage  bells  and  skies  overrun  with  bless- 
ings. Ever  faithfully  yours, 

Phillips  Bkooks. 

There  was  a  short  visit  to  Philadelphia  in  the  latter  part 
of  October,  and  then  this  letter  to  the  Rev.  W.  N.  Mc- 
Vickar :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  November  6,  1888. 

My  dear  William,  —  It  was  a  bold  thing  for  me  to  ask  you 
for  the  "  Vade  Mecum, "  but  I  wanted  it,  and  I  thought  you  would 
give  it  to  me,  and  you  did.  Now  I  shall  have  associations  with 
it  every  time  I  take  it  up  to  go  on  one  of  those  official  duties 
which  we  know  so  well.  The  first  one  I  had  was  given  me  by 
Marshall  Smith  when  we  left  the  Seminary.  The  second  was 
given  me  by  George  Strong  while  I  was  at  Holy  Trinity.  And 
now  you  fit  me  out  for  the  home  stretch,  and  give  me  the  book 
which  will  see  me  through  all  the  services  until  my  journey's 
end.  Would  that  I  were  where  I  might  take  your  hand  and 
thank  you.      You  will  be  sure  that  I  am  grateful,  won't  you? 


^T.  52]     THANKSGIVING   SERMON  695 

We  have  seen  that  Phillips  Brooks  reserved  for  his  ser- 
mons on  Thanksgiving  Days  topics  of  general  interest,  polit- 
ical or  religious,  which  afforded  the  opportunity  to  summarize 
the  world's  outlook  in  each  successive  year.  In  the  preamble 
of  one  of  these  sermoDs,  1881,  he  thus  alludes  to  this  usage 
and  justifies  it,  although  aware  of  its  dangers :  — 

Thanksgiving  Day  has  fallen  naturally  into  the  habit  of  trying 
to  estimate  the  tendencies  and  the  present  conditions  of  our  cur- 
rent life.  Such  efforts  have  made  a  great  literature  which  I 
think  is  almost  peculiar  to  our  time,  the  literature  of  an  age's 
introspection ;  of  the  inquiry  by  living  men  into  the  nature  and 
worth  of  the  life  of  their  own  time. 

The  Thanksgiving  Day  sermons  taken  together  present  not 
only  a  picture  of  the  time  through  which  he  lived,  but  of  his 
own  life  also,  —  the  individual  moods  reflecting  the  mood  of 
the  common  humanity.  In  1888  he  considered  that  passing 
mood  of  sadness,  which  seems  to  have  been  widespread,  when 
for  a  moment  the  world  had  grown  subdued  and  thoughtful, 
when  the  joy  of  living  had  given  place  to  a  more  sombre 
estimate  of  the  future.  Taking  for  his  text  Psalm  Ixxxix. 
15,  "Blessed  is  the  people  that  hear  the  joyful  sound,"  he 
began  his  sermon  with  this  tribute  to  the  forefathers  of  New 
England :  — 

With  all  the  hardness  of  their  Puritanism  they  were  not  so 
grim  as  they  sometimes  seem,  since  it  was  in  their  hearts  to  in- 
stitute a  day  of  joy.  It  may  be  they  were  of  those  who  rather 
accepted  joy  as  a  duty  than  yielded  to  it  as  an  instinct;  but  at 
least  they  saw  how  true  and  necessary  a  part  of  life  it  was. 

The  gratitude  and  thankfulness  called  for  by  the  national 
festival  were  in  contrast  with  the  prevailing  mood  of  the 
hour. 

Let  us  think  for  a  few  moments  about  the  tendency  of  the 
world  with  reference  to  this  whole  matter  of  joyfulness.  Some- 
times we  hear,  sometimes  certainly  we  fear,  that  the  world  we 
live  in  is  growing  to  be  a  sadder  world,  that  happiness  is  less 
spontaneous  and  abundant  as  the  years  go  by.  Is  that  the  truth, 
or  is  it  a  delusion? 

His  method  of  meeting  the  inquiry  is  to  reduce  it  to  more 


696  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [i888 

exact  terms.  The  world  of  realism  is  just  as  joyous  as  it 
ever  was.  The  world  of  childhood  knows  no  difference. 
The  children  have  not  found  out  that  the  world  is  old.  Each 
new  generation  is  still  born  into  a  garden.  The  world  also 
of  uncivilized,  barbaric  life  keeps  all  the  joy  and  freshness 
it  ever  had.  It  is  only  of  the  comparatively  small  world  of 
adult  human  civilization  of  which  it  may  be  said  that  its 
sadness  deepens  its  joy.  And  of  this  world  it  may  be  asked 
whether  its  growing  sadness  is  a  real  decline  and  loss  of  that 
robustness  and  primitive  simplicity  of  life,  or  whether  the 
great  world,  like  every  man,  is  simply  for  the  moment  moody, 
and  the  stage  of  sadness  is  a  temporary  thing,  not  to  be 
made  too  much  of,  sure  to  pass  away,  having  no  reasons 
which  are  deep,  best  treated,  as  the  moods  of  a  great  healthy 
man  are  often  best  treated,  by  ignoring  it.  He  turns  to  the 
reasons  which  may  account  for  this  existing  mood :  — 

(1)  The  larger  view  of  the  world,  the  clearer  atmosphere,  so 
that  we  hear  the  groans  of  misery  in  Mexico  or  Turkey.  The 
curtain  has  fallen  between  the  rich  and  the  poor;  the  poor  look 
into  our  luxurious  homes  with  their  haggard  faces,  and  we  eat 
and  talk  and  sleep  in  the  unceasing  sound  of  their  temptation 
and  distress.  There  has  been  nothing  like  it  in  any  other  day. 
No  wonder  the  world  grows  sad. 

(2)  The  universal  ambition;  all  who  feel  the  spirit  of  the  time 
are  struggling  for  the  unattainable.  The  mountains  and  the 
rivers,  once  climbed  or  followed  only  by  a  few,  now  fling  their 
challenge  or  the  invitation  to  all.  There  is  discontent  every- 
where, and  discontent  means  sadness. 

(3)  The  vague  way  in  which  our  complicated  life  puts  us  in  one 
another's  power.  The  strings  of  a  man's  destiny  are  held  by  a 
thousand  hands,  most  of  them  unknown  to  him, —  his  fortune  at 
the  mercy  of  brokers  plotting  on  the  other  side  of  the  wall,  his 
character  at  the  mercy  of  gossips  talking  in  the  next  room,  his 
life  at  the  mercy  of  anarchists  raving  in  some  cellar  underground. 
Hence  the  burden  of  a  conscious  helplessness,  —  a  nightmare 
which  will  not  let  him  stir.  He  is  sad  with  the  vague  loss  of 
personal  life. 

(4)  Another  reason  for  the  sadness  of  which  all  are  more  or 
less  aware  is  the  presence  of  fear  as  an  element  in  our  life. 
Other  ages  knew  at  least  what  perils  they  were  threatened  with. 
The  consciousness  of  our  time  is  that  it  does  not  know.     Vast, 


^T.  52]         THANKSGIVING  SERMON  697 

unmeasured  forces  hold  us  in  their  hands.  Great,  bleak,  uncer- 
tain vistas  open  and  appall  us.  We  are  like  children  in  the  waste 
of  a  great  prairie.  The  mere  vastness  scares  us.  We  fear  we 
know  not  what.  We  only  know  we  fear.  And  fear  like  that 
does  not  inspire  definite  and  concentrated  energy.  It  only  breeds 
pervading  and  pathetic  sadness. 

(5)  The  man  on  whom  these  causes  of  sadness  act.  Our  modern 
human  nature  is  sensitive  as  in  no  other  time  to  such  a  degree. 
Things  hurt  more  than  they  used  to  hurt.  Once  no  one  cared 
how  much  the  beasts  suffered  by  the  driver's  lash  or  the  surgeon's 
knife.  Once  men  went  home  from  an  auto  da  fd  and  slept  with- 
out uncomfortable  dreams.  The  atmosphere  has  grown  clearer 
and  the  perceptions  within  us  finer.  He  who  had  foreseen  it  all 
years  ago  might  have  said  prophetically,  "What  a  terrible  capa- 
city of  sadness  man  is  growing  into  and  will  reach !  " 

From  this  summary  of  the  causes  producing  sadness,  the 
preacher  turned  to  the  reassuring  prospects  in  life,  to  show 
how  in  each  one  of  these  motives  he  had  enumerated  there 
was  the  possibility  of  contributing  to  joy,  that  indeed  they 
are  the  very  elements  and  motives  that  must  be  mingled  in 
the  deepest  joy.  The  large  view  of  the  world,  the  eager 
ambitions,  the  close  complications  of  life  with  life,  the  out- 
look into  future  mystery,  and  the  quickened  sensitiveness, 
—  these  are  essential  to  the  final  perfect  happiness ;  they  are 
permanent  forces  which  have  come  to  remain ;  it  is  only  the 
first  influence  of  them  which  is  temporary;  as  the  time  goes 
on  the  first  confusion  and  depression  will  pass  away.  "  The 
life  and  character  of  Jesus  is  a  perpetual  illumination  of  the 
hopes  of  man.  In  Him  behind  the  superficial  and  tempo- 
rary sadness  is  revealed  a  profound  and  ultimate  joy.  No 
restless  and  impatient  pessimist  knows  the  deep  tragedy  of 
life  as  the  Divine  Sufferer  knew  it.  All  that  lies  undi- 
gested, unassimilated  in  the  present  condition  of  the  world 
lay  harmonized  and  peaceful  in  the  soul  of  Christ." 

I  have  talked  idly,  almost  wickedly,  upon  Thanksgiving  morn- 
ing, unless  I  have  succeeded  in  making  you  see  light  shine  out 
of  the  darkness,  in  making  you  hear  a  "joyful  sound"  piercing 
through  the  complaints  and  wailings  which  besiege  our  ears.  We 
take  too  little  views.  It  is  not  the  events  of  life,  nor  its  emo- 
tions, or  this  or  that  experience,  but  life  in  itself  which  is  good. 


698  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1888 

The  great  joy  is  just  to  be  alive.  The  fact  of  life  is  greater  than 
what  is  done  with  it.  So  I  answer  confidently  the  question 
which  I  asked.  No  period  of  sadness  can  be  other  than  tempo- 
rary. The  nature  of  the  world  is  not  changed.  Nothing  has 
happened  to  make  it  different  from  what  it  has  always  been. 
The  essential  tendency  of  life  is  towards  happiness.  Therefore 
we  may  wait  confidently  till  the  morning.  Optimism  tempered 
and  sobered,  nay,  saddened,  if  you  will,  but  optimism  still  is  the 
only  true  condition  for  a  reasonable  man.  I  seem  to  see  Christ 
stand  over  all  making  the  world  into  His  likeness.  The  promise 
issues  fresh  from  the  divine  lips  of  the  great  Saviour,  the  great 
Sufferer,  the  Son  of  Man,  the  Son  of  God,  that  the  pure  in  heart 
shall  see  God,  and  that  He  will  lead  all  men  to  the  Father. 

On  his  fifty-third  birthday  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Robert  Treat 

Paine :  — 

December  13,  1888. 

Dear  Mrs.  Paine,  —  I  thank  you  again,  as  I  have  thanked 
you  many  times  before,  and  always  with  a  fuller  and  fuller  heart. 
Few  men  have  had  such  happy  years  and  such  kind  friends  as 
have  been  given  me.  I  wish  I  had  been  more  worthy  of  them, 
but  at  any  rate  I  am  grateful  for  them,  most  of  all  for  you  and 
yours.  I  dare  to  believe  it  will  keep  on  until  I  am  a  hundred. 
At  present,  however,  I  am  looking  forward  to  next  Saturday, 
when  I  shall  thank  you  again.  Gratefully, 
Your  friend, 

Phillips  Brooks. 


CHAPTEK  XXI 

1889 

WATCH  NIGHT.  OCCASIONAL  ADDRESSES.  LENT  SERVICES 
AT  TRINITY  CHURCH.  ILLNESS.  SUMMER  IN  JAPAN. 
EXTRACTS  FROM  NOTE-BOOKS.  THE  GENERAL  CONVEN- 
TION. SOCIAL  AND  POLITICAL  REFORMS.  THE  EVANGELI- 
CAL  ALLIANCE.      CORRESPONDENCE 

Watch  night  at  Trinity  had  always  been  an  impressive 
service,  but  the  impression  deepened  with  the  passing  years. 
There  was  something  almost  weird  in  seeing  the  church  at 
midnight  with  a  congregation  coming  from  every  direction, 
quietly  pouring  into  all  the  vacant  spaces,  on  the  floor  or  in 
the  galleries.  Mr.  Brooks  always  made  it  a  point  to  have 
his  friends  in  the  chancel  in  order  to  more  sympathetic  utter- 
ance. A  description  of  the  service  is  here  given,  as  it  was 
reported  in  a  Boston  paper :  — 

Everybody  has  heard  of  Methodist  and  Second  Adventist 
watch-night  meetings ;  of  the  prayers,  of  the  songs,  the  testimo- 
nies, the  audible  manifestations  of  religious  enthusiasm  with 
which  members  of  these  communions  are  accustomed  in  certain 
localities,  and  especially  were  accustomed  in  former  times,  "to 
watch  the  old  year  out  and  the  new  year  in."  The  impression 
derived  from  witnessing  or  reading  accounts  of  such  gatherings 
naturally  is  that  a  watch-night  service  is  peculiarly  adapted  to 
places  and  peojjle  where  and  among  whom  religious  fervor  is 
more  highly  esteemed  than  the  graces  of  culture.  Accordingly 
the  public  devotional  observance  of  the  midnight  hour  between 
December  31  and  January  1  is  not  extensively  practised  in  New 
England,  But,  year  after  year,  the  wealthiest  church  in  Boston, 
connected  with  that  denomination  which,  of  all  Protestant  com- 
munions, has  the  stateliest  ceremonial  of  worship,  celebrates 
"  watch  night "  with  services  so  impressive,  so  solemn,  so  deeply 
spiritual,  that  the  memory  of  them  remains  indelibly  stamped 
upon  the  minds  of  many  participants. 


700  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1889 

Last  night,  when  the  hour  of  eleven  opened,  Trinity  Church 
appeared  to  be  filled  in  every  part ;  yet  for  some  time  afterward 
there  was  a  constant  stream  of  people  entering  and  following  the 
ushers,  who  kept  on  providing  seats  in  all  possible  places  until 
not  another  seat  could  be  found ;  and  then  a  multitude  remained 
standing,  until  the  last  hour  of  1888  was  ended,  and  the  first 
hour  of  1889  had  come. 

After  an  address  by  Rev.  Leighton  Parks,  Rev.  Phillips 
Brooks  spoke  three  or  four  minutes,  urging  home  the  thought  that 
during  every  moment  of  the  closing  year  God's  hand  has  held  and 
guided  us,  and  that  during  the  coming  year  we  rest  still  more 
completely  in  His  love,  not  because  He  loves  us  more,  but  because 
we  may  open  our  hearts  wider  to  receive  His  love. 

Then,  as  the  hands  of  the  clock  that  stood  within  the  chancel 
railing  pointed  to  one  minute  of  midnight,  the  great  congregation 
bowed  in  silent  prayer  until  twelve  strokes  had  been  sounded 
forth,  and  1889  had  begun.  The  united  repetition  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer  aloud  ended  this  solemn  stage  of  the  service,  after  which 
Dr.  Brooks  again  spoke  a  few  earnest  words,  expressing  the  hope 
that  all  present  might  live  stronger,  purer,  more  manly,  more 
womanly,  more  Christlike  lives  in  the  year  that  had  begun  than 
in  the  year  that  had  closed. 

An  incident  occurred  in  the  early  part  of  the  year  which 
illustrates  the  tolerance  of  Phillips  Brooks,  not  only  in 
thought,  but  in  action.  As  a  member  of  the  Standing  Com- 
mittee of  the  Diocese,  he  labored  for  the  confirmation  of 
Rev.  C.  C.  Grafton,  who  had  been  elected  bishop  of  Fond  du 
Lac,  in  Wisconsin,  writing  letters  also  in  his  behalf  to  other 
dioceses  which  were  hesitating,  urging  that  the  comprehen- 
siveness of  the  church  should  not  be  restricted  by  any  per- 
sonal or  doctrinal  prejudices.  In  a  letter  he  remarks  that 
he  is  surprised  to  find  how  earnest  he  has  become  in  advo- 
cating the  cause  of  one  "  for  whom  nothing  in  the  world 
would  have  induced  me  to  vote." 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  January  7,  1889. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  You  really  ought  to  read  "  Ilian,  or  the 
Curse  of  the  Old  South  Church."  It  is  the  most  preposterous 
novel  that  any  author  ever  wrote,  and  any  publisher  ever  pub- 
lished. I  have  read  it  from  beginning  to  end,  and  thanked  you 
for  it  at  every  absurd  page.  I  did  not  dream  a  book  could  be  so 
bad.      Therefore  I  bless  you   for  a  new  sensation.    ...    I  went 


JET.  ss}  CORRESPONDENCE  701 

to  St.  Paul's  'Church  and  preached  there  morning  and  evening  the 
other  Sunday,  and  had  the  usual  curious  and  mixed  sensations. 
I  couldn't  help  feeling  as  if  Father  and  Mother  were  sitting  over 
in  Pew  No.  60,  and  as  if  I  were  both  the  preaching  minister  and 
the  tall  boy  in  the  congregation. 

During  January  and  February  Mr.  Brooks  went  again  to 
Faneuil  Hall  for  four  successive  Sunday  evenings.  He  gave 
also  one  Sunday  evening  to  a  service  in  the  Globe  Theatre. 
There  is  the  usual  record  of  sermons  at  Appleton  Chapel 
and  of  addresses  at  the  Harvard  Vespers.  He  was  getting 
some  relief  under  the  burden  he  was  carrying,  for  Trinity 
had  called  another  assistant  minister,  —  Rev.  Roland  Cotton 
Smith,  in  whose  cooperation  Mr.  Brooks  took  hope  and  com- 
fort. How  full  his  days  were  is  evident  from  this  letter  to 
Rev.  W.  N.  McVickar:  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  January  14,  1889. 

Dear  William,  —  Is  it  indeed  possible  that  a  week  from  to- 
morrow evening  you  will  indeed  be  here?  'Tis  true!  And  I 
am  all  expectation.  You  and  your  sister  will  arrive,  I  hope,  as 
early  in  the  evening  as  you  can.  I  am  to  be  out  of  town  all  day, 
but  shall  be  back  by  six  o'clock,  and  dinner  shall  wait  you  at 
whatever  hour  after  that  you  will  come.  About  Sunday,  the 
27th,  you  are  to  preach  at  Cambridge  in  the  evening.  Alas  that 
I  must  not  hear  you,  but  I  must  be  at  Faneuil  Hall,  where  I  am 
holding  four  Sunday  evening  services,  but  we  will  meet  later  and 
you  shall  tell  me  how  the  students  liked  your  talk.  You  will 
preach  for  me,  I  hope,  in  the  morning,  and  then  we  will  make 
Roland  Cotton  Smith  preach  in  the  afternoon,  so  that  neither  of 
us  shall  be  overworked.  Cotton  Smith  is  preaching  excellently, 
and  fast  taking  the  work  out  of  the  hands  of  the  old  Rector. 

I  hope  now  to  get  away  from  here  on  the  evening  of  February  6, 
and  spending  a  day  in  New  York,  to  be  in  Philadelphia  some  time 
on  Friday,  the  8th.  There  I  can  stay,  I  hope,  about  a  week, 
and  it  will  be  a  delightful  frolic. 

The  sermons  which  Mr.  Brooks  delivered  at  Faneuil  Hall 
or  at  the  Globe  Theatre  differed  in  some  respects  from  his 
ordinary  preaching.  In  his  note-books  we  see  him  in  the 
process  of  preparation  for  what  is  requiring  a  greater  effort 
of  his  strength  than  his  ordinary  sermon.     He  was  not  pro- 


702  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1889 

posing  to  preach  down  to  these  congregations,  but  to  lift 
himself  above  even  his  highest  level.  He  took  for  one  of 
his  texts  the  words  of  Christ,  "I  am  among  you  as  he  that 
serveth."  He  did  not  urge  upon  his  hearers  the  importance 
of  goodness  or  righteousness  in  themselves,  for  some  might 
have  lent  a  deaf  ear  to  his  entreaty.  He  struck  a  deeper 
note,  one  that  must  resound  in  every  soul,  when  he  summed 
up  practical  religion  in  the  effort  to  make  others  good. 
"Christ  in  the  gospel  never  appears  so  much  as  one  who  is 
cultivating  righteousness  in  Himself,  but  as  one  seeking  to 
cultivate  it  in  others." 

In  his  sermon  at  the  Globe  Theatre  he  dwelt  on  the  neces- 
sity of  a  feeling  of  "need"  as  lying  beneath  the  world's  life 
and  the  history  of  its  civilization.  No  discovery  was  made 
or  work  done  without  it;  imagine  it  removed  and  there 
would  be  a  vast  stoppage.  "In  the  spiritual  life  the  absence 
of  the  sense  of  imperious  need  is  the  great  cause  of  sluggish- 
ness, —  the  dulness  of  the  churches  compared  with  the  vital- 
ity of  the  streets."  He  wrestled  like  a  giant  with  his  theme, 
till  it  seemed  as  if  every  soul  must  have  felt  the  need  which 
he  portrayed.  His  text  was  the  words  of  the  centurion  to 
Christ,  "Sir,  come  down,  ere  my  child  die." 

Turning  from  these  sermons  we  find  him  on  the  15th  of 
January  at  the  dinner  given  to  Professor  Lovering  on  the 
completion  of  fifty  years'  service  at  Harvard,  where  he 
spoke  for  the  ministry,  as  bringing  their  tribute  to  the  man 
of  science.  For  himself,  as  he  remarked,  he  had  not  been 
while  in  college  or  since  a  student  who  excelled  in  the  natural 
sciences,  and  for  mathematics  which  Professor  Lovering 
represented  he  had  shown  no  aptitude.  And  yet  there  re- 
mained "the  value  of  forgotten  knowledge,  which  has  some- 
how passed  into  the  blood.  It  was  better  to  have  known  and 
lost  than  never  to  have  known  at  all.  At  least  the  sense  of 
the  value  of  the  sciences  was  something  gained.  It  was  all 
like  forgotten  but  effectual  periods  in  the  world's  history." 
He  recognized  "the  debt  which  we  all  owe  to  a  man  who  has 
made  any  department  of  life  more  complete,  the  power  of 
scientific  study  to  enrich  life  and  make  it  more  youthful,  — 


^T.  S3']     A   HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY      703 

the  proud  consciousness  of  a  man  who  knows  the  world  through 
which  he  is  passing." 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  January  17,  1889. 

Dear  Arthur,  — ...  How  the  familiar  mill  grinds  on 
through  these  mid- winter  months !  I  hope  the  world  is  better 
for  its  grinding,  and  I  believe  it  is.  We  varied  it  the  other 
night  by  a  great  dinner  in  honor  of  Joe  Lovering  and  his  com- 
pleted fifty  years  of  professorship.  Eliot  and  Peabody  and  Good- 
win and  a  lot  of  others  loaded  him  with  praise,  and  he  himself 
looked  happy  and  young  and  wonderfully  as  if  he  would  like  to 
begin  again. 

To  think  that  I  myself  remembered  Cambridge  for  almost 
thirty-eight  of  those  fifty  years  was  solemn. 

There  Is  no  other  news  except  that  I  have  written  half  a  ser- 
mon and  hope  to  get  the  other  half  done  by  Sunday.  And  last 
night  there  was  a  Wednesday  evening  lecture,  and  William  and 
Mary  came  in  afterwards,  and  Parks  turned  up  quite  late. 

I  wish  that  you  were  here  this  rainy  afternoon.  We  would 
neglect  our  duty  and  talk.      Now  I  will  neglect  mine  and  read. 

Ever  affectionately,  P. 

On  the  21st  of  January  he  made  the  address  on  the  occasion 
of  the  thirty-eighth  anniversary  of  the  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Association,  when  they  were  taking  possession  of  their 
building  on  Boylston  Street.  His  subject  was  the  value  of 
the  institution,  and  the  significance  it  had  for  human  life. 
But  as  he  went  on  he  broadened  his  thought,  as  he  did  on 
every  such  occasion,  till  it  included  religion  and  the  changes 
which  it  had  undergone ;  he  spoke  of  this  organization  as  one 
of  the  necessary  forms  which  the  changed  form  of  religion 
was  demanding.  He  had  no  fear  of  its  interference  with  the 
churches  of  Christ,  for  it  is  the  Church  of  Christ.  Liberty, 
he  impressed  upon  the  young  men,  had  been  the  character- 
istic word  of  the  last  hundred  years,  but  it  was  a  negative 
term,  the  removal  of  obstacles  in  order  that  a  higher  order 
might  come  in,  the  reign  of  human  sympathy  under  the  re- 
cognition of  human  brotherhood.  "  Cultivate  the  power  of 
sympathy  because  it  is  the  spirit  of  your  age  and  the  coming 
age."  Sympathy  "is  curing  more  and  more  the  evils  of 
social  life,  making  harmonious  the  differences  of  our  com- 


704  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1889 

mercial  life,  entering  more  and  more  into  the  obstructed 
ways  of  secular  life."^ 

This  varied  picture  of  the  active  life  of  Mr.  Brooks  during 
the  month  of  January  is  not  exceptional,  but  may  be  taken 
as  a  type  of  all  his  months  in  every  year.  We  follow  him 
now  into  another  Lenten  season,  where  we  can  only  pause 
to  note  the  topics  with  which  he  was  concerned.  Friday 
evenings  he  devoted  to  the  versicles  in  the  Prayer  Book,  and 
as  he  expounded  them  the  words,  which  had  become  so  fa- 
miliar as  to  have  almost  lost  their  force,  were  seen  to  be  full 
of  unsuspected  depths  of  meaning.  He  dwelt  on  the  "effect 
of  a  largely  constructed  liturgy  like  ours,  constantly  used, 
upon  the  progress  of  religious  thought  in  an  individual  and 
in  a  church."  Because  he  kept  himself  alive  to  the  deeper 
meanings  of  familiar  words,  he  gave  them  force  when  he  read 
them  in  the  daily  services.  They  were  mistaken  who  thought 
that  he  slurred  the  service  in  order  to  get  to  the  sermon. 
The  service  took  on  new  beauty  and  impressiveness  when  he 
read  it.  "He  puts  into  his  utterance  of  creed  and  litany  and 
prescribed  forms  of  prayer,"  said  a  writer  not  of  his  own 
communion,  "such  wealth  of  personal  consecration  that  a 
person  who  should  hear  that  and  nothing  more  would  remem- 
ber the  thrilling  experience  all  his  days." 

On  Wednesday  evenings  he  dwelt  on  the  "ajjpeals  to 
Christ"  as  given  in  the  Evangelical  narrative:  "Come  down 
ere  my  child  die;  "  "Speak  to  my  brother  that  he  divide  the 
inheritance  with  me;  "  "Give  me  this  water  that  I  thirst 
not,  neither  come  hither  again  to  draw;"  "Remember  me 
when  Thou  comest  In  Thy  kingdom."  There  was  one  course 
of  lectures  that  he  was  giving  during  Lent  in  this  year,  which 
deserves  a  special  mention.  He  took  up  with  his  Bible  class 
the  evidences  of  Christianity,  —  what  some  have  thought  to 
be  the  most  formal  and  perfunctory  subject  in  the  whole 
range  of  systematic  theology.  His  natural  utterance  on 
these  subjects  was  in  his  sermons  in  such  a  living  way  that 
Christianity  became  its  own  evidence,  —  and  Christianity  was 
Christ.  It  is  evident  from  the  preparation  he  made  that  he 
^  Cf.  Essays  and  Addresses,  pp.  170  ff. 


^T.  S3']       CHRISTIAN   EVIDENCES  705 

was  doing  his  best  to  reach  the  minds  of  the  young  men 
before  him  in  ways  that  they  would  appreciate.  The  distinc- 
tive features  of  his  theology  appear  at  every  turn,  and  the 
thoroughness  of  his  mind,  as  he  takes  up  in  succession,  (1) 
Christianity,  (2)  Christ  and  the  Trinity,  (3)  The  Bible,  (4) 
Miracles,  (5)  The  Resurrection,  (6)  The  Church,  (7)  Per- 
sonal Experience,  (8)  Prayer.  Although  he  did  not  value 
this  kind  of  work  as  his  best,  yet  if  his  notes  of  these  lectures 
could  be  published,  they  would  form  a  valuable  manual  for 
Christian  instruction.  As  an  instance  of  his  method  and  in 
justification  of  these  comments,  an  extract  is  here  given  from 
the  last  of  these  lectures,  entitled  "Personal  Experience:  "  — 

What  is  the  Christian  religion  for?  The  salvation  of  the 
world.  But  that  must  be  by  the  salvation  of  men.  And  so  we 
ask  whether  it  has  saved  men.  When  we  ask  what  it  is  to  save 
a  man,  we  remember  what  are  a  man's  enemies.  His  sins,  his 
discouragements,  his  sloths,  his  temptations.  All  of  these  keep 
man  from  the  fulness  of  his  life,  from  what  God  made  him  to 
become. 

Now  the  religion  of  Christ  undertakes  to  rescue  man  from 
these  evils,  and  to  let  him  complete  himself.  Has  it  done  that  ? 
Who  shall  answer?  Only  they  who  have  submitted  themselves 
to  its  power.  The  difference  of  this  proof  from  all  others: 
danger  of  reasoning  in  a  circle.  The  soul  must  stand  in  the  sun- 
light to  bear  witness  to  the  sun. 

The  claim  of  the  Christian  faith  is  that  there  is  a  Divine  Pre- 
sence among  men,  by  whose  agency  Christ  is  forever  present  in 
the  world  and  does  in  richer  way  that  which  He  did  during  His 
incarnation,  —  the  truth  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

What  did  Christ  do  ? 

1.  He  forgave  men's  sins,  and  so  set  them  free  for  a  new  life. 

2.  He  declared  such  a  doctrine  of  humanity  as  made  that  new 
life  seem  to  be  the  natural  life  of  man. 

3.  He  put  the  power  of  that  new  life  into  men,  and  made  them 
strong  with  a  power  which  they  knew  was  not  their  own. 

4.  He  comforted  men  for  their  sorrows  with  a  positive  consola- 
tion which  made  even  their  sorrows  a  source  of  strength. 

5.  He  glorified  life;  filling  it  with  joy  and  making  it  seem  a 
beautiful  and  noble  thing  to  live. 

6.  He  adjusted  men's  relations  to  each  other  by  making  them 
have  common  love  for  himself. 

VOL.   II 


7o6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1889 

7.  He  set  unselfishness  as  the  law  of  men's  lives.  Making 
them  first  devoted  to  Him  and  then,  for  His  sake,  to  one  another. 

8.  He  made  life  spiritual,  making  the  soul  more  than  the 
body. 

9.  He  declared  immortality  to  the  soul,  making  it  know  itself 
stronger  than  death. 

Now  all  these  could  only  be  known  to  the  souls  in  which  they 
existed,  and  to  those  whom  they  told  of  their  experience.  But  that 
souls  did  know  those  experiences  we  cannot  doubt.  Look  at  St. 
John's  Epistles,  —  "Beloved,  now  are  we  the  sons  of  God,"  etc. 

And  all  of  these  are  the  experiences  of  men  to-day.  We  can- 
not doubt  their  word.      Then  why  not  of  all  men  ?     Either :  — 

1.  They  are  meant  for  a  few  and  all  are  not  capable  of  them. 
Show  that  this  cannot  be  true.     The  essentially  human  char- 
acter of  the  experience. 

Only  understand  the  need  of  different  types  and  properties  of 
their  elements. 
Or  else :  — 

2.  Men  put  some  hindrance  in  the  way.  How  unconscious  this 
may  be.  The  need  of  close  self-inquiry  as  to  the  condition  of 
mind.     Need  of  asking  what  are  the  ways  of  openness. 

Those  ways  are :  — 

1.  Prayer.     The  whole  appeal  of  the  nature  to  the  Infinite. 

The  asking  of  God  to  show  Himself.  The  objective  and  sub- 
jective thoughts  of  prayer.  The  meaning  of  God's  "hearing 
prayer  "  and  doing  things  because  we  pray  to  Him. 

2.  Reading  the  Bible.  The  need  of  knowing  the  historic 
Christ.  The  hope  that  in  Him  we  may  find  the  help  we  seek. 
The  strange  neglect  of  and  lack  of  acquaintance  with  the  Gospels. 

3.  The  readiness  to  give  reality  and  value  to  the  experiences  of 
others. 

4.  The  sense  of  our  own  incompleteness.  Not  to  be  satisfied, 
but  always  conscious  of  the  prophecy  of  larger  things. 

To  count  the  highest  experiences  not  impossible,  that  is  the 
condition  for  the  highest  life. 

One  may  detect  a  somewhat  unusual  tone  in  the  Sunday 
morning  sermons  delivered  during  this  season  of  Lent.  At 
least  the  texts  imply  a  certain  pathos  in  the  mood  which 
chose  them,  stealing  over  the  preacher,  as  he  sought  in  new 
ways  to  enforce  the  truth  within  him.  Thus  the  sermon  for 
Ash  Wednesday  was  from  the  text,  "Who  knoweth  if  He 
will  return  and  repent  and  leave  a  blessing  behind  him." 


^T.  53]  LENTEN   SERVICES  707 

The  picture  is  of  a  departing  God,  once  very  near,  now  going 
away  and  going  further.  To  some  it  is  very  real  as  a  fact  of 
experience.  They  did  once  have  God  nearer  to  them.  The  days 
of  communion  and  obedience  and  realized  love ;  the  definite  stan- 
dards. And  now  the  far-awayness  of  it  all.  Or  to  take  the  com- 
parison, not  of  past  and  of  present,  but  of  idea  and  realization. 
God  is  close  to  us  in  His  own  revelation,  but  far  from  tis  in  our 
actualization  of  Him.      This  the  deeper  historic  meaning. 

Either  way  the  withdrawing  God  and  the  soul  crying  after 
Him.  Strange  situation !  Driving  Him  away  and  yet  calling 
on  Him  to  stay.  The  mixed  mystery  of  our  inner  life.  .  .  . 
He  certainly  will  return,  else  what  mean  these  promises  ?  He  is 
not  going  willingly,  nor  angrily,  nor  carelessly.  He  is  going 
because  He  rmist,  because  you  will  not  have  Him. 

He  will  return  if  you  seek  Him  rightly.  The  gift  He  will 
bring  back  with  Him  is  an  offering  to  Himself.  Restoration  to 
be  sought  that  we  may  have  a  life  to  give  Him. 

This  puts  a  motive  into  our  repentance.  Repentance  for 
safety,  even  for  cleanness,  is  not  complete.  The  true  motive  that 
God  may  be  glorified  in  us. 

This  implies  a  certain  essence  of  the  misery  of  sin.  It  is  that 
our  sinful  lives  do  not  belong  to  and  redound  unto  Him.  That  is 
the  felt  misery  of  the  best  lives  when  they  fall  into  sin.  They 
have  dishonored  God.  They  have  nothing  to  render  Him.  Then 
the  delight  of  His  return,  that  once  more  they  may  do  Him  honor. 

The  sense  of  exhilaration  which  thus  enters  into  repentance. 

One  of  the  sermons  was  on  the  text  in  the  Prayer  Book 
version,  "He  brought  down  my  strength  in  my  journey  and 
shortened  my  days."  Another  sermon  was  on  a  verse  from  a 
Psalm :  "  I  shall  find  trouble  and  heaviness,  and  I  will  call 
upon  the  name  of  the  Lord."  And  stiU  another  from  the 
words  of  Christ :  "  It  cannot  be  that  a  prophet  perish  out  of 
Jerusalem."  In  this  sermon  he  dwelt  on  the  expenditure  of 
energy  for  personal  power  and  wealth  and  lower  ends,  —  the 
giving  of  life  for  most  unworthy  things. 

The  life  miist  be  given.  You  must  expend  it.  You  cannot 
beep  it.  It  is  going.  What  is  there  to  show  for  it  at  the  end? 
Is  there  the  result  of  enlarged  spiritual  conditions  in  the  world, 
so  that  first  we  and  then  our  brethren  are  better  for  our  having 
lived  ?     He  who  perishes  in  Jerusalem  claims  Jerusalem  for  God. 

There  are  but  few  letters  belonging  to  this  moment.     One 


7o8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1889 

of  them  is  important  as  giving  his  opinion  on  the  various 
expositions  appearing  from  time  to  time  regarding  the  Epis- 
copal Church,  its  claims  and  their  grounds.  It  was  written 
to  the  Rev.  George  H.  Buck :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  16, 1889. 

Mt  dear  Mr.  Buck,  —  I  do  not  know  a  single  book  about 
our  Church  which  does  not  mingle  with  its  exposition  of  what  the 
Church  is  some  notions,  more  or  less  erroneous,  but  certainly- 
private  and  personal,  of  the  author.  Therefore,  I  am  quite  out 
of  the  habit  of  asking  any  one  who  is  at  all  interested  in  our 
Church  to  study  anything  but  the  Prayer  Book.  The  Prayer 
Book,  without  note  or  comment,  interpreting  itself  to  the  intelli- 
gent reader,  —  that  is  the  best  thing.  And  histories  of  our 
Church  also  are  written  with  a  purpose.  There  is  not  one  which 
is  not  colored  with  the  intention  of  its  writer.  Bishop  White's 
"History"  is  the  best,  and  some  of  Frederick  D.  Maurice's 
"Lectures  on  the  Prayer  Book"  have  much  light  in  them.  Let 
your  friends  know  that  the  only  real  "claim  "  of  the  Church  is 
the  power  with  which  it  claims  their  souls  and  makes  them  better 
men.  Then  offer  them  its  privileges  if  they  are  humble  and  ear- 
nest enough  to  know  their  need. 

I  hope  that  you  are  well  and  happy,  and  I  am 

Ever  faithfully  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

To  the  Rev.  H.  H.  Montgomery,  on  the  news  of  his  ap- 
pointment as  Bishop  of  Tasmania :  — 

April  13,  1889. 

My  dear  Friend,  —  Tliis  is  indeed  a  startling  letter.  One 
cannot  hear  of  such  a  great  change  in  a  dear  friend's  life  without 
a  moment's  something  which  is  almost  like  dismay  before  he  lets 
himself  go  freely  into  the  congratulations  which  are  the  true  re- 
sponse to  such  intelligence.  But  I  do  congratulate  you  with  all 
my  heart.  The  great  fresh  world  which  you  will  go  to  will  make 
all  things  new  to  you,  and  you  will  have  the  splendid  sense  of 
building  for  vast  futures,  and  of  touching  the  springs  of  great 
hopes.  It  is  just  what  one  has  longed  for  a  thousand  times,  who 
has  worked  in  a  world  as  old  as  yours,  or  even  as  old  as  ours. 
If  I  were  an  Englishman,  I  would  beg  you  to  take  me  with  you, 
and  make  me  a  humble  canon  or  something  else  which  could  give 
me  a  bit  of  share  in  the  work  which  you  will  do.  May  God  bless 
that  work,  and  make  you  very  happy  in  it. 

Those  who  followed  the  preaching  of  Phillips  Brooks  and 


^T.  S3']  CORRESPONDENCE  709 

contrasted  his  later  with  his  earlier  method  were  aware  of 
a  change,  not  only  in  the  form  of  the  sermons,  but  in  the 
manner  of  their  delivery.  Instead  of  standing  unmoved  and 
apparently  impassive,  as  he  has  been  described  while  in 
Philadelphia  or  during  his  first  years  in  Boston,  he  appeared 
to  be  profoundly  moved,  his  physical  system  even  to  be 
shaken  by  the  severe  effort.  Whether  it  was  that  preaching 
now  exhausted  his  nervous  force,  or  whether  some  other 
cause  must  be  assigned,  it  was  becoming  evident  that  he  was 
not  well.  His  friends  noticed  the  change  in  his  looks  with 
alarm.  The  Proprietors  of  Trinity  Church  sent  to  him  this 
resolution  passed  on  Easter  Monday :  — 

The  Proprietors  would  respectfully  recommend  to  the  Rector, 
in  view  of  the  length  of  time  that  has  elapsed  since  he  has  been 
away  from  us,  and  the  amount  of  work  tl^at  has  fallen  upon  him, 
that  he  take  a  liberal  vacation,  and,  if  possible,  go  abroad. 

The  late  Colonel  Henry  Lee  spoke  what  many  were  feeling 
when  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Brooks :  — 

Boston,  May  3,  1889. 
I  was  shocked,  as  I  have  been  several  times  of  late,  at  your 
appearance.  Who  am  I,  to  meddle  in  your  affairs  ?  Only  one 
of  many  more  thousands  than  you  will  ever  know,  to  whom  your 
existence  is  all  important ;  and  as  one  of  them  I  beg  you  earnestly 
to  cease  your  incessant  work  this  very  day  and  depart,  going  by 
sea  or  land  where  you  can  find  rest  and  recreation.  I  wish  I 
knew  who  was  your  physician.  I  would  urge  him  to  order  you 
off  at  once.  If  you  knew  of  what  importance,  not  only  to  your 
Church,  but  to  the  college,  to  our  city,  to  all  of  us,  is  your  life, 
you  would  do  what  you  can  to  preserve  it. 

As  for  Mr.  Brooks  himself,  while  he  refused  to  admit  that 
he  was  not  as  well  as  ever,  yet  there  is  evidence  that  he  was 
aware  of  the  need  of  some  greater  change  and  of  absolute 
cessation  from  work.  It  had  been  a  mistake,  his  plan  of  tak- 
ing rest  only  in  alternate  years.  Perhaps  it  had  worked  well 
enough  in  earlier  life,  but  it  was  trespassing  on  his  strength, 
or  his  supposed  strength,  to  keep  up  the  practice  longer. 
He  realized  that  the  time  had  come  to  lay  aside  work,  to 
find  some  new  country  where  all  was  fresh  and  strange,  and 


7IO  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1889 

where  for  a  while  he  might  forget  himself.  So  he  had 
turned  to  Japan.  He  held  long  conversations  with  Rev. 
W.  E.  Griffis,  author  of  the  "Mikado  and  his  Empire," 
who  encouraged  him  to  make  the  venture.  He  read  with 
great  zest  "The  Soul  of  the  Far  East,"  by  Mr.  Percival 
Lowell.  As  the  scheme  took  possession  of  his  mind  he  grew 
enthusiastic  about  its  possibilities.  It  added  to  his  pleasure 
in  contemplating  the  journey  that  he  had  secured  his  friend 
McVickar  for  a  travelling  companion.  If  he  had  misgivings 
about  his  health,  they  do  not  appear  in  his  letters,  which 
seem  to  overflow  with  a  new  buoyancy  of  spirits.  To  Mr. 
McVickar  he  writes :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  20,  1889. 

My  dear  William,  — I  went  down  to  Salem  and  lunched 
with  the  blessed  Frankses.  Then,  after  luncheon,  I  went  over 
and  saw  Professor  Morse,  who  is  the  biggest  authority  on  Japan 
to  be  found  anywhere.  And  such  a  collection  of  bowls  and 
basins,  of  cups  and  candlesticks,  of  jars  and  jimcracks  as  he  has! 
My  mouth  is  watering  and  my  eyes  are  sparkling  even  now,  in 
spite  of  several  Lent  services  which  have  come  in  between.  But 
what  he  says  is  this :  that  Japan  is  perfectly  possible  in  summer ; 
that  it  is  very  hot,  but  that  the  heat  is  not  felt  as  much  as  it  is 
here;  that  you  must  wear  the  thinnest  of  clothing  and  the  straw- 
iest  of  hats,  and  that  it  is  as*  healthy  as  you  please.  He  makes 
little  or  nothing  of  the  rainy  season.  Says  it  rains  worst  in  June 
and  September,  but  declares  that  if  we  reach  there  about  mid- 
July,  and  leave  to  come  home  about  September  1,  we  shall  have 
royal  weather. 

It  would  seem,  too,  as  if  Japan  were  a  rather  singularly  easy 
country  to  see.  There  is  a  central  core  of  it  which  apparently 
contains  most  all  which  we  shall  care  to  see.  Yokohama,  Tokio, 
Nikko,  Osaka,  Kioto,  and  perhaps  the  inland  sea  of  Nagasaki. 
These,  with  the  country  and  the  sights  which  lie  between  them, 
are  enough  to  make  us  feel  always  that  we  know  Japan,  and  these 
can  easily  be  compassed  in  six  weeks. 

In  the  afternoon  there  came  to  Jim  Franks 's  study  a  certain 

Captain  H ,  who  has  commanded  steamships  all  about  in  the 

Chinese  and  Japanese  seas,  and  he  had  many  interesting  things 
to  say.  But  the  main  thing  was  that  he,  too,  said  there  was  no 
trouble  about  going  there  in  the  summer,  and  raved,  as  they  all 
do,  about  the  wonderful  beauty  of  it  all. 

And  now,  dear  William,  the  middle  of  June  is  just  upon  us. 


^T.  53]  VISIT  TO  JAPAN  711 

It  will  come  jiki-jiki,  which,  being  interpreted,  is  "toute  de 
suite,"  and  then  we  will  say  to  the  train  at  New  York  some  fine 
morning,  Peggi,  which  means  "Go  along,"  and  before  we  know 
it  we  are  there.  Jim  thinks  he  cannot  go,  which  is  so  much  the 
worse  for  him.  But  we  will  go,  and  all  the  parish  apparatus 
and  routine  shall  be  for  three  good  months  as  if  it  were  not. 
Won't  it  be  fine? 

Isn't  it  sad  about ?     Dear  me,  if  that  splendid  fellow 

has  indeed  given  way,  who  of  us  is  there  that  can  be  sure  of  him- 
self for  an  hour?     And  yet  there   are  encouragements  as  well. 

Here  is  getting  engaged  and  starting   out  on  a  new  life 

when  it  seems  as  if  he  would  think  things  were  about  through 
with  him.  He  's  like  the  fellow  who  lights  up  a  new  cigar  just 
when  it  seems  as  if  bedtime  had  really  come.  But  there  is  a 
splendid  courage  about  it,  and  it  almost  makes  one  ready  to  fling 
prudence  to  the  winds  and  go  in  for  it  himself.  But  I  g^ess  I 
won't,  on  the  whole. 

I  can  hear  the  chatter  of  Japanese  tongues  and  the  clatter  of 
Japanese  crockery  in  the  distance,  but  just  now  I  must  get  ready 
for  service,  and  so  must  you. 

Affectionately  yours,  P.  B. 

Mr.  Brooks  left  Boston  on  the  10th  of  June  for  the  ride 
across  the  continent,  breaking  the  journey  at  Salt  Lake 
City,  where  he  spent  a  Sunday,  and  visited  the  Mormon 
Tabernacle.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  been  impressed  by 
the  appearance  of  the  people,  or  by  the  features  of  their  civi- 
lization. On  the  20th  of  June  he  sailed  from  San  Francisco 
for  Yokohama  in  the  steamship  City  of  Sydney.  There  were 
but  two  passengers  on  board  besides  himself  and  Dr.  Mc- 
Vickar.  The  eighteen  days  passed  quietly,  for  the  ocean 
was  calm,  and  the  only  event  which  appealed  to  his  imagina- 
tion was  the  dropping  of  one  day  from  the  record  of  time, 
Monday,  July  the  1st.  "The  lost  day!  Think  what  might 
have  come  of  it!     The  undone  deeds!     The  unsaid  words!  " 

These  are  extracts  from  his  note-book  written  on  ship- 
board :  — 

Difference  between  "a  good  fellow  "  and  a  good  man. 
Preach  on  the  tone   of  life,   high  or  low,  apart   from  special 
acts. 

Over  the  prairies  racing  the  moon.      Wednesday,  June  12. 
Text,    "God  hath  laid  on  Him  the  iniquity  of  us  all."      The 


712  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1889 

way  men  bear  each  other's  sins.  The  great  sinful  world  on  men's 
shoulders.      Ah!   there  's  the  key!     Imagine  that  complete. 

Those  wise  blinds,  through  which  you  can  see  out,  but  cannot 
see  in. 

"Thou  hast  wrestled  and  prevailed."  The  deeper  life.  The 
only  question  left.  How  to  do  one's  duty. 

"I  will  not  do  this  wicked  thing  and  sin  against  God."  The 
special  definite  resolve. 

"Unless  the  Lord  build  the  house,  their  labor  is  but  vain  that 
build  it."      The  inner  spiritual  building  of  everything. 

"Then  would  I  flee  away  and  be  at  rest."  The  deep  impulse 
of  escape  and  retirement. 

I  would  like  to  do  one  thing  perfectly,  and  do  only  that  the 
rest  of  my  life.      Yet,  no ! 

A  "spent  sea"  in  history;  e.  g.,  the  ages  following  the  seven- 
teenth century. 

"Of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven." 
What!  a  child's  paradise? 
No!   the  eternal  childlike. 

The  Child  in  all  great,  simple  actions. 

Like  the  captain's  view  of  things  at  sea,  so  different  from  the 
landsman  passenger's. 

The  question  whether  all  life  is  to  be  drawn  in,  —  its  great 
expansion  into  the  supernatural  denied  it.  Intention  for  exten- 
sion.    The  world  it  would  make.     Try  to  depict. 

"And  the  land  liad  rest  fourscore  years."  The  worth  and 
dangers  of  rest. 

Awful  the  convulsion  that  does  nothing.  The  beauty  of  our 
war.      It  killed  Slavery. 

What  is  the  greatest,  noblest,  finest  deed  ever  done  on  this 
earth?     What  if  we  could  put  our  finger  on  it! 

Jehoram  "reigned  in  Jerusalem  eight  years  and  departed  with- 
out being   desired."      The  being  missed  and  its  natural  desire. 

The  Son  can  do  nothing  of  Himself,  but  what  He  seeth  the 
Father  do.  Christianity  all  in  the  line  of  God's  great  first  pur- 
poses. 

Coming  in  sight  of  a  new  land  (Japan),  with  its  mysterious 
multitudinous  history,  set  in  the  ancient  halls,  like  coming  in 
sight  of  another  man's  life  with  its  mystery.     July  8,  1889. 

That  Mr.  Brooks  was  in  the  happiest  of  moods  during  the 
long  idle  days  of  the  ocean  journey  is  shown  by  his  rever- 
sion  to    poetry.     He   was   writing   Christmas    and   Easter 


^T.  S3']  CHRISTMAS  CAROLS  713 

carols,  for  which  he  had  a  peculiar  gift  or  combination  of 
gifts,  —  his  grasp  upon  the  large  primitive  instincts  of  life, 
and  the  child's  gladness  and  simplicity  of  nature.  The  joy 
of  many  Easter  and  Christmas  festivals  wherein  he  had 
rejoiced  as  if  a  child  himself  with  the  children,  keeping  his 
faith  the  stronger  because  of  his  sympathy  with  childhood, 
—  all  this  comes  out  in  these  carols,  which  he  seems  to  have 
written  with  great  ease,  as  if  they  had  long  been  singing  in 
his  heart.  But  beneath  them  is  the  vivid  consciousness  of 
the  possible  perversion  of  theology.  Thus  among  his  notes 
he  speaks  of  the  expression  the  "visitation  of  God,"  which 
in  mediaeval  theology  stood  for  the  inexplicable  calamities  of 
life,  and  the  higher  idea  of  God's  visitation  of  the  world  at 
Christmas  tide. 

The  silent  stars  are  full  of  speech 

For  who  hath  ears  to  hear; 
The  winds  are  whispering  each  to  each, 
And  stars  their  sacred  lessons  teach 

Of  faith  and  hope  and  fear. 

But  once  the  sky  its  silence  broke, 

And  song  o'erflowed  the  earth; 
And  Angels  mortal  language  spoke, 
When  God  our  human  utterance  took, 

In  Christ  the  Saviour's  birth. 

This  was  the  first  rapid  sketch  of  one  of  the  Christmas 
carols.     Another  begins  with  the  lines :  — 

The  earth  has  grown  old  with  its  burden  of  care, 
But  at  Christmas  it  always  is  young. 

And  a  third :  — 

Everywhere,  everywhere,  Christmas  to-night! 

This  Easter  carol  also,  which  has  become  widely  popular :  — 

Tomb,  thou  shalt  not  hold  Him  longer! 
Death  is  strong,  but  life  is  stronger. 

In  the  letters  from  Japan,  Mr.  Brooks  speaks  of  his  jour- 
ney as  a  great  success.     The  weather  was  unusually  fine. 

I  do  not  think  there  can  be  a  place  anywhere  in  the  world 
more   suitable  for  pure  relaxation.   ...   Of  all  bright,    pretty 


714  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1889 

places,  it  Is  the  prettiest  and  the  brightest.  ...  It  is  very  fas- 
cinating, the  merriest,  kindest,  and  most  graceful  people,  who  seem 
as  glad  to  see  you  as  if  they  had  been  waiting  for  you  all  their 
years,  and  make  you  feel  as  if  their  houses  were  yours  the  mo- 
ment you  cross  the  threshold,  ...  as  if  good  manners  and  civ- 
ility were  the  only  ends  in  life.  I  never  saw  anything  like  it, 
and  the  fascination  grows  with  every  new  street  picture  that  one 
sees. 

We  have  had  most  hospitable  welcome  from  American  and 
English  people;  almost  every  night  in  Yokohama  we  dined  out, 
and  here  we  have  been  given  rooms  at  the  club,  which  is  a  Gov- 
ernment affair  and  most  comfortable.  To-morrow  night  we  are 
to  dine  with  the  English  Bishop  of  Japan,  and  there  is  more  of 
courtesy  and  kindness  than  we  can  accept. 

While  most  of  the  time  was  spent  in  travelling,  and  get- 
ting acquainted  with  what  was  most  distinctive  of  the  coun- 
try, no  opportunities  were  lost  of  meeting  the  missionaries, 
and  learning  of  their  work.  He  was  greatly  impressed  with 
Bishop  Williams,  of  the  American  Mission.  He  came  across 
one  of  the  missionaries  engaged  in  translating  into  Japanese 
"Pearson  on  the  Creed,"  an  elaborate  and  learned  work  of 
Anglican  theology  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  thought 
it  unwise  to  confuse  the  minds  of  the  Japanese  with  the 
technicalities  and  processes  through  which  the  Western  mind 
had  passed.     Once  only  did  he  preach. 

In  his  letters  home  he  speaks  of  the  impression  which  he 
and  Dr.  McVickar  made  upon  the  Japanese  by  their  unusual 
size.  He  was  afraid  that  the  jinrikisha  men  would  rebel  at 
the  burden,  but  that  happened  only  once.  The  Japanese 
were  curious  to  get  the  measurements  of  the  head  and  hands 
and  feet  of  their  extraordinary  guest.  The  children  caUed 
out,  Daihutsu^  which  means  the  image  of  the  great  Buddha. 

Kioto,  August  1, 1889. 
My  dear  Bob,  —  I  am  anxious  to  send  you  all  at  least  one 
greeting  from  this  queer  and  interesting  land,  and  I  must  do  it 
quick  or  not  at  all,  for  our  short  time  here  is  half  exhausted  and 
the  next  steamer  but  one  will  carry  us  to  San  Francisco.  The 
journey  has  been  a  great  success  thus  far,  and  here  we  are  perched 
on  a  breezy  hill  just  outside  of  the  brightest  and  gayest  of  Japa- 
nese cities  with  such  a  view  of  the  confused  and  jumbled  town 


^T.  53]  VISIT   TO  JAPAN  715 

and  the  high  hills  beyond  as  not  many  city  suburbs  can  furnish. 
It  is  a  hot,  sweltering  afternoon.  All  the  morning  we  have  been 
looking  at  Mikado's  Palaces  and  Buddhist  Temples,  dragged  in 
jinrikishas  through  picturesque  and  crowded  streets  by  trotting 
coolies  who  must  remember  us  and  hate  us  all  the  rest  of  their 
miserable  lives.  Now  in  the  quiet  afternoon  there  is  a  pleasant 
wind  blowing  across  the  hotel  veranda,  and  all  the  time  there 
comes  the  monotonous  and  soothing  music  of  a  Buddhist  drum 
which  a  poor  priest  is  beating  at  the  Temple  close  to  us,  and 
which  never  seems  to  pause  an  instant  from  the  sun's  rising  to  its 
setting.  It  is  all  as  calm  and  beautiful  and  different  from  Bos- 
ton as  anything  can  be.  The  bamboos  are  waving  gracefully  in 
the  foreground  and  the  pines  are  standing  majestically  behind. 
Japan  is  rich  in  both,  and  they  are  pictures  of  the  way  in  which 
strength  and  grace  meet  in  her  history  remarkably. 

We  are  now  in  our  fourth  week  on  shore,  and  indeed  I  do  not 
know  how  any  one  could  make  for  himself  a  more  delightful  sum- 
mer than  by  doing  just  what  we  have  done.  A  swift  run  across 
the  continent,  a  slow  and  peaceful  sail  on  the  Pacific,  and  then 
this  phantasmagoria  of  color  and  life  and  movement  for  six  de- 
lightful weeks.  And  then  the  return  over  the  familiar  ways  with 
much  to  think  about  and  one's  brain  full  of  pictures.  "What  could 
be  better  than  that? 

Do  you  remember  our  meeting  Harleston  Deacon  long  ago  up 
among  the  barren  heights  of  Auk?  I  found  him  this  year  among 
the  temples  of  Nikko,  the  sacredest  of  Japanese  sacred  places,  and 
the  deep  thunder  of  his  voice  mingled  beautifully  with  the  chanting 
of  the  priest.  There,  also,  were  Bigelow  and  Fenollosa,  both 
very  interesting  men.  Besides  them  we  have  seen  our  missiona- 
ries and  something  of  their  work,  though  the  schools  are  mostly 
now  in  summer  vacation.  They  are  good  strong  men,  and  the 
work  which  they  are  doing  will  be  a  true  contribution  to  the  du- 
bious future  of  Japan. 

But  I  wish  I  knew  just  how  it  is  faring  with  you  all.  An 
afternoon  on  the  terrace  at  Waltham  would  even  more  than  repay 
the  loss  even  of  this  pretty  scene,  and  the  strange  sights  which 
we  shall  see  when  we  go  out  as  it  gets  cooler.  Better  still,  if 
you  were  all  here !  But  we  will  meet  soon,  and  meanwhile  be 
sure  that  I  am  thinking  of  you  and  wishing  you  all  good.  My 
best  of  love  to  Mrs.  Paine  and  all  the  children  and  the  grandchil- 
dren, and  I  am,  dear  Bob, 

Ever  affectionately  yours,  P.  B. 

On  the  return  voyage  he  resumes  his  note-book :  — 


7i6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1889 

The  strange  personalness  of  a  new  land;  becoming  "ac- 
quainted "  with  it. 

As  the  Japanese  build  their  houses  to  suit  their  mats. 

The  Japanese  smiling  as  he  tells  of  his  mother's  death. 

Japan  strangely  self-conscious.  Lack  of  sense  of  individuality 
in  the  East. 

"Why  pluckest  thou  not  thy  right  hand  out  of  thy  bosom  to 
consume  the  enemy  ?  "  The  apparent  indifference  of  God.  What 
is  God's  enemy? 

The  thing  which  is  done  upon  earth,  He  doeth  it  Himself. 

Both  engine  and  brake.  Conservatism  and  radicalism  parts  of 
the  same  machine. 

Sermon  on  a  man's  discovering  a  meanness  in  himself  from 
which  he  thought  he  was  free  (coming  from  new  circumstances, 
6.  g.,  travelling). 

Sermon  on  outgrowing  temptations,  falsely  made  cause  for 
complacency.  Like  passing  railway  stations;  the  new  ones  are 
the  old  ones  under  new  forms. 

The  ultimate  mystery  of  life  is  personality.  All  which  stops 
short  of  that  is  partial. 

The  impressions  of  nature,  the  truths  of  science,  all  less  than 
personal  relations.  The  only  final  means  of  revelation.  Recon- 
ciliation. The  secret  of  Christ.  God  sent  forth  His  Son.  Two 
kinds  of  religion,  — truth  and  person.  All  religions  develop 
both.      Love  and  faith  are  the  powers. 

Houses  for  earthquake,  built  either  very  slight  or  very  solid. 

R.  S.  V.  P.      So  says  nature  with  her  invitations. 

A  man  behind  whose  closed  eyelids  light  and  darkness  show 
their  difference,  though  he  can  distinctly  see  no  object. 

The  latitude  and  longitude  of  life. 

"  Lord,  to  whom  shall  we  go  ?  Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal 
life."     Christ  the  key  of  existence,  not  Buddha,  nor  any  other. 

The  Japanese  giving  a  new  name  at  the  time  of  death.  The  new 
name  of  the  new  life  kept  hung  up  in  the  sacred  place  of  the  house. 

"While  I  am  coming  another  steppeth  in  before  me."  Com- 
petition, —  its  naturalness  and  unnaturalness ;  its  advantages  and 
horrors.  Sure  to  be  some  day  outgrown.  As  a  method  so  often 
used  for  other  things. 

Mark  iii.  21.  Christ's  friends,  not  His  enemies,  said,  He  is 
beside  Himself,  and  wanted  to  restrain  Him.  The  limitations 
that  Christians  put  to  Christ. 

Mark  v.  7.  The  demoniac  crying  out,  "What  have  I  to  do 
with  thee,  Jesus  ?  "  But  Jesus  shows  that  He  has  something  to 
do  with  the  Son  of  God. 


^T.  S3']    EXTRACTS  FROM  JOURNAL   717 

"That  the  things  which  cannot  be  shaken  may  remain." 

The  spider  spins  his  web  in  the  rice-pot.  Japanese  phrase  for 
poverty. 

You  might  as  well  think  to  help  the  moon  fighting  its  battle 
with  the  clouds. 

The  balance  and  cooperation  of  content  and  discontent. 

A  law,  a  truth,  an  institution,  a  Person.  Which  is  Christian- 
ity?    There  can  be  no  doubt. 

The  East  haunted  by  the  problems  of  reality  and  apparition, 
as  well  as  by  that  of  personality  and  impersonality. 

The  present  with  the  future  on  its  back,  like  a  Japanese  mother 
and  her  child. 

Shakespeare's  true  apology  for  art:  — 

Yet  nature  is  made  better  by  no  mean, 
But  nature  makes  that  mean. 

Sermon  on  the  variety  of  aspect  of  religion  in  the  various  ages 
of  life,  — youth's  activity  and  middle  age. 

The  rising  tide  catching  one  against  a  precipitous  wall.  Es- 
cape impossible. 

If  we  hope  for  that  we  have  not,  then  we  work  for  it. 

The  whole  meaning  of  Reconciliation. 

"My  people."  God's  word  for  the  Jews.  Its  larger  equiva- 
lent.     The  pastor  and  his  parish. 

"Get  thee  behind  me."  The  everlasting  word  to  the  tempter. 
Who  cannot  say  it,  dies. 

"A  dislike  in  the  mass  is  a  pre judice. "  Victor  Hugo,  "Toilers 
of  the  Sea,"  p.  61. 

Lives  haunted  like  houses. 

A  man  who  is  a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and  a  pillar  of  fire  by 
night. 

The  Shinto  (ancestor- worship)  of  Boston. 

Losing  a  Tuesday  going  over  and  picking  up  a  Thursday  com- 
ing back. 

August  28,  1889,  lived  twice  on  the  Pacific. 

Pride  before  destruction.  The  great  danger  of  boasting. 
Our  liability  to  the  sins  from  which  we  think  ourselves  most 
secure. 

A  man's  suffering  till  the  consequences  of  his  sin  are  exhausted. 

Japanese  preserving  political  traditions  in  the  manner  of  mak- 
ing or  serving  tea. 

"There  is  nothing  hidden  that  shall  not  be  revealed,  neither 
hid  that  shall  not  be  known."  The  kind  of  world  that  perfect 
light  shall  make,  and  the  kind  of  life  in  waiting  for  it. 


71 8  PHILLIPS     BROOKS  [1889 

He  shall  save  his  soul  alive. 

Ashamed  of  himself.      Filled  with  all  the  fulness  of  God. 
Evening  and  morning  were  the  first  day.      Ending  and  begin- 
ning everywhere. 
A  man  in  Christ. 

By  the  middle  of  September  Mr.  Brooks  was  again  in 
Boston,  and  had  resumed  his  work.  While  he  was  in  Japan 
he  had  not  been  well,  and  his  enjoyment  of  what  he  saw,  or 
of  the  hospitalities  extended  to  him,  had  in  consequence 
been  diminished.  He  was  the  better,  however,  for  the 
change,  better  than  if  he  had  tried  to  spend  "a  lazy  summer  " 
at  home,  as  he  at  one  time  proposed  to  do.  To  the  world  he 
seemed  vigorous  and  strong,  or,  as  one  of  his  friends  abroad 
wrote  to  him,  "the  happiest  and  hopefuUest  man  I  know." 

At  Trinity  Church,  the  first  Sunday  after  his  return,  he 
spoke  of  God's  ownership  of  the  world,  as  giving  it  beauty 
and  value:  "The  earth  is  the  Lord's  and  the  fulness  thereof; 
the  world  and  they  that  dwell  therein."  With  what  interest 
he  was  followed  is  shown  in  this  extract  from  a  daily 
paper : — 

As  he  passed  quietly  in  to  begin  the  service  he  looked  and 
moved  with  all  his  old-time  vigor,  although  some  might  fancy 
that  his  massive  frame  betrayed  an  appreciable  loss  of  flesh.  A 
slight  cough,  too,  was  also  noticed  during  the  reciting  of  a  por- 
tion of  the  service.  To  the  friends  who  embraced  an  opportunity 
to  greet  him,  he  manifested  his  unvarying  cheerfulness  and  vi- 
vacity. It  was  in  the  pulpit,  as  always,  that  he  appeared  with 
all  the  fulness  of  his  personality  and  mental  powers,  and  when  he 
spoke,  it  was  with  a  torrent  of  language  and  abounding  imagery 
that  seemed  to  have  gathered  even  more  than  the  customary  mo- 
mentum from  contact  with  the  Oriental  glow  of  life  and  scenes. 
Whether  from  association  with  these,  or  from  the  feelings  evoked 
by  return  to  the  family  of  his  congregation,  he  supplemented  his 
unsurpassed  rapidity  of  thought  and  utterance  with  more  than  his 
usual  emotional  quality. 

On  the  second  Sunday  after  his  return  he  went  to  Cam- 
bridge to  address  the  students  at  the  opening  of  a  new  year 
of  college  life.  He  spoke  of  the  new  system  of  voluntary 
prayers  as  no  longer  an  experiment.      "Hitherto  there  had 


.'ET.  ssl      GENERAL  CONVENTION  719 

been  a  certain  self -consciousness  about  it  which  it  was  now 
time  to  drop.  It  was  the  legitimate  successor  of  all  the  best 
religious  influence."  He  urged  upon  the  students  to  give 
their  best  to  the  college  if  they  would  get  its  best  in  return, 
"  treat  it  not  as  a  playground  or  living  shop,  but  as  a  living 
being  with  a  soul  caring  for  spiritual  nature,  and  it  will 
bestow  its  riches,  for  indeed  it  has  tAem."  The  address  was 
noticeable  for  its  intense  earnestness.  His  love  for  Harvard 
came  out  in  a  few  sentences  at  its  close.  "Many  noble  men 
have  rejoiced  to  live  for  the  College,  asking  nothing  as  they 
grew  old  but  to  do  something  more  for  her  before  they  died. 
Will  you  join  their  army?  What  she  asks  of  you  is  to  be 
as  full  men  as  you  can,  for  so  her  life  grows  fuller." 

The  General  Convention  met  in  New  York  in  October, 
when  he  was  the  guest  of  his  brother  Arthur.  It  was  quiet 
compared  with  that  in  Chicago,  three  years  before,  and  the 
proposal  to  change  the  name  of  the  Church  was  not  renewed, 
as  he  had  wrongly  prophesied.  He  took  part  in  the  discus- 
sions on  the  revision  of  the  Prayer  Book,  urging  the  substi- 
tution of  Psalm  Ixiv  for  Psalm  Ixix  in  the  Evening  Prayer 
for  Good  Eriday.  "We  listen  to  Jesus  crying,  'Father,  for- 
give them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do,'  and  then  pro- 
ceed at  once  to  say,  '  Let  their  table  be  made  a  snare,  to  take 
themselves  withal, '  "  etc.  In  the  debate  on  recommitting 
the  Prayer  Book  for  further  revision,  he  expressed  the  hope 
that  the  task  would  be  continued  for  three  years  longer,  for 
many  points  needed  further  consideration.  He  spoke  against 
introducing  the  versicles,  "O  God,  make  speed  to  save  us," 
"O  Lord,  make  haste  to  help  us,"  on  the  ground  that  it 
seemed  as  if  the  purpose  was  to  seek  uniformity  with  the 
English  book  even  in  small  details,  rather  than  to  meet  any 
great  demand  for  new  forms  of  devout  expression  in  view  of 
the  changed  conditions  which  prevail  in  our  great  and  new 
Western  land. 

In  a  proposed  canon  on  marriage  and  divorce  Mr.  Brooks 
objected  to  a  phrase  forbidding  "clandestine  marriages:" 
"If  we  are  to  forbid  a  thing,  we  must  have  some  penalty  for  its 
disobedience,  which  in  this  case  would  obviously  be  exclusion 


720  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1889 

from  Holy  Communion."  He  should  feel  himself  unable  to 
deny  the  sacrament  to  people  who  in  their  youth  had  been 
indiscreet  enough  to  make  a  clandestine  marriage.  "There 
is  a  danger  of  making  marriage  too  difficult."  The  subject 
of  "divorce  "  had  been  in  his  mind  as  he  was  returning  home 
from  Japan.  In  his  note-book  he  expresses  hints  of  his 
opinion. 

The  "putting  away,"  which  Christ  condemned,  was  not  the 
equivalent  of  our  present  divorce  system ;  it  was  purely  arbitrary, 
with  no  trial  or  opportunity  of  defence,  the  man's  right  only, 
while  the  woman  had  no  corresponding  power ;  it  was  originally 
for  some  cause  which  includes  more  than  adultery,  and  it  allowed 
remarriage  (Deut.  xxiv.  2).  Our  divorce  is  a  different  matter, 
involving  different  necessities.  The  Mosaic  institution  which 
Christ  modified  had  reference  to  inheritance  and  preservation  of 
purity  of  descent.  There  are  strong  objections  to  using  the 
Holy  Communion  for  enforcing  a  position  on  this  subject,  espe- 
cially in  the  matter  of  its  administration  to  the  dying,  in  view 
of  the  perfect  conscience  with  which  divorces  are  obtained.  It 
would  be  more  consistent  to  deny  divorce  altogether.  But  the 
whole  question  is  not  a  clear  one  in  view  of  the  fact  that 
Christian  nations  have  so  differed  regarding  it  and  so  differ  still. 
Circumstances  have  changed  since  the  time  of  Christ.  The  spirit 
is  more  than  the  letter. 

On  his  return  from  the  General  Convention,  Mr.  Brooks 
preached  a  sermon  at  Trinity  Church  more  hopeful  in  its 
tone  than  his  sermon  in  1886.  He  reviewed  the  results  the 
convention  had  accomplished  in  a  kindly  way,  declaring 
himself  not  altogether  in  sympathy  with  the  changes  made 
in  the  Prayer  Book,  but  speaking  of  the  convention  as  an 
inspiring  one  in  its  manifestation  of  high  moral  purpose,  in 
its  desire  for  Christian  unity,  and  in  its  zeal  for  missionary 
work.  He  went  to  the  Episcopalian  Club,  where  the  con- 
vention was  passed  in  review,  making  a  speech  which  pleased 
and  satisfied  its  members  and  was  pronounced  by  some  to  be 
"churchly."  He  was  apparently  forgiven  for  what  he  had 
said  of  the  convention  of  1886.  But  he  was  so  genuine,  so 
rational,  so  human,  that  forgiveness  was  not  difficult  to 
grant. 


^T.  ssl  PROHIBITION  721 

Two  sermons  of  Phillips  Brooks  are  notable  for  his  advo- 
cacy in  his  own  way  of  causes  of  social  and  political  reform. 
On  Fast  Day  he  discussed  "the  public  schools"  and  "pro- 
hibition." In  regard  to  the  first  he  maintained  that  the  state 
has  incorporated  its  best  ideas  in  the  public  schools,  the 
three  essentials  of  character  without  which  a  state  cannot  ex- 
ist —  freedom,  intelligence,  and  responsibility.  Not  only  the 
right  of  the  state,  but  its  duty  in  this  matter  of  primary 
education  must  be  boldly  maintained.  If  scholars  were  to 
be  withdrawn  from  the  public  schools  into  private  institutions, 
the  state  must  assert  its  prerogative  and  enforce  on  them  its 
principles,  insisting  that  they  shall  be  the  equals  of  the  pub- 
lic schools  in  cultivating  freedom,  intelligence,  and  responsi- 
bility. 

On  the  subject  of  prohibition  he  declared  his  preference 
for  restrictive  legislation  as  the  true  policy,  on  the  ground 
that  it  gave  the  opportunity  for  self-control.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  his  interest  in  the  end  to  be  attained  was  so  real 
and  absorbing  that  he  could  say :  — 

I  have  no  charge  or  reproach  to  make  against  the  most  extrav- 
agant temperance  reformer.  I  can  understand  the  intensity  of 
his  feeling,  which  urges  the  most  sweeping  laws  which  he  can 
secure.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  instead  of  legal  restriction,  the 
great  advance  in  this  direction  is  to  arouse  the  conscience  of  the 
people  to  live  for  the  State  and  for  their  fellow  men,  and  not  for 
themselves;  to  let  no  selfish  desire  stand  in  the  way  of  any  rea- 
sonable measure  which  shall  help  to  overcome  this  evil.  It  does 
no  good  to  champion  this  or  that  public  measure,  while  as  yet 
our  own  hearts  and  consciences  are  untouched.  In  this  as  in 
similar  matters  it  is  very  easy  for  intense  earnestness  to  develop 
into  mere  partisanship,  in  which  condition  we  oppose  all  plans 
which  do  not  harmonize  with  our  own,  even  though  they  may  con- 
tain much  good.  Rather  let  us  keep  ourselves  pure  and  broad, 
ready  to  accept  any  truest  and  best  method  by  which  at  the  time 
our  purpose  may  be  achieved. 

He  preached  a  sermon  on  Civil  Service  Keform,  in  re- 
sponse to  a  request  that  the  clergy  would  treat  the  subject 
from  their  pulpits  on  Thanksgiving  Day.  The  sermon  was, 
however,  given  the  following  Sunday,  with  this  preface :  — 

VOL.  n 


722  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1889 

When  Thanksgiving  morning  came,  it  seemed  impossible  to 
preach  it,  with  a  furious  fire  raging  in  the  city,  awakening  awful 
memories  of  the  old  conflagration  and  baffling  all  prediction  as  to 
where  it  would  be  stopped.  With  everybody  anxious  and  excited, 
it  seemed  quite  impossible  to  ask  those  who  came  to  church  to  sit 
quietly  and  listen  to  a  discussion  on  the  meaning  and  duty  of 
Civil  Service  Reform. 

The  interest  of  the  sermon  lies  in  revealing  his  devotion  to 
the  idea  of  nationality,  and  to  the  underlying  principles  of  a 
republican  form  of  government.  The  text  was  from  the  Old 
Testament,  "Ye  shall  be  unto  me  a  kingdom  of  priests  and 
a  holy  nation.  These  are  the  words  that  thou  shalt  speak 
unto  the  kingdom  of  Israel"  (Exodus  xix.  6).  That  one 
should  take  a  text  from  the  Old  Testament  for  Civil  Service 
Reform  might  appear  to  some,  he  said,  as  evidence  of  the 
incompetence  of  the  clergy  to  deal  with  living  political 
issues. 

The  old  reproach  of  ministers  that  they  lived  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment and  preached  about  the  sins  and  virtues  of  the  Patriarchs, 
and  not  about  the  sins  and  virtues  of  the  modern  world,  is  perhaps 
obsolete.  It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  ask  how  far  it  was  ever 
deserved.  That  which  it  most  concerns  us  to  observe  about  it  is 
the  misconception  which  it  indicated,  on  the  part  both  of  preach- 
ers and  of  hearers,  of  the  true  place  and  use  of  that  wonderful 
portion  of  the  word  of  God  in  which  the  story  of  God's  dealings 
with  his  chosen  people  is  related.  The  history  of  the  Jews  ap- 
peared to  some  men  to  be  an  utterly  outgrown,  uninteresting 
record  of  a  people  who  perished  as  a  nation  centuries  ago,  and 
the  constant  recurrence  to  it  seemed  to  be  a  hopeless  effort  arti- 
ficially to  keep  alive  the  dead.  To  other  men  it  seemed  as  if 
many,  at  least,  if  not  all,  of  the  details  of  Jewish  life  were  of 
perpetual  obligation,  patterns  to  be  mechanically  copied  and  re- 
peated to  the  end  of  time. 

He  commented  on  the  Old  Testament  as  still  the  "  au- 
thoritative text-book  of  nationality,"  despite  the  manifest 
failures  to  enforce  its  teaching  in  Christian  history,  as  in  the 
notion  of  the  divine  right  of  kings,  or  in  Puritan  attempts  to 
make  the  law  of  Moses  the  law  of  God  for  modern  life. 
"God,  may  we  not  say,  was  too  present  with  His  modern 
world  to  let  them  treat  Him  as  if  He  had  died  two  thousand 


MT.  ssl      CIVIL  SERVICE   REFORM  723 

years  ago."  But  the  thought  of  the  Old  Testament  lives  on. 
The  nation  is  sacred  and  struggles  to  assert  its  sacredness. 
"At  the  moment  when  it  almost  seemed  as  if  the  notion  of 
the  sanctity  of  the  state  had  perished,  and  nations  were  com- 
ing to  be  regarded  as  only  joint  stock  companies  for  mutual 
advantage,  —  there  has  come  this  wonderful  thing,  the  sa- 
credness of  human  life,  standing  up  and  demanding  recog- 
nition : "  — 

Republican  government  is  open  to  the  influx  of  the  essential 
sacredness  of  human  life  itself. 

The  essential  nature  of  humanity  is  so  divine  that  every  effort 
of  man  after  self-government  is  a  true  echo  of  the  life  of  God. 

The  simplest  republic  is  sacred  as  no  most  splendid  monarchy 
could  ever  be. 

The  divinity  which  used  to  hedge  a  king  fills  all  the  sacred  life 
of  a  free  people. 

Not  down  from  above  by  arbitrary  decree,  but  up  from  below, 
out  from  within  by  essential  necessity,  proceeds  the  warrant  of 
authority. 

The  sacredness  of  man,  of  the  individual  man ;  the  cultivation, 
not  the  repression,  of  his  personality;  individualism  not  institu- 
tionalism;  institutions  only  for  the  free  characteristic  develop- 
ment of  the  individual,  —  those  are  the  tokens  of  healthy  life,  the 
watchwords  of  true  progress. 

A  state  in  which  the  people  rule  themselves  is  able  to  realize 
the  sacredness  of  the  nation  more  profoundly  than  any  other. 

Popular  government  is  not  the  last  desperate  hope  of  man,  un- 
dertaken because  everything  else  has  failed.  It  is  the  consum- 
mation toward  which  every  previous  experiment  of  man  has  strug- 
gled. It  is  no  reckless  slipping  down  into  the  depth  of  anarchy. 
It  is  a  climbing  to  the  mountain  top  of  legitimate  authority. 

Tlie  public  officer  embodies  the  nation's  character,  expresses 
its  spirit  and  its  sanctity.  The  public  servant  is  not  simply  a 
man  hired  by  the  State  to  do  a  certain  work.  He  is  the  State 
itself  doing  that  work  and  so  making  manifest  at  one  point  its 
intrinsic  life  and  character. 

Is  popular  government  naturally  disposed  to  corruption  and 
mismile,  and  so  must  you  force  upon  it  against  its  nature  an  in- 
tegrity and  unselfishness  which  it  instinctively  hates  and  despises, 
or  is  it  the  constant  struggle  of  popular  government  to  bring  its 
best  men  to  power,  and  have  you  only  to  work  in  confederation 
with  that  struggle  and  against  the  enemies  which  hinder  its 
success  ? 


724  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1889 

To  make  America  to  be  more  truly  American,  with  a  pro- 
founder  faith  in  and  loyalty  to  herself,  to  resist  any  attempt  to 
impose  the  will  of  a  man  or  a  party  on  the  free  action  of  Ameri- 
cans, this  sums  up  the  duty  of  every  reformer  who  believes  that 
thus  strengthened  and  set  free,  America  will  of  her  own  nature 
send  forth  her  own  true  governors. 

That  he  shared  in  the  prevailing  sense  of  anxiety  about 
the  country  which  was  prevalent  at  the  time  is  evident  from 
this  passage :  — 

We  cannot  forget  the  stress  and  strain  to  which,  as  all  men 
feel,  the  whole  system  of  human  government,  popular  government 
like  every  other,  is  evidently  in  the  near  future  of  the  world  to 
be  subjected.  We  believe  in  our  institutions  as  we  believe  in  a 
strong  ship  in  which  we  sail  out  upon  the  sea.  But  we  cannot 
look  forth  upon  the  sea  on  which  we  are  to  sail  and  not  behold  it 
black  with  threatening  storms.  We  are  full  of  faith  that  the 
good  ship  will  weather  them,  but  what  fools  we  are  unless  we 
look  not  merely  to  the  soundness  of  the  timbers  which  compose 
her  structure,  but  also  to  the  character  of  her  officers  and  crew! 
In  the  great  trial  of  popular  institutions  which  is  coming,  the 
most  critical  of  all  questions  concerning  them  will  be  as  to  their 
power  to  control  their  own  leadership  and  to  express  the  better 
and  stronger,  and  not  the  worse  and  weaker,  portions  of  their  life 
through  those  whom  the  nation  calls  from  the  mass  of  her  citizens 
and  sets  in  public  stations. 

Durino;  the  month  of  November  Mr.  Brooks  was  conduct- 
ing  prayers  at  Harvard,  as  he  had  also  given  his  quota  of 
Sunday  evenings  to  Appleton  Chapel  from  time  to  time 
throughout  the  year.  But  for  some  reason,  probably  the  ill 
health  which  had  been  so  visible  in  his  face  and  in  the 
shrinkage  of  his  form  in  the  spring  as  to  induce  much  com- 
ment, he  had  not  enjoyed  the  work  at  Harvard  as  in  pre- 
vious years.  He  spoke  of  his  period  of  service  there  as 
"distinctly  an  off  term,"  intimating  that  the  sound  of  his 
voice  had  grown  familiar  and  tiresome.  For  whatever  reason 
he  seemed  disappointed,  and  at  moments  inclined  to  dreary 
forebodings  about  the  future. 

To  an  invitation  from  Rev.  Lyman  Abbott  to  take  part  in 
the  services  of  his  installation  as  pastor  of  Plymouth  Church, 
Mr.  Brooks  wrote  the  following  letter :  — 


^T.  S3']      EVANGELICAL  ALLIANCE  72^ 

Wadswokth  House,  Cambridge,  December  2, 1889. 

Dear  Dr.  Abbott,  —  ...  I  thank  you  for  the  friendly  im- 
pulse which  made  you  wish  that  I  should  come  and  take  any  part 
in  the  most  interesting  service  of  your  installation.  I  value  that 
impulse  of  yours  very  deeply,  and  I  always  shall.  I  may  most 
frankly  say  that  there  is  no  man  from  whom  I  should  more  joy- 
fully receive  such  a  token  of  confidence  and  affection. 

I  should  like  exceedingly  to  come.  I  would  make  every  effort 
to  do  so.  There  is  nothing,  I  am  sure,  in  any  canon  or  rubric 
which  would  prevent  my  coming.  I  am  not  very  wise  in  rubrics 
or  canons,  but  I  do  not  remember  one  which  says  a  word  about 
our  ministers  sitting  in  Congregational  councils.  ...  As  to  the 
function  of  a  member  of  an  ordaining  coimcil,  I  am  disgrace- 
fully ignorant.  I  have  been  nothing  but  an  Episcopalian  all  my 
life.  What  does  an  installer  do,  I  wonder.  And  what  would 
the  Congregationalists  say  when  they  saw  me  there? 

Would  it  not  be  better  that  I  should  come,  if  possible,  and 
utter  the  interest  which  I  really  deeply  feel  by  giving  out  a  hymn 
or  reading  a  lesson  from  Scripture  at  the  installation  service? 
And  then,  if  at  the  last  moment,  something  here  made  it  impos- 
sible for  me  to  come,  perhaps  another  man  might  do  my  impor- 
tant duty  in  my  place,  and  I  should  be  with  you  in  spirit  and  bid 
you  godspeed  all  the  same. 

These  are  my  questions.  In  view  of  them,  do  with  me  what 
you  think  best.  I  hope  I  have  written  intelligently,  but  since  I 
began  to  write,  several  of  these  boys  have  been  in  with  their  big 
questions  which  they  ask  with  as  much  apparent  expectation  of 
an  immediate  and  satisfactory  answer  as  if  they  were  inquiring 
the  way  to  Boston.  How  delightful  they  are !  We  are  all  re- 
joicing in  the  good  which  you  did  here  and  left  behind  you.  It 
was  a  distinct  refreshment  and  enlargement  of  all  that  had  been 
done  before.  We  will  do  our  best  to  keep  the  fire  from  going 
out  until  you  come  again. 

Meanwhile,  I  hope  I  have  not  written  too  vaguely  about  the 
council,  and  I  am 

Ever  faithfully  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

In  the  first  week  of  December  he  took  part  in  the  meetings 
of  the  Evangelical  Alliance,  which  held  its  session  in  Boston. 
One  evening  was  assigned  to  him,  when  he  made  an  address 
occupying  nearly  an  hour  in  its  delivery.  His  speech  has 
been  published  in  the  proceedings  of  the  society,  where,  in 
its  intensity  and  tumultuousness,  it  still  excites  the  reader. 


726  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1889 

One  can  understand  his  rapidity  of  utterance  in  reading  it, 
for  the  excitement  may  be  felt  in  every  sentence.  He  threw 
all  considerations  of  form  to  the  winds,  apparently  anxious  to 
make  a  full  utterance  of  his  convictions.  He  travelled  over 
the  whole  field  of  theology,  coordinating  aU  his  beliefs  with 
the  central  truth  that  every  man  is  the  child  of  God.  He 
was  careful  to  have  it  understood  in  his  opening  remarks 
that  he  had  not  chosen  his  subject;  it  had  been  assigned  to 
him,  —  "The  Need  of  Enthusiasm  for  Humanity;"  but  if 
he  could  have  chosen,  there  was  no  subject  upon  which  he 
would  have  desired  more  to  speak.  He  recalled  the  origin 
of  the  expression  by  the  author  of  "Ecce  Homo."  After 
more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  he  took  up  the  phrase  and 
gave  it  his  own  interpretation.  It  had  originally  been  de- 
fined as  "the  love  of  humanity  grounded  in  the  conviction 
that  Christ  is  the  type  and  ideal  of  every  man."  This  he  had 
believed  and  preached ;  but  according  to  his  own  definition, 
"the  enthusiasm  for  humanity  is  based  upon  the  conviction 
which  Christ  implanted,  that  every  man  is  the  child  of 
God."  He  seemed  to  go  beyond  himself  in  the  fiery  zeal  of 
his  earnestness  as  he  enforced  this  principle  in  all  its  impli- 
cations. The  address  cannot  be  analyzed  here  or  even  its 
synopsis  attempted.     But  one  passage  may  be  cited :  — 

Do  I  believe  that  Jonathan  Edwards,  when  he  has  told  me 
about  the  power  and  the  majesty  of  the  divine  will,  has  told  me 
the  whole  truth?  Do  I  believe,  on  the  other  hand,  that  Chan- 
ning,  when  he  has  told  me  of  the  purity  and  dignity  of  human 
nature,  has  told  me  the  whole  truth?  God,  revealed  to  me  by 
the  deepest  thoughts  of  those  who  have  lost  themselves  in  His 
existence ;  man,  revealed  to  me  by  the  deep  and  tender  utterances 
of  those  who  have  lived  in  supreme  sympathy  with  him!  God 
and  man,  shall  they  stand  separate  ?  It  is  the  Christ,  the  God- 
man  that  I  see.  The  great  Christ-truth  of  the  Sonship  of  man 
to  God  takes  possession  of  these  things  which  have  been  frag- 
ments, as  we  have  heard  this  afternoon,  and  blends  them  in  their 
glorious  whole.  We  have  feared  that  man  should  be  a  traitor  to 
God.  There  is  great  danger  also,  — who  shall  measure  dangers 
where  they  are  all  so  tremendous  ?  —  there  is  vast  danger  lest 
man  be  a  traitor  to  man.  It  is  thirty  years,  I  suppose,  since 
Mrs.  Browning  sang,  in  one  of  her  characters :  — 


Rev.  Arthur  Brooks 


MT.  S3^        A   CHRISTMAS   SERMON  727 

This  age  shows,  to  my  thinking,  still  more  infidels  to  Adam 
Than  directly,  by  profession,  simple  infidels  to  God.^ 

A  letter  to  the  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks,  which,  like  so  many 
of  his  letters,  seems  to  say  but  little  and  yet  reveals  so  much 
of  the  man  in  his  most  characteristic  mood,  closes  the  record 
for  the  year :  — 

233  Clarendon  Stkeet,  Boston,  December  26, 1889. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  When  we  came  home  from  Jim's,  Tvhere  we 
had  eaten  our  Christmas  dinner  last  night,  I  found  the  big  box 
in  my  front  entry,  and  I  slowly  extricated  from  it  the  delightful 
lamp,  with  all  the  world  upon  its  globe.  Indeed,  I  never  thought 
that  I  should  own  a  globe  like  that  of  yours  which  had  excited 
my  youthful  wonder.  And  here  it  is,  all  my  own,  and  with  a 
lovely  lamp  to  set  it  on,  and  I  can  hardly  wait  for  the  evening 
shades  to  prevail  that  it  may  take  up  its  wondrous  tale.  I  think 
of  giving  a  party  to  let  people  see  it,  and  at  the  same  time  im- 
prove their  geography  by  study  of  its  globe.  I  cannot  do  that 
for  a  week  or  two,  but  meanwhile.  Bishop  Clark  is  coming  to 
spend  two  or  three  days,  and  preach  for  me  on  Sunday.  He  in- 
vited himself,  saying  that  he  would  like  to  preach  in  Trinity 
Church  once  more.  He  shall  see  the  lamp,  and  I  am  sure  it  will 
brighten  him  up.  ...  I  am  hoping  to  look  in  upon  you  on  the  16th 
of  January,  when  I  am  coming  on  to  help  install  Lyman  Abbott 
at  the  Plymouth  Church.  Then  you  shall  tell  me  all  about  Hart- 
ford and  the  good  things  which  you  did  there,  and  I  will  tell 
you  all  about  the  Evangelical  Alliance  and  Greer's  speech.  And 
we  will  mingle  our  tears  in  memory  of  Browning  and  Lightfoot, 
and  altogether  it  seems  as  if  it  would  be  very  pleasant.  Until 
that  time  you  must  think  of  me  as  sitting  gratefully  in  the  warm 
light  of  the  new  lamp,  very  calm  and  very  happy. 

We  trace  the  working  of  his  mind  in  some  brief  hints  of 
his  Christmas  sermon  on  the  text,  "Hast  thou  not  known, 
hast  thou  not  heard,  that  the  everlasting  God,  the  Lord,  the 
Creator  of  the  ends  of  the  earth,  fainteth  not,  neither  is 
weary?     There  is  no  searching  of  His  understanding." 

The  greatest  is  the  kindest  and  the  dearest.      Tendency  to  run 

^  Cf .  for  the  Address  in  full,  National  Needs  and  Remedies.  The  Discussions 
of  the  General  Christian  Conference  held  in  Boston,  Mass.,  December  4,  5,  and  6, 
1889,  under  the  Auspices  and  Direction  of  the  Evangelical  Alliance/or  the  United 
States.     New  York :  The  Baker  and  Taylor  Co.     1890. 


728  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1889 

to  the  little  in  our  religion.  The  great  landscapes,  the  great 
thoughts  suitable  for  Christmas  time.  Their  belonging  to  all 
men  makes  them  more  and  not  less  truly  ours.  The  dear  earth 
and  dear  sky.  Dear  humanity.  It  is  not  relative  size,  but  true 
relationship  that  makes  the  grip.  Ask  yourself  if  your  largest 
were  not  most  sympathetic. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

1890 

SPEECH  AT  THE  CHAMBER  OP  COMMERCE.  LENTEN  AD- 
DRESSES IN  TRINITY  CHURCH,  NEW  YORK.  CHANGE  IN 
MANNER  OF  PREACHING.  CORRESPONDENCE.  ADDRESS 
AT  THE   CHURCH   CONGRESS.      THANKSGIVING   SERMON 

"Regret  at  leaving  any  past;  but  quick!  seize  what  is 
precious  before  it  is  too  late;  then  go!  Seize  Wisdom, 
Faith,  Hope ;  then  forward ! "  These  were  the  words  ad- 
dressed to  the  congregation  at  Trinity  Church  after  the  bell 
had  struck  which  announced  the  death  of  the  old  year  and 
the  coming  of  the  new. 

With  the  coming  of  1890  we  enter  upon  the  last  year  in 
the  parish  ministry  of  Phillips  Brooks.  All  his  years  seem 
great,  yet  this  stands  out  with  a  distinct  character  of  its 
own,  in  some  respects  the  greatest  of  them  all.  It  was  not 
that  the  incidents  of  his  life  were  more  striking  than  in  pre- 
vious years,  but  the  life  itself  seems  greater  and  more  im- 
pressive. He  had  now  reached  the  age  of  fifty-four,  and 
had  kept  the  thirtieth  anniversary  of  his  ordination.  Twenty- 
one  years  had  gone  by  since  he  became  the  rector  of  Trinity 
Church.  There  was  no  outward  sign  of  weariness  or  exhaus- 
tion as  he  entered  the  fifty-fifth  year  of  his  life,  for  on  the 
contrary  he  summoned  the  energies  of  his  being  to  make 
more  effective  the  utterance  God  had  given  him.  He  had 
attained  the  simplicity  for  which  he  had  aspired  and  strug- 
gled. Intellectual  difficulties  about  religion  or  the  world 
process  had  long  ceased  to  embarrass  him.  His  philosophy 
of  life  was  the  same  with  which  he  started,  only  it  had  now 
become  part  of  his  being,  identified  with  his  inmost  person- 
ality.    He  had  this  one  theme,  the  sacreduess,  the  beauty, 


730  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

the  glory  of  life,  and  that  because  all  men  were  the  children 
of  God,  and  Christ  was  the  eternal  Son.  This  one  theme 
ramified  into  a  thousand  variations,  always  new,  always  dif- 
ferent, and  rich  beyond  measure,  as  the  theme  in  nature  is 
simple,  but  inexhaustible  in  the  beauty  and  variety  of  its 
manifestations.  Whenever  he  spoke,  the  subject  was  to  him 
as  if  it  were  new,  and  this  sense  of  freshness  and  novelty 
was  contagious.  Wherever  he  went,  whatever  might  be  the 
occasion,  he  lifted  his  banner  whereon  was  written  the  sacred- 
ness  and  the  possibilities  of  life.  As  some  were  blind  to  the 
beauty  of  outward  nature,  others,  the  greater  part  of  men, 
were  blind  to  the  wealth  and  the  splendor  of  the  spiritual 
world,  and  yet  ready  to  recognize  it  when  pointed  out  to 
them.  This  was  his  work,  to  recall  men  to  their  spiritual 
environment,  to  remind  them  of  their  spiritual  heritage,  and 
show  them  its  content.  He  quotes  in  his  note-book  the 
words  of  Schleiermacher  as  though  he  were  aj)plying  them  to 
himself:  "Now  this  is  just  my  vocation,  — to  represent  more 
clearly  that  which  dwells  in  all  true  human  beings,  and  to 
bring  it  home  to  their  consciousness."  But  what  seemed  to 
rise  above  every  other  characteristic  of  his  preaching  or  his 
conversation  was  the  inextinguishable  and  boundless  hope. 
He  would  not  allow  himself  to  be  daunted  by  any  circum- 
stances of  life  in  proclaiming  the  salvation  by  hope.  Amidst 
countless  voices  of  despair,  or  the  wailings  of  misery,  or  the 
manifestations  of  indifference  which  surged  about  him  like  a 
chorus  striving  to  silence  or  drown  his  utterance,  his  voice 
rose  above  them  all,  proclaiming  hope  and  the  blessedness 
of  life  in  itself,  the  sacredness  of  humanity  and  all  its  legiti- 
mate interests.  Nor  was  it  that  he  did  not  see  the  evil,  the 
misery,  and  the  sin.  More  than  most  men  was  he  called 
into  contact  with  suffering  and  with  sorrow  in  their  pathetic 
and  tragic  forms.  Constant  ministrations  to  the  sick  and 
dying,  to  those  in  deepest  mourning,  filled  up  his  days.  His 
gift  of  consolation  was  so  marvellous  that  it  must  needs  be  in 
perpetual  exercise.  The  more  hideous  forms  of  evil,  the 
evidences  of  vice,  lives  from  which  ahnost  all  the  light  had 
gone  out,  —  these  things  were  familiar.    Then  there  were  his 


JET.  54]      PERSONAL   IMPRESSIONS  731 

own  personal  sorrows  and  disappointments,  the  growing  lone- 
liness, "If  any  man  knows  what  loneliness  is,  I  do,"  he  once 
said  of  himself;  possible  misgivings  about  his  health,  of 
which  he  spoke  to  no  one ;  the  feeling,  an  awful  one  to  him, 
that  youth  was  departing  and  with  it  might  be  lost  the  fresh- 
ness of  his  outlook  on  life ;  the  possibility  that  he  might  not 
live  to  see  what  life  would  soon  reveal,  —  all  these  combined 
to  raise  their  varying  strains  of  hopelessness  and  sadness, 
and  still  the  voice  that  was  in  him  soared  above  the  discord- 
ance and  confusion,  proclaiming  hope,  and  joy,  and  always 
cheerfulness  as  the  word  of  God  to  man.  He  had  to  fight 
harder,  it  may  be,  to  retain  his  faith,  but  for  this  very  rea- 
son his  faith  grew  stronger  and  more  secure.  However  it 
may  be  explained,  so  it  was  that  he  gained  an  ever  deepen- 
ing conviction  that  the  world,  whether  of  nature  or  of  human- 
ity, had  been  redeemed  and  glorified  in  Christ.  In  the  light 
of  this  redemption  the  world  never  looked  fairer  or  richer,  or 
life  more  attractive  than  now,  till  it  almost  pained  him  to 
address  young  men  with  the  prospect  before  them  of  a  vision 
which  he  could  not  live  to  see.  He  resented  every  attitude 
or  criticism  which  implied  that  there  might  be  anything  fun- 
damentally wrong  where  men  were  using  their  God-given  fac- 
ulties to  open  up  the  meaning  of  man's  environment. 

Let  us  take  one  more  and  a  final  glance  at  the  equipment 
which  made  possible  this  outlook  on  the  world,  —  so  rich,  so 
comprehensive,  so  generous  and  rare.  He  was  not  a  philos- 
opher in  the  conventional  meaning  of  the  term,  but  in  its 
larger  and  truer  sense  he  had  gained  what  philosophy  could 
give.  In  the  working  of  his  mind  we  may  trace  the  results 
of  the  long  history  of  philosophy,  from  the  time  of  Plato  to 
his  own  age.  There  was  nothing  in  the  line  of  philosophical 
development  beyond  the  range  of  his  endeavor  to  comprehend 
and  to  adjust  in  a  large  scheme  of  the  world's  order.  He 
had  this  peculiarity,  when  compared  with  others  engaged  in 
the  task  of  explaining  the  world,  that  what  they  were  think- 
ing he  was  not  only  thinking,  but  feeling  and  living.  He  was 
not  a  professed  student  of  philosophy  or  the  systems  of  great 
thinkers,  yet  he  inquired  of  them,  and  he  seemed  to  know,  as 


732  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

if  he  had  made  their  search  the  object  of  his  life,  what  it  was 
that  they  stood  for  in  relation  to  the  world  problem.  He 
was  an  idealist  with  Plato.  With  Kant  he  lived  in  the 
human  consciousness.  He  felt  the  force  of  the  transcen- 
dental philosophy.  There  are  hints  of  the  Berkeleian  princi- 
ple, as  well  as  reminders  of  Hegel's  ruling  idea.  Yet  on  the 
other  hand  he  retained  his  youthful  devotion  to  Bacon  in  the 
idealization  of  the  world  of  outward  nature,  while  in  Lotze  he 
found  a  healthful  check  for  the  extravagance  or  one-sidedness 
of  a  transcendental  idealism,  —  the  purely  intellectual  esti- 
mate of  things.  He  still  retained  the  vision  of  his  youth, 
when  he  saw  the  world  transfigured  as  in  ancient  Neoplatonic 
reverie ;  but  he  overcame  its  error  and  weakness  by  giving 
the  central  place  in  thought  and  life  to  the  Incarnation,  thus 
gaining  unity  and  simplicity,  the  power  of  the  personal 
Christ  as  the  bond  of  union  with  God.  He  held  the  truth  of 
the  immanence  of  God,  in  nature  and  in  humanity,  uniting 
with  it  the  personality  of  God  in  His  distinctness  from  both, 
whose  personal  will  was  the  final  explanation  of  all  the  issues 
of  life  and  thought. 

In  the  various  addresses  he  now  made,  or  in  the  sermons 
preached,  we  may  see  some  of  these  points  illustrated.  Thus, 
in  January,  he  spoke  to  the  merchants  of  Boston  at  a  ban- 
quet of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  when  his  speech  was  the 
amplification  of  the  words  of  Bacon:  "Not  for  gold,  or  sil- 
ver, or  precious  stones  was  commerce  instituted,  not  for  silks 
or  spices,  nor  for  any  other  of  those  crude  ends  at  which  thou 
aimest,  but  first  and  only  for  the  child  of  God,  that  is  to  say, 
for  light."  ^  He  began  his  address  by  remarking  that  it  was 
a  privilege  "to  sit  in  the  midst  of  a  multitude  of  merchants 
and  see  the  modern  look  in  their  faces  and  catch  the  modern 
tone  in  their  voices ;  it  is  the  merchant  to-day  who  holds  the 
reins  and  bears  the  responsibility  of  life."  This  was  the 
report  of  his  speech :  — 

Let  it  be  our  place  to  rejoice  that  the  world  had  not  fulfilled 
itself,  —  that  man,  so  marvellously  mysterious  as  he  was,  evidently 
was  beginning  to  realize  that  he  had  not  begun  to  display  the  power 

1  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  i.  p.  226. 


^T.  54]  NATURE  AND   MAN  733 

that  was  in  him.  And  let  us  take  up  boldly  the  responsibility 
which  belonged  to  his  enlarged  outlook.  The  one  thing  that 
grew  upon  him  as  he  grew  older,  he  said,  was  the  mysteriousness 
of  human  life  and  the  absolutely  unfulfilled  powers  that  were  in 
humankind.  His  one  great  assurance  was  that  the  world  was 
bound  to  press  onward  and  find  an  escape  from  the  things  that 
terrified  it,  not  by  retreat,  but  by  a  perpetual  progress  into  the 
large  calm  that  lay  beyond.  The  very  things  that  made  men 
hesitate,  fear,  and  dread  were  the  things  in  which  we  most  re- 
joiced, and  which  we  could  not  possibly  surrender.  The  things 
that  made  it  beautiful  to  live  to-day  were  the  enlarged  opportu- 
nity, the  enlarged  intelligence,  the  enlarged  communication,  the 
magnificent  freedom,  and  the  increased  conveniences  of  human 
life.  These  were  the  things  that  made  the  enormous  and  fierce 
competition  of  mankind;  but  these  also  were  the  things  which 
mankind,  having  once  tasted,  never  could  surrender,  and  so  it 
must  be  through  progress  and  not  retreat,  through  greater  en- 
largement of  human  life  and  not  restraint  in  its  regions  of 
thought  or  action,  that  the  future  of  mankind  was  going  to  realize 
itself.  Let  us  look  forward  and  believe  in  men.  Let  us  believe 
that  every  power  of  man  put  forth  to  its  best  activity  must  ulti- 
mately lead  to  the  large  consummation  of  the  complete  life  to  all 
the  sons  of  men.  To  be  in  the  thick  of  that  seemed  to  be  the 
glory  of  a  single  human  life.  It  was  for  us  to  rejoice  in  the 
richness  of  the  life  in  which  we  were  placed,  —  the  richness  of 
thought  and  the  richness  of  action,  —  to  believe  in  it  with  all  our 
hearts,  to  hesitate  at  nothing.  But  it  seemed  to  him  the  very 
newness  of  our  life,  the  very  newness  of  business  life  and  of  schol- 
arly life,  compelled  a  complete  loyalty  to  those  great  fundamental 
things  which  never  changed.  The  more  change  came,  the  more 
absolutely  we  were  bound  to  hold  fast  to  those  things  which  must 
be  the  strength  of  every  changing  civilization,  every  activity  of 
men's  thought  or  nature.  Those  things  were  integrity  and  public 
spirit.  Let  those  be  alive  among  our  thinkers  and  merchants, 
and  the  thinkers  and  merchants  needed  them  equally,  and  then 
we  might  welcome  whatever  great  changes  had  to  come  in  the 
future.  It  was  because  those  were  being  preserved,  as  he  be- 
lieved, most  earnestly,  most  religiously,  that  we  were  able  to 
look  forward  into  the  future  without  a  fear.  There  never  was  a 
time  for  men  to  live  like  this  time. 

His  imagination  was  working  in  the  same  line  as  he  went 
in  January  to  the  Leather  Trade  dinner,  noting  down  this 
point  to  be  made  in  his  speech :  — 


734  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

Each  business  touches  the  imagination.  It  stands  between 
nature  and  man  and  turns  the  wonderful  world  to  human  use. 
Behind  the  carpenter,  the  waving  forest.  Behind  the  factory  the 
sunny  cotton  field,  and  before  both  man,  human  life,  made 
stronger,  happier  by  the  transformation  which  they  work.  These 
the  two  great  things  of  the  earth,  nature  and  man. 

Behind  your  business  is  the  world  of  cattle  on  a  thousand  hills, 
the  lowing  herd  in  the  pasture,  the  rush  of  buffaloes  across  the 
prairie,  the  bleating  of  flocks  in  the  fold,  —  these  bright  and  airy 
pictures ;  and  in  front  of  it  man,  with  this  tough  element  in  his 
civilization  which  you  bring  there  for  his  comfort. 

He  had  taken  offence  at  something  which  he  had  heard 
uttered  in  disparagement  of  nature  and  of  its  study,  as  if  the 
love  of  nature  stood  in  the  way  of  the  spiritual  life.  His 
answer  to  it  was  a  sermon  at  Trinity  Church  to  "a  great 
gathering,"  when  his  text  was  the  words  of  St.  Paul:  "For 
the  earnest  expectation  of  the  creation  waiteth  for  the  reveal- 
ing of  the  sons  of  God,"  and  his  subject  the  relations  of 
nature  and  humanity,  —  the  waiting  attitude  of  nature  for 
the  perfect  man :  — 

How  full  were  Paul's  words  of  the  spirit  of  our  time!  For 
what  was  Science  doing  to-day?  Was  she  not  building  up  and 
completing  man  so  that  he  might  be  more  and  more  able  to  ask 
of  Nature  what  she  means,  and  call  forth  from  her  the  great 
forces  of  the  world  ? 

The  thing  men  were  looking  for  was  not  that  Nature  should 
become  more  and  more  rich  or  full,  but  that  man  should  become 
more  worthy  of  the  answers  and  the  revelations  which  Nature 
could  make  to  him  of  herself. 

This  was  also  true  of  the  poetry  of  the  time,  for  it  was  a  char- 
acteristic of  the  verse  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  it  felt  a  soul 
in  Nature. 

And  it  was  the  pain  at  the  great  soul  of  Nature  that  she  could 
not  do  for  man  what  she  could  do  were  he  worthy  as  a  son  of  God. 
The  world  was  waiting  to-day  to  do  the  things  for  man  that  it 
could  not  do  so  long  as  he  had  not  in  himself  the  son  of  God. 

Well,  man  had  declared  himself  the  son  of  God,  and  that  was 
the  lesson  of  those  wondrous  pages,  yet  men  stumbled  over  them 
with  little  conception  of  what  they  meant,  and  spoke  of  miracles 
as  incredible  simply  because  they  never  happened  before  or  since. 

Why,  the  Son  of  God  never  manifested  Himself  before  or  since, 


^T.  54]  THE  MIRACLE  735 

and  that  was  the  true  philosophy  of  miracles.  It  might  be  that 
Christ  did  things  which  had  in  them  only  the  ordinary  forces  of 
nature,  but  He  gave  liberty  to  the  soul  of  the  world,  and  gave  it 
power  to  manifest  itself. 

The  question  of  the  miracle,  its  actuality  or  Its  possibility, 
was  at  this  time  one  of  the  disturbing  issues  in  the  churches. 
Phillips  Brooks  encountered  it  in  his  preaching,  receiving 
sharp  protests  from  those  who  dissented,  urging  him  to  aban- 
don what  was  unprofitable  and  men  no  longer  believed.  His 
answer  to  such  protests  was  the  mild  reply  that  the  pulpit 
should  be  free,  or  that  if  all  lived  up  to  the  truth  they  did 
believe,  it  would  be  well.  There  are  many  of  his  letters, 
many  reports  of  conversations-  with  him,  turning  on  this 
point.  Young  men  came  to  him  with  the  difficulty.  It  was 
keeping  them  out  of  the  church,  or  preventing  their  whole- 
souled  allegiance  to  Christ.  He  did  what  he  could  to  help 
them  by  argument  or  by  statement  of  the  question  in  a  new 
light.  He  was  troubled  by  an  attitude  in  which  he  did  not 
sympathize,  and  he  seems  to  have  kept  his  deeper  conviction 
in  the  background  as  something  they  could  not  share.  But 
in  a  sermon  preached  in  1889  —  one  of  the  most  characteris- 
tic sermons  he  ever  wrote  —  he  gave  full  scope  to  his  devo- 
tion. The  text  indicates  his  attitude  toward  this  and  every 
other  conviction  he  held,  "Rejoicing  in  the  truth."  It  was 
one  thing  to  believe,  and  another  to  rejoice.  He  enumerates 
the  points  of  belief  wherein  he  rejoiced,  and  In  doing  so 
comes  to  the  miracle :  — 

There  is  the  man  who  rejoiceth  in  the  truth  of  the  miracle, 
and  for  whom  the  earth  he  treads  is  always  less  hard,  more  soft 
and  buoyant,  because  it  has  once  trembled  under  the  feet  of 
Christ.  He  is  glad  through  all  his  soul  that  the  hard-seeming 
order  of  things  has  once  and  again  felt  the  immediate  compulsion 
of  the  Master  soul.  Critical  as  he  may  be  in  his  judgment  of 
evidence,  he  does  not  grudge  assent  because  of  any  previous  con- 
viction of  impossibility.  He  is  glad  to  believe.  Belief  to  him 
is  better  than  unbelief.  Every  sunrise  is  more  splendid,  every 
sunset  is  more  tender,  every  landscape  has  new  meanings;  the 
great  sea  is  mightier  and  more  gracious ;  life  has  more  fascina- 
tion, death  has  more  mystery,  because  Jesus  Christ  spoke  to  the 


736  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

waters,  and  shone  in  the  transfiguration  glory,  and  called  Laz- 
arus out  of  the  tomb,  and  stood  himself  in  the  bright  morning 
outside  his  own  tomb  door  at  Jerusalem. 

Mr.  Brooks  seems  at  this  time  to  have  been  making  more 
occasional  addresses  than  usual.  Thus,  in  addition  to  those 
already  mentioned  in  this  first  month  of  the  year,  he  went 
to  a  Browning  service  and  spoke ;  twice  to  the  Harvard  Ves- 
pers ;  to  the  Grand  Opera  House,  where  he  preached  on  a 
Sunday  evening ;  to  Cambridge  to  talk  on  Foreign  Missions 
to  theological  students,  and  to  a  meeting  of  the  Yale  alumni. 
He  went  out  to  Cambridge  again  as  Lent  approached,  Feb- 
ruary 17,  to  meet  the  alumni  of  the  Episcopal  Theological 
School,  who  were  holding  a  "retreat"  in  preparation  for 
their  work.  He  did  not  like  the  word,  but  he  went  deter- 
mined to  do  all  that  was  asked  of  him,  giving  three  "medi- 
tations "  on  the  words  of  the  great  Intercessory  Prayer,  and 
rising  early  on  the  morning  of  the  second  day  of  the  meeting 
in  order  to  administer  the  Holy  Communion.  In  his  parish 
during  Lent  he  was  making  three  addresses  every  week.  On 
Wednesdays  his  subject  was  the  Joys  of  Christ:  His  incar- 
nation, —  obedience,  consciousness  of  brotherhood,  transfigu- 
ration, resurrection.  On  Fridays,  the  Sufferings  of  Christ: 
His  incarnation,  —  persecution,  disappointments  in  friends, 
the  mystery  of  Gethsemane,  the  crucifixion.  With  his  Bible 
class  he  took  up  the  church  as  it  was  in  the  mind  of  Christ, 
following  its  presentation  in  history,  ancient  and  mediaeval, 
and  closing  with  the  modern  church  and  the  church  of  the 
future.  He  was  preaching  on  Sundays  in  Lent  at  Trinity, 
and  his  record  shows  him  going  to  other  places,  —  to  the  Old 
South  Church,  to  Winchester,  to  Springfield,  to  Koxbury, 
to  Newton  Lower  Falls,  to  Providence.  As  if  this  were  not 
enough,  he  gave  an  address  lasting  for  an  hour  every  Mon- 
day noon  at  St.  Paul's  Church,  in  Boston.  These  services 
were  intended  for  business  men,  but  long  before  twelve 
o'clock  the  church  was  filled  with  women,  with  the  clergy  of 
Boston  and  of  the  surrounding  towns,  as  well  as  students  of 
theology,  so  that  business  men  were  crowded  out.  A  letter 
of  remonstrance  was  sent  to  Mr.  Brooks :  — 


^T.  54]       NEW   YORK   ADDRESSES  737 

Boston,  March  13, 1890. 
Dear  Sir,  —  Will  you  inform  me  whether  the  Monday  noon 
services  at  St.  Paul's  during  Lent  are  intended  to  be  "Business 
Men's  Meetings,"  or  not?  There  is  a  general  impression  on  the 
street  that  they  are,  and  the  lectures  would  seem  to  strengthen 
the  impression.  Yet  the  preponderance  of  women  in  the  audi- 
ence would  seem  to  belie  the  impression.  If  the  meetings  are 
intended  particularly  for  business  men,  would  it  be  unjust  to 
others  to  reserve  the  central  aisle  for  business  men  only  until 
12.05,  for  instance?  That  such  a  step  would  be  approved  I  am 
sure  from  conversations  both  at  the  church  and  on  the  street. 
Business  men  feel,  as  far  as  my  knowledge  goes,  that  if  it  is 
their  service,  it  is  keeping  them  out  to  have  nine  tenths  of  those 
in  the  pews  women,  who  can  get  there  before  twelve,  and  the 
majority  of  whom  can,  and  probably  do,  hear  you  on  Sunday. 
The  business  men  from  the  suburbs  or  distant  cities  cannot  hear 
you  on  Sundays,  we  will  assume,  but  can  on  Monday  noon.  I 
know  of  many  men  who  would  attend  the  noonday  service  on  the 
Mondays  in  Lent  but  for  the  fact  that  they  cannot  get  to  St. 
Paul's  before  twelve,  and  at  that  hour  the  seats  are  taken  and 
the  aisles  crowded,  so  they  remain  away.  If  the  service  is  pri- 
marily for  business  men,  they  are  at  a  great  disadvantage  at  pre- 
sent; if  not  primarily  for  them,  of  course  they  must  take  their 
chances  with  the  rest.  A  line  will  be  appreciated  by  many 
friends,  etc. 

A  similar  experience  awaited  him  at  Trinity  Church,  New 
York,  where  he  went  during  Lent  to  give  a  course  of  ad- 
dresses to  business  men  on  six  consecutive  days.  The  invi- 
tation came  from  the  rector  of  Trinity,  the  Rev.  Morgan 
Dix,  for  whose  courtesy  and  ability  as  the  honored  president 
of  the  House  of  Deputies  in  the  General  Convention  Mr. 
Brooks  had  often  expressed  the  highest  admiration.  The 
event  was  one  of  peculiar  interest  and  significance  in  the  life 
of  Phillips  Brooks.  He  had  been  in  the  habit  for  many 
years  of  preaching  at  the  Church  of  the  Incarnation  on  the 
Sunday  after  Easter,  and  occasionally  at  Grace  Church.  But 
at  Trinity  he  spoke  to  representative  New  York  in  the  larg- 
est possible  way.  If  it  was  an  event  for  Phillips  Brooks,  it 
seems  to  have  been  still  more  an  event  for  the  city  of  New 
York.  No  missioner  ever  achieved  a  greater  conquest.  And 
what  was  most  remarkable,  no  effort  whatever  was  made  to 


738  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

call  attention  to  the  services,  no  announcement  in  other 
churches,  no  advertisement  in  the  newspapers.  A  simple 
placard  was  suspended  to  the  iron  fence  on  the  day  when 
the  services  were  to  begin,  announcing  that  Rev.  Phillips 
Brooks,  of  Boston,  would  speak  to  men  at  twelve  o'clock 
each  day  of  the  week.  The  difficulty  which  had  been  experi- 
enced in  Boston  was  not  to  be  repeated.  It  had  been  pro- 
posed at  first  that  one  half  of  the  church,  divided  by  the 
middle  aisle,  should  be  assigned  to  women,  and  the  other 
half  to  men.  Mr.  Brooks  decided  that  the  services  should 
be  confined  to  men.  The  f olio winge reports  of  these  services 
are  taken  from  the  New  York  "  Sun : "  — 

At  11.30  this  morning  [Monday,  February  24],  busy  men 
began  to  file  into  Trinity  Chui'ch.  The  great  interior  was  dim 
by  reason  of  the  heavy  rain  outside,  and  the  business  men  who 
entered  carried  umbrellas  dripping  wet,  or  shook  the  water 
from  their  gossamers  as  they  stood  in  the  entry.  The  seats  were 
rapidly  filled,  and  before  twelve  o'clock  the  benches  in  the  aisles 
were  occupied,  so  that,  after  that  hour,  the  men  who  entered 
were  obliged  to  stand  in  the  broad  space  far  in  the  rear 

Before  the  lecture  was  completed  a  throng  of  men,  whose  busi- 
ness made  it  inconvenient  for  them  to  come  at  the  beginning  of 
the  address,  had  pressed  down  the  aisle  at  the  end  of  which  the 
pulpit  stands,  so  that,  when  the  lecture  was  half  completed, 
there  stood  beneath  the  pulpit  a  great  throng  of  men  looking  with 
the  earnestness  and  steadiness  which  true  eloquence  begets  up  at 
the  great  preacher  who  was  uttering  simple  words  of  Christian 
wisdom. 

It  was  an  impressive  sight  to  see  this  vast  church  filled  to  over- 
flowing with  a  body  of  New  York  men,  representatives  of  the 
professions,  trades,  commerce,  and  the  financial  energies  of  Wall 
Street.  For  here  were  men  who  directed  affairs  involving  mil- 
lions, others  who  represent  vast  litigations,  seated  side  by  side 
with  clerks  and  older  men,  who  were  employed,  many  of  them, 
in  subordinate  capacities  by  the  men  beside  whom  they  sat. 

The  chimes  in  Trinity  steeple,  whose  echoes  were  heard  with 
dim  resonance  in  the  church,  had  scarcely  ceased  ringing  for  the 
hour  of  twelve  when  the  door  of  the  vestry  room  opened  and  the 
choir  boys,  with  Dr.  Brooks  and  Dr.  Morgan  Dix  following,  en- 
tered the  chancel.  Dr.  Brooks  wore  the  conventional  surplice, 
while  Dr.  Dix  wore  no  vestments.      Dr.  Brooks  at  once  mounted 


^T.  54]       NEW   YORK   ADDRESSES  739 

the  pulpit,  where,  as  he  stood,  his  giant  stature  was  revealed  to 
the  great  throng  hefore  him.  In  a  low  voice,  which  could  be 
heard  scarcely  twenty  feet  away,  he  read  the  opening  hymn, 
beginning,  "A  charge  to  keep  I  have."  The  great  congregation 
rose,  and  it  was  a  sight  to  see  these  busy  men  as  they  stood  there 
singing  the  hymn  to  the  familiar  tune  written  for  it.  There 
were  men  who,  a  few  moments  before,  had  been  plunged  into  the 
intricacies  of  trade  and  finance,  now  singing  with  devout  manner 
the  hymn,  and  the  volume  of  music  which  arose  from  this  great 
throng  must  have  sounded  sweetly  to  the  ear  of  Dr.  Brooks,  for 
he  paused  in  his  own  singing  that  he  might  listen  to  the  glorious 
music  made  by  this  congregation  of  male  voices. 

After  a  Collect  and  the  repetition  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  which 
must  have  been  pronounced  by  every  member  in  the  church,  so 
reat  and  distinct  was  the  volume  of  sound,  Dr.  Brooks  began 
the  address.  He  started  without  a  preliminary  utterance  right 
into  the  heart  of  the  sermon,  and  his  very  first  sentence  was  ut- 
tered with  that  mighty  impetuosity  of  thought  and  speech  which 
distinguishes  him  among  American  clergymen,  which  makes  it  im- 
possible for  the  swiftest  stenographer  completely  to  report  him, 
and  which  is  a  Niagara  of  thoughts  and  words  maintained  from 
the  begiiming  to  the  end  of  the  discourse.  His  voice  is  peculiarly 
sympathetic  and  sweet,  even  in  his  most  impassioned  utterances. 
His  tones  are  mellow  and  a  delight  to  the  ear,  and  when  he 
utters  a  sentence  with  the  utmost  speed  of  thought,  and  of  great 
length,  but  with  perfect  symmetry  and  lucidity,  his  tones  are  so 
melodious  that  they  seem  almost  like  the  intoning  of  his  discourse. 

The  first  few  sentences,  however,  were  spoken  in  so  low  a  tone 
that  they  were  inaudible,  and  a  silent  gesture  of  protest  went  up 
all  over  the  church,  manifested  by  the  holding  of  one  hand  to  the 
ear  that  his  words  might  be  the  better  distinguished.  He  seemed 
to  take  the  hint,  and  to  have  tested  the  acoustics  of  the  church, 
for  a  moment  later  his  voice  was  distinct  and  clear,  and  heard 
in  the  remotest  corners.    .    .    . 

As  he  finished  his  address  he  stopped  for  a  moment  and  looked 
over  the  pulpit  at  that  vast  throng  crowding  the  aisle  beneath 
with  upturned  faces,  listening  for  every  word  which  came  from 
his  lips.  When  he  turned  to  descend  from  the  pulpit,  the  throng 
still  stood  there  as  though  controlled  by  his  presence  and  power, 
even  after  he  had  departed  from  the  place  where  he  had  uttered 
these  words  of  wisdom  in  a  manner  which  seemed  almost  inspired. 

On  the  second  day,  Tuesday,  the  hymn  was  "Rock  of 
Ages,  cleft  for  me,"  followed  by  the  saying  of  the  Lord's 


740  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

Prayer.      These   sentences   indicate   that  the   interest  was 
growing :  — 

The  heavy  mist  which  palled  the  city  this  morning  concealed 
the  steeple  which  surmounts  Trinity  Church,  and  almost  hid  the 
clock  at  noon  to-day,  while  the  chimes  rang  out  the  mid-day  hour 
in  tones  which  seemed  to  he  almost  muffled.  Yet  a  steady  throng 
of  men  had  been  filing  into  the  church  for  half  an  hour,  ready  to 
meet  with  the  discomfort  occasioned  by  the  packing  together  of 
a  throng  whose  clothing  was  damp,  and  every  one  of  whom  car- 
ried a  dripping  umbrella.  When  the  noon  hour  was  reached,  the 
great  interior  contained  as  dense  a  throng  as  were  ever  within 
its  walls.  After  all  the  seats  were  taken,  the  crowd  pressed 
down  the  aisles,  and  stood  in  a  great  mass  of  men  in  the  passage- 
way at  the  rear  of  the  church.  So  dense  was  the  throng  that, 
after  the  exercises  which  called  it  together  began,  it  was  impos- 
sible for  any  to  get  in,  and  almost  impossible  for  any  to  get  out. 

Yesterday  the  church  was  comfortably  filled,  but  the  throng  that 
gathered  then  was  moderate  in  comparison  with  that  which  as- 
sembled to-day.  In  the  aisles,  too,  there  stood  with  perfect 
patience  for  nearly  an  hour  men  who  command  millions  of  money, 
and  who  direct  affairs  of  colossal  importance.  Not  one  of  these 
turned  and  left  the  building,  although  the  discomfort  was  great 
by  reason  of  the  close  packing  of  the  throng  and  the  dampness 
which  was  encountered  on  every  side. 

Very  many  in  the  audience  had  never  heard  him  before,  and  it 
was  evident  that  they  were,  at  the  beginning,  astonished  at  the 
rapidity  of  his  utterance.  He  spoke  with  a  voice  better  modu- 
lated to  the  acoustics  of  the  church  than  was  the  case  yesterday, 
and  after  the  first  sentence  or  two,  his  words  were  heard  with 
perfect  distinctness  all  over  the  church.  But,  though  he  had 
increased  the  volume  of  his  tone,  and  the  distinctness  of  his  utter- 
ance was  evidently  in  his  mind,  yet  the  exquisite  modulation  of 
his  tone  was  even  more  apparent  than  yesterday. 

The  service  closed  with  the  hymn,  "Arise,  my  soul,  and  with 
the  sun. "  The  impressiveness  of  this  hymn  as  sung  by  the  great 
body  of  men  was  very  great,  and  not  a  few  of  those  there  as- 
sembled, who  heard  the  volume  of  song,  were  so  impressed  that 
tears  rolled  down  their  cheeks. 

As  the  days  went  on  the  interest  continued  to  grow  deeper, 
as  the  following  comment  shows :  — 

The  services  suggest  none  of  the  familiar  scenes  of  the  revival 
meeting.     There  is  no  excitement,  but  there  is  a  majestic  revela- 


MT.  54]       NEW   YORK   ADDRESSES  741 

tion  of  the  power  of  eloquence  used  to  illustrate  the  sublimest  of 
all  truths  upon  a  vast  body  of  business  men. 

Each  succeeding  day  has  witnessed  an  increase  in  the  attend- 
ance, till  the  chancel  has  been  occupied,  the  preacher  has  found 
difficulty  in  wending  his  way  to  the  pulpit,  and  hundreds  have 
been  turned  away  unable  to  gain  admittance.  There  have  been 
clergymen  present,  a  large  number  of  young  men,  lawyers  also, 
and  the  great  throng  of  business  men,  till  Wall  Street  and  its 
vicinity  seemed  deserted.  The  women  have  pleaded  to  be  ad- 
mitted but  have  been  refused,  for  if  women  were  admitted  they 
would  fill  the  church  to  the  exclusion  of  those  for  whom  the  ser- 
vice is  intended. 

Whatever  the  reason,  the  throng  that  has  been  drawn  from 
the  offices  and  stores  in  the  lower  part  of  the  city  to  Trinity 
Church  at  the  noontide  has  been  something  unprecedented.  The 
wonderful  success  of  the  Lenten  season  at  Trinity  Church  is  an 
event  about  which  merchants,  bankers,  and  lawyers  are  talking. 

It  is  important  to  preserve  the  contemporaneous  comment, 
the  description  of  the  effect  produced,  the  efforts  to  explain 
it.  The  above  comment  is  taken  from  the  "Sun."  The 
following  is  from  the  "World:  "  — 

There  is  a  bewitchery  of  eloquence  which  has  descended  upon 
lower  New  York,  A  Demosthenes  has  appeared  in  the  modern 
metropolitan  market-place.  There  are  people  who  argue  that  a 
"revival"  is  in  progress  in  "Old  Trinity,"  but  it  would  be  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  substantiate  this  claim.  Certainly  Dr.  Brooks 
has  not  as  yet  called  for  volunteers  to  the  "anxious  seats,"  nor 
even  requested  an  uplifting  of  hands  among  those  who  desire  to 
be  saved.  On  the  contrary,  he  studiously  avoids  all  incentives 
to  religious  excitement.  The  unusual  spectacle  of  a  big  church 
filled,  as  seldom  is  any  theatre,  with  the  leading  business  men  and 
capitalists  of  New  York,  must  be  explained  on  natural  grounds. 
No  Moody,  no  Sankey,  no  timbrel-playing  of  the  Salvation  Army, 
could  have  held  this  audience.  The  secret  of  this  success  is  elo- 
quence. 

Phillips  Brooks,  in  his  splendid  personality,  —  for  he  is  a 
commanding  figure,  —  is  awe-inspiring  of  himself.  He  is  like  a 
vessel  which,  having  been  filled  by  nature  to  the  brim,  simply 
overflows.  His  congregation  yesterday,  representing  all  that  is 
eminent  in  business  circles,  or  rather  in  that  greatest  of  all  busi- 
ness circles  which  spreads  its  brilliant  circumference  south  of  Ful- 
ton Street,  practically  consisted  of  so  many  human  fishes.      These 


742  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

money-getters,  these  prosperous  and  for  the  most  part,  doubt- 
less, churcligoing  men,  sat  under  the  rainfall  of  his  eloquence  as 
though  they  had  for  months  been  famished. 

It  was  a  marvellous  spectacle.  He  told  them  nothing  which 
they  might  not  have  heard,  and  probably  had  heard  over  and  over, 
from  the  honest  lips  of  less  gifted  preachers,  but  it  all  seemed  to 
have  a  new  sound.      He  held  his  hearers  spellbound. 

We  are  not  concerned  so  much  with  what  Phillips  Brooks  said 
as  with  the  fact  that  in  these  days,  when  men  are  accused  of  such 
a  general  disregard  of  churchgoing,  business  and  professional  men 
on  a  week  day  should  crowd  a  church  to  listen  to  what  a  preacher 
has  to  say  of  God  and  of  man's  duty  to  Him.  There  is  in  such 
a  service  conducted  by  Phillips  Brooks  nothing  that  approaches 
the  sensational.  Nobody  goes  to  hear  him  to  be  amused  or  star- 
tled. None  of  the  pulpit  tricks  some  "drawing"  preachers  re- 
sort to,  none  of  the  paradoxical  rhetoric  or  novel  illustrations 
others  seek  out,  are  ever  used  by  Phillips  Brooks.  Were  he  that 
kind  of  a  preacher  he  might  possibly  fill  Old  Trinity  once  or  twice 
with  the  kind  of  an  audience  that  is  crowding  it  this  week,  but 
then  the  crowding  would  stop.  Busy  men  at  a  busy  hour  of  the 
business  day  have  no  time  to  spare  for  such  amusements.  These 
men  crowd  to  hear  Phillips  Brooks  because  he  is  an  earnest  and 
powerful  talker  with  a  sincere  message.  His  eloquence  is  so  sim- 
ple that  at  the  time  one  hardly  recognizes  it  as  eloquence.  It  is 
what  he  says  and  the  man  who  says  it,  not  his  manner  of  saying 
it,  which  attract  and  win.  Phillips  Brooks  appeals  to  men  as  one 
of  themselves,  who  has  himself  found  a  great  secret,  —  the  secret 
of  faith  in  the  unknown  God.  He  is  in  touch  with  the  modern 
world  in  all  its  science,  and  luxury,  and  progress.  He  knows  its 
thinking  and  its  philosophy.  He  is  a  part  of  it.  His  is  not  the 
narrow,  literal  belief  of  an  earnest  good  man,  whose  outlook  is 
bounded  by  the  horizon  of  his  creed.  He  is  as  great  a  contrast 
to  a  Moody  as  Colonel  Ingersoll  himself.  And  yet  there  is  in 
Phillips  Brooks's  every  utterance  the  same  ring  of  absolute  sin- 
cerity that  charms  in  Moody.  But  about  his  sincerity  and  his 
views  of  life  there  are,  besides  an  absence  of  the  conventional,  a 
Christ-like  directness  and  simplicity  in  reaching  the  heart  of  the 
matter,  and  a  Christ-like  recognition  of  the  wideness  of  the  spir- 
itual nature,  which  appeal  to  the  thoughtful  in  the  same  way  as 
the  words  of  Jesus  himself. 

Men  are  not  nearly  as  indifferent  to  religion  as  many  of  the 
signs  of  the  times  seem  to  indicate.  For  its  conventionalities 
they  care  little.  They  have  lost  faith  in  the  virtue  of  mere  dog- 
matism.    But  when  the  opportunity  is  given  them  to  hear  a  true 


^T.  54]       NEW   YORK   ADDRESSES  743 

"message,"  — the  message  of  a  man  in  whose  breadth  of  view 
and  sincerity  of  conviction  they  have  confidence,  —  they  are 
ready,  even  eager  listeners.  The  crowds  that  throng  Old  Trinity 
are  typical  of  the  attitude  of  thinking  men  to-day.  They  are 
seeking  to  strengthen  a  faith  that  finds  much  to  shake  it,  and 
that  cannot  be  regained  by  words  of  professional  religion.  Words 
that  count  must  be  words  spoken  by  a  man  to  men. 

Another  most  intelligent  observer  seeking  at  a  later  time 
to  give  a  calm  estimate  of  the  man  who  had  produced  such 
"  a  marvellous  ejffect,"  writes:  — 

One  of  the  most  potent  secrets  of  Phillips  Brooks's  power  was 
unquestionably  his  complete  and  rounded  knowledge  of  all  the 
forces  amidst  which  he  lived.  His  large  work  and  immense 
influence  outside  his  parish  amply  prove  this.  With  a  type  of 
genius  that  linked  him  largely  with  the  outreaching  faith  and 
self-denial  of  an  age  of  greater  faith  than  this,  he  had  all  the 
practical  keenness  of  vision  that  linked  him  to  the  present.  He 
was  a  progressionist  to  the  letter.  Without  this  trait  he  could 
not  have  wielded  the  influence  he  did  over  the  business  men  of 
Wall  Street  in  New  York,  or  of  State  Street  in  Boston.  A  man 
of  mere  faith,  without  insight  into  all  their  methods  and  springs 
of  action,  could  not  have  held  those  men  day  after  day  during 
their  busy  hours  of  dollar-hunting. 

Before  dismissing  the  subject,  we  turn  for  a  moment  to 
the  preacher  himself,  as  he  is  preparing  for  utterance.  As 
soon  as  he  accepted  the  invitation,  several  months  before  the 
time  fixed  upon,  he  decided  upon  his  subject,  and  made  a 
synopsis  of  each  address.  First  he  had  taken  rough  notes  in 
pencil,  and  then  in  ink  drawn  up  the  more  matured  plan. 
During  the  intervening  time  he  was  revolving  the  topics  and 
their  method  of  treatment  in  his  mind.  He  spoke  extempo- 
raneously without  the  assistance  of  notes,  but  each  address 
meant  an  immense  amount  of  preparation.  Again,  judging 
from  the  appearance  of  these  analyses,  it  was  no  calm  prepa- 
ration that  he  made,  but  his  soul  was  heaving  with  excite- 
ment and  emotion,  as  he  dug  deep  Into  the  recesses  of  his 
theme.  After  he  had  made  the  final  analyses  he  went  over 
them  In  review  with  interlineations  in  almost  every  line. 
But  all  this  only  prepared  the  way,  for  in  the  presence  of  his 


744  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

audience  he  was  set  free  and  lifted  up  to  say  things  with 
startling  power,  which  are  not  mentioned  in  his  plan.  He 
never  was  more  free,  and  therefore  more  himself,  than  when 
he  stood  in  the  pulpit  of  Trinity  Church,  New  York.  What 
he  was  endeavoring  to  do  was  only  in  more  intense  and  thor- 
ough fashion  that  which  he  sought  for  in  every  sermon. 
But  the  occasion  stimulated  him  with  the  possibility  of  pre- 
senting in  complete  and  condensed  form  the  total  picture 
of  life  and  of  man  in  relation  to  the  gospel  of  Christ.  He 
appears  determined  that  nothing  which  he  esteemed  of  vital 
importance  should  be  lost.  He  spoke  as  if  all  the  world 
were  listening. 

He  chose  "Freedom"  for  his  subject, — the  one  word 
most  revealing  men  to  themselves,  in  the  presence  and  under 
the  influence  of  an  enfeebling  fatalism,  which  had  come  in 
consequence  of  the  decline  of  individualism,  of  the  rise  of 
socialism,  of  theories  about  heredity,  and  of  the  reign  of 
universal  law.  Here  are  a  few  detached  sentences  from  his 
note-book :  — 

It  is  not  by  going  aside  from  life  but  by  going  deeper  into  it. 
The  full  understanding  of  life  is  the  renewal  of  life.  This  the 
old  Bible  idea  o£  wisdom  and  folly. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  living,  one  to  be  given  up,  the  other  to 
be  assumed.  The  need  of  going  from  one  to  the  other  haunts 
every  man.  But  how?  One  says  in  reply,  "From  freedom  to 
imprisonment."  The  constant  presentation  of  this  view.  Its 
truth,  as  shown  also  in  civilization.  But  there  is  another  method. 
It  is  an  entrance  in  a  new  region  where  new  powers  awake. 
Without  rejecting  the  other  method,  this  must  be  the  best. 

Liberty  is  the  full  opportunity  to  be  one's  best.  Take  the 
matter  of  belief,  as  an  illustration.  The  question,  Must  I  be- 
lieve so  and  so  ?  A  liberal  faith  ought  to  believe  more,  not  less. 
There  is  the  other  question,  —  May  I  believe  ?  The  enlarged 
creed  is  an  enlarged  life.  Faith  in  the  Incarnation,  —  the  open 
field  of  a  new  truth. 

So  of  the  resolution  of  a  new  life.  Think  of  purity ;  which  is 
negative,  and  which  is  positive?  It  is  not  that  the  pure  man  is 
losing  something,  but  the  impure.  The  glorious  self-indulgence 
at  the  end  of  all  self-denials. 

And  so  of  the  total  Christian  life.     The  dominion  of  words,  — 


^T.  54]      NEW   YORK   ADDRESSES  745 

it  is  not  an  initiation,  it  is  life.  It  is  consecration  to  a  Master 
to  whom  you  belong.  Is  all  this  an  everlasting  disappointment 
and  degradation  of  the  nature?  No!  but  its  true  satisfaction. 
The  liberty  to  be  good;  the  liberty  of  life  with  Him. 

What  value  does  this  give  to  sin  ?  It  takes  all  its  glory  and 
glamour  away  from  it.  The  awful  spell  of  that.  The  sense  of 
its  disgrace  and  meanness.  It  is  a  self-imposed  and  treasured 
slavery. 

And  yet  it  gives  sin  its  full  value  of  awfulness.  It  is  you,  the 
man,  the  true  son  of  God,  that  is  sinning.  The  awfulness  of  the 
chains  which  bind  a  king. 

Here  is  the  chance  for  every  man.  The  impulse  of  freedom  in 
every  soul.      The  nature's  homesickness. 

In  his  second  address  lie  took  for  the  subject  "Christ  the 
Liberator." 

Christ  had  shown  how  a  man  might  be  perfectly  pure  and  yet 
manly;  how  a  man  might  defy  conventionalities  in  the  name  of 
truth;  He  had  set  before  men  the  glory  of  character.  Christ 
was  free,  and  says  of  His  freedom  that  it  belonged  to  Him  as  the 
Son  of  God.  That  does  not  separate  us  from  Him,  but  brings  us 
closer  together.  Are  not  we  the  sons  of  God  ?  Jesus  was  full 
of  the  mystery  of  human  life.  This,  too,  is  freedom.  No  doc- 
trine could  do  all  this.  Our  religion  is  a  personal  religion.  It 
is  following  Christ. 

The  third  address,  "The  Process  of  the  Liberation,"  was 
interesting  as  showing  how  he  treated  the  endless  contro- 
versy, as  old  in  Christian  history  as  the  time  of  Pelagius 
and  Augustine,  — the  question  of  the  relation  of  God's  grace 
to  human  freedom.  He  combats  lingering  notions  about 
election  which  still  hamper  men.  He  refers  the  whole  work 
of  salvation  to  God  alone,  as  Augustine  had  done,  and  the 
freedom  is  God's  gift. 

God  is  working  on  His  side  for  you  with  His  instruments. 
What  are  they?  All  your  experiences.  He  is  really  the  worker 
and  He  uses  them  all ;  the  sunshine  melting  and  the  iron  smiting. 
You  cry  out  to  Him,  "Use  that  other,"  but  He  uses  what  He 
wills.  So  you  work,  and  at  last  the  wall  is  broken  down  and 
you  are  with  God.  And  then  comes  a  surprise  to  learn  how  long 
He  has  been  seeking  you,  even  when  you  were  a  boy.  At  last 
you  stand  in  His  freedom,  doing  His  will  for  His  love. 


746  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

The  subject  of  the  fourth  address  had  a  distinct  theological 
interest,  for  it  concerned  the  "  Freedom  of  Christian 
Thought."  It  stood  out  among  all  the  addresses  as  having 
made  the  most  profound  impression,  and  was  referred  to  as 
having  given  character  to  them  all.  It  cleared  the  intellec- 
tual horizon.  Phillips  Brooks  was  sensitive  to  a  widely  pre- 
vailing impression  that  the  clergy  were  not  free  to  speak  the 
full  truth,  or  even  to  think  freely,  because  they  were  bound 
by  subscription  to  theological  tenets  which  were  irrational, 
whatever  their  denomination  or  sect.  This  deep  and  wide- 
spread conviction  was  acting  as  a  subtle  barrier  against  the 
appeal  of  the  Christian  faith.  Then  there  was  the  large  body 
of  Christian  tenets  or  doctrines,  unintelligible  to  most  men, 
which  hung  like  a  dead  weight  upon  even  the  religious  mind. 
Intelligent  laymen  even,  who  went  to  church  or  recited  the 
creeds,  would  in  confidential  moments  admit  that  they  did  not 
know  anything  about  it,  whether  they  believed  or  did  not 
believe.  To  teach  men  the  meaning  of  dogmas,  or  the  dis- 
crimination of  theological  refinements,  was  too  vast  a  task  for 
a  course  of  addresses.  But  the  preacher  had  this  advantage, 
that  he  had  gained  his  own  freedom,  and  knew  that  he  was 
free,  not  by  denying  dogmas,  but  by  entering  into  their  spirit 
and  discerning  their  relation  of  life.  This  part  of  the  sub- 
ject he  touched  only  indirectly,  devoting  his  time  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  one  supreme  presupposition,  which,  if  it  were 
admitted,  covered  the  whole  ground. 

During  all  these  days  one  thought  must  have  arisen  in  many 
minds:  "All  very  well,  but  your  boasted  freedom  stops  with 
activity;  it  cannot  reach  to  thought ;  that  is  all  enslaved."  Such 
thought  is  common.  It  is  sometimes  assumed  by  churches  and 
religious  books  that  it  is  true. 

If  true,  the  religion  could  not  hold  us  by  any  means,  and  it 
could  not  really  be  an  active  force.  Christ  claims  that  it  is  not 
true:  "Ye  shall  know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you 
free."  It  is  the  truth  itself  that  is  to  bring  freedom.  Let  us 
talk  of  this  to-day. 

I  think  I  know  something  of  what  it  means.  It  is  the  diffi- 
culty of  realizing  a  life  not  our  own ;  partly  also  the  sense  that 
it  is  too  good  and  great  to  be  true.     I  know  the  worse  side.      I 


^T.  54]      NEW   YORK   ADDRESSES  747 

will  not  think  of  that.  Rather  let  me  think  of  the  doubter  who 
would  fain  believe  the  Christian  faith. 

What  is  the  Christian  faith?  The  need  of  definitions.  It  is 
Christ  the  Leader.  A  thousand  things  besides  attached  to  it. 
But  that  is  it.  It  is  the  Being  standing  there  in  history  and 
attaining  the  power  of  God  to  lead  men  into  new  life,  so  that 
the  desires  of  richer  life  find  fulfilment  in  Him.  Am  I  hamper- 
ing myself  in  that  ?  Not  unless  electricity  hampers  itself  when 
it  gathers  in  lightning. 

But  how  do  I  get  at  Him?  Just  as  the  people  in  Jerusalem 
got  at  Him.  Christ  Himself,  in  His  personal  character,  then 
faith  in  His  words  and  their  acceptance,  the  opening  up  of  their 
possibility  in  life.      Is  a  man  not  free  with  his  world  enlarged  ? 

Miracle,  yes !  That  means  that  the  world  has  larger  answers 
to  make  to  the  greater  power,  as  it  says  more  to  the  civilized 
than  to  the  savage.  It  bursts  to  larger  music  and  diviner  land- 
scape.     Miracle  does  happen  when  the  miracle  man  appears. 

And  how  for  me  ?  Why,  that  Being  claiming  my  confidence 
says  He  will  be  always  here  and  will  always  lead.  He  promises 
the  great  extension  of  Himself,  —  the  Holy  Spirit.  He  gives 
one  divine  commandment. 

That  is  the  Christian  faith.  The  other  things  connected  with 
it,  character  of  books,  forms  of  government,  interpretation  of 
His  words,  special  injunctions,  aye,  His  own  nature.  His  scheme 
of  penalties,  — all  of  these  are  interesting,  but  Christianity  be- 
hind them  all.  Let  us  not  exclude  Christians  from  Christianity. 
Whoever  is  His  disciple  and  calls  Him  Master  is  a  Christian. 

What  does  Christ  do?  He  makes  God  real.  The  two  reasons 
for  believing  God's  existence,  — the  world  is  intelligible  with 
Him,  and  a  great  puzzle  without  Him ;  and  Jesus  believed  Him. 
I  think  He  knew. 

I  honor  the  skeptic.  He  will  not  enter  this  region  uncon- 
vinced. Perhaps  he  is  demanding  conviction,  which  can  only 
come  when  he  is  inside.  Still,  honor  to  him.  Truthfulness  is 
more  than  truth.      But  his  is  not  a  larger,  't  is  a  smaller  life. 

The  fifth  address  was  entitled  "  The  Christian  is  the  True 
Man."  The  sight  of  men  coming  to  these  services  raises  the 
question,  "Have  they  left  one  world  for  another,  or  have  they 
mounted  to  the  highest  conception  of  their  whole  world?" 

The  way  people  keep  their  religion ;  there  is  a  loss  of  conti- 
nuity ;  once  in  a  while  a  run  across  from  one  world  to  the  other ; 
then  back  to  the  old  life. 


748  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

The  Christian  life  is  the  human  life.  The  same,  only  filled 
out  entirely.  Do  I  say  only  ?  What  can  be  more  ?  The  abso- 
lute way  in  which  Christ  is  recognized  as  the  truest  man,  — man 
forever  and  forever,  —  and  all  the  more  as  God. 

The  noble  value  of  human  life  is  the  first  truth  of  religion. 
The  truth  of  the  Incarnation,  the  truth  of  the  Cross.  Along 
these  lines  to  God.  Christ  is  nearer  to  us  than  most  great  and 
good  men.  The  dreadfulness  of  cynicism.  Its  ineffable  selfish- 
ness. The  duty  and  privilege  of  living.  The  dreadfulness  of 
suicide;  its  horrible  cowardice. 

The  simple  first  emotions,  how  they  are  at  the  root  of  every- 
thing! Men  advance  only  as  these  advance.  Delusion  of  scien- 
tific advance.  Talk  from  here  to  Calcutta,  or  journey  to  Cali- 
fornia. What  to  say?  what  for?  Christ  knew  none  of  these 
things.  The  nobility  of  man,  that  is  greater.  Character  at  the 
centre  of  all. 

The  strong  sense  of  the  need  of  character  in  special  acts.  No 
special  skill  makes  up  for  its  absence.  The  great  victories,  — 
justice,  love,  sympathy.  Over  all  is  the  Christian  life.  The 
elevation  of  these  human  goodnesses  to  their  completeness,  but 
the  same  things  still,  —  love  to  man  and  to  God,  gratitude,  truth, 
the  service  rendered  for  Christ's  sake  to  fellow  men. 

When  I  say  this,  then  the  whole  essentialness  of  Christian  life 
opens;  the  great  charge  against  it  of  arbitrariness  disappears. 
Hell  and  heaven,  what  shall  they  be  ?  their  sorrow  and  their  joy  ? 
The  suffering  is  in  the  sin,  the  joy  is  in  the  holiness.  Heaven 
and  hell  are  here.      Spiritual  revealment. 

The  naturalization  which  this  gives  to  our  best  moments. 
They  are  not  glimpses  of  another  world.  They  are  liftings  of 
this  world  into  the  light  of  God.  The  easy  way  in  which  we 
expect  our  lowest  to  repeat  itself,  but  not  our  highest.  Your 
best  moments  are  your  truest. 

The  great  conception  of  doing  things  for  God.  How  it  trans- 
figures and  glorifies  duty  and  makes  the  most  familiar  splendid. 

The  great  secret  is  to  insist  on  doing  such  things  as  shall  need 
God.  You  are  doing  too  small  things.  Do  larger,  and  you  will 
be  on  your  knees  calling  for  God. 

The  two  great  rites  of  the  Christian  church.  Their  narrowness 
now,  but  how  great  as  sacraments  in  their  splendid  universal 
humanness:  (1)  Consecration  (baptism),  or  the  life  put  in  God's 
hands.      (2)  Dependence  (the  Lord's  Supper),  the  life  fed  on  God. 

In  the  last  address,  when  the  interest  which  had  been 
daily  increasing   culminated,   he   began   by   expressing   the 


^T.  54]      NEW   YORK   ADDRESSES  749 

sense  and  fear  of  too  much  talk  lest  he  should  have  compli- 
cated what  is  simple,  but  also  the  rejoicing  confidence  that 
"when  we  plead  with  one  another,  there  is  forever  the  great 
pleading  power  of  God  "  standing  behind  the  appeal,  as  the 
power  of  nature  with  the  physician  or  the  law  of  gravitation 
with  the  mechanic. 

I  could  never  get  hold  of  the  theology  of  those  who  stand  in 
perpetual  amazement  before  the  spectacle  of  God's  love  to  his 
children.      That  love  seems  to  me  more  and  more  natural. 

What  I  have  tried  to  do  is  to  make  the  whole  seem  natural. 
You  know  a  little  more  truth ;  then  a  little  more  obedience,  then 
more  truth;  forever  so.  But  all  depends  on  being  in  earnest. 
Assume  earnestness. 

Do  you  say,  What  can  I  do?  As  your  brother,  let  me  try  to 
tell  you. 

(1)  Leave  off  your  sin.  (2)  Do  your  personal  duty.  (3)  Pray. 
simply,  passionately,  earnestly.  (4)  The  Bible  ;  read  it  till  that 
Christ  figure  is  before  you.  (5)  The  CMirch,  which  is  the  embodi- 
ment of  all.      If  it  is  weak,  make  it  strong. 

Unless  you  do  these  things  you  have  no  right  to  complain  that 
the  new  life  does  not  come  in  and  you  are  not  free.  These  are 
not  a  set  of  rules.      They  are  the  windows  of  the  soul. 

These  are  the  great  religious  words  ever  deepening :  — 

(1)  Separation  from  the  ivorld ;  not  the  desert  or  cell,  but  in- 
dependence by  service. 

(2)  Salvation  of  the  soul,  not  from  pain,  but  from  sin. 

(3)  Prepare  to  meet  thy  God,  with  glorious  and  glad  welcome. 
He  is  always  here. 

Be  such  a  man  that  if  all  men  were  like  you  the  world  would 
be  saved. 

Farewell,  my  friends.  It  is  not  for  long,  and  yet  it  is  so  long. 
For  the  world  will  be  here  after  we  are  gone,  and  after  the  world 
is  gone  we  shall  live  forever.  Whatever  may  come  hereafter, 
not  this  particular  opportunity  to  serve  God  will  come  again. 
Catch  to-day.  Be  men ;  be  men.  Love  God.  Be  brave.  Be 
true.  And  at  last,  may  we  say  as  He  said,  "Father,  I  have 
glorified  Thee  on  the  earth." 

Those  who  were  following  Phillips  Brooks  at  this  time,  as 
he  pursued  his  wonderful  career,  felt  that  some  mysterious 
change  was  passing  over  him,  intensifying  his  power,  pro- 
ducing effects  upon  his  congregation  which  no  words  are  ade- 


750  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

quate  to  represent.  Here  is  an  extract  from  a  Boston  paper, 
important  because  it  records  what  many  were  thinking,  writ- 
ten just  after  his  return  from  New  York,  and  referring  to 
his  work  there :  — 

According  to  all  accounts  that  quality  which  has  entered  into 
Dr.  Brooks's  sermons,  especially  of  late,  was  felt  in  a  marked 
degree  by  his  New  York  audience.  Always  strong,  earnest,  and 
filled  with  the  dignity  of  his  words  and  work,  it  has  been  a  matter 
for  comment  in  Boston  that  since  his  return  from  his  last  journey 
[the  visit  to  Japan]  he  has  brought  to  bear  a  deeper  force  than 
ever,  a  more  impassioned  delivery  of  thought,  and  an  apparent 
burning  conviction  of  the  necessity  of  impressing  upon  the  people 
the  truth  of  which  he  is  convinced.  The  repressed  but  tremendous 
effect  of  yesterday's  sermon  in  New  York  confirms  the  belief 
that  there  is  new  power  in  his  utterance,  a  sense  of  having  been 
touched  by  the  coal  that  the  world's  prophets  have  felt  when  they 
have  spoken  enduring  words  to  those  who  "hear  indeed  but  under- 
stand not." 

This  "new  power  of  utterance"  was  now  increasingly 
manifest  in  every  sermon,  but  it  cannot  be  described.  One 
thing  was  apparent,  however,  that  the  whole  man  was  visibly 
affected  when  he  preached.  It  was  not  so  in  his  earlier  min- 
istry, when  he  stood  unimpassioned  and  unmoved,  thrilling 
his  audience  till  it  took  them  long  to  recover  their  normal 
mood,  but  himself  calm  in  the  inner  recesses  of  his  spirit, 
and  maintaining  his  self -composure.  What  struck  his  hear- 
ers now  was  the  torrent  of  feeling  within  him,  as  he  poured 
forth  his  burning  words.  He  was  preaching  as  if  under  the 
stress  of  anxiety  that  the  whole  truth  should  be  said  before 
it  was  too  late,  that  not  one  particle  of  the  power  which  God 
had  given  him  should  be  wasted  or  lost.  He  had  mastered 
the  rules  of  rhetoric  and  studied  the  art  of  composition,  and 
accumulated  from  life  the  similes  it  could  offer ;  but  all  this 
only  to  gain  his  freedom  in  the  pulpit,  where  he  rose  above 
all  artificial  restrictions  and  appeared  in  his  real  greatness,  a 
man  addressing  his  fellows  with  a  gift  of  penetrating  every 
heart.  It  was  the  culmination  of  the  process  by  which  the 
simple  manhood  in  him  had  become  a  stronger  appeal  than 
any  intellectual  endowment. 


^T.  54]       THE  NEW   UTTERANCE  751 

One  would  like  to  linger  over  many  of  the  sermons  preached 
in  a  year  which  seems  to  have  been  among  the  most  prolific 
in  his  ministry.  Especially  was  the  Lenten  season  rich  in 
these  impressive  sermons.  And  what  was  noticeable  was  his 
inclination  to  dwell  more  on  the  passive  side  of  the  life  of 
Christ,  His  sufferings  and  cross  in  their  deeper  relations  to 
Christian  experience.  He  saw  the  Atonement  in  the  light  of 
the  Divine  Fatherhood,  as  that  for  which  the  long  process 
of  thought  and  inquiry  into  the  meaning  of  Christ's  death 
had  been  preparing  the  way.  He  seemed  also  to  be  review- 
ing his  deeper  theological  convictions,  and  giving  them  a 
firmer  expression.  He  had  refused  to  dogmatize  upon  the 
subject  of  the  duration  of  future  punishment,  but  in  a  sermon 
on  the  text  "Vengeance  is  mine;  I  will  repay,  saith  the 
Lord,"  he  speaks  of  the  "blessedness"  of  "Eternal  Hope" 
and  of  "our  right  to  keep  it." 

How  the  mind  of  Phillips  Brooks  was  working  in  other 
directions  at  this  time  may  be  seen  in  an  essay  entitled 
"Orthodoxy,"  read  before  the  Clericus  Club,  June  2,  1890. 
The  essay  has  been  already  referred  to  in  a  previous  chapter, 
but  a  few  words  may  be  added  here  regarding  the  time  and 
the  motive  which  led  him  to  write.  He  saw  the  symptom, 
as  he  believed,  of  an  ecclesiastical  reaction,  waving  this 
word  on  its  banner.  He  seems  to  challenge  the  coming 
storm  in  his  own  person.  He  denounces  orthodoxy  as  "born 
of  fear,  and  as  having  no  natural  heritage  either  from  hope 
or  love."  He  admitted  that  orthodoxy  had  a  place  and  an 
importance,  but  they  were  both  inferior. 

It  is  an  arrogant,  pushing  thing,  crowding  itself  into  thrones 
where  it  has  no  right.  ...  Is  not  the  whole  sum  of  the  matter 
this,  that  orthodoxy  as  a  principle  of  action  or  a  standard  of  belief 
is  obsolete  and  dead?  It  is  not  that  the  substance  of  orthodoxy 
has  been  altered,  but  that  the  very  principle  of  orthodoxy  has  been 
essentially  disowned.  It  is  not  conceivable  now  that  any  council, 
however  oecumenically  constituted,  should  so  pronounce  on  truth 
that  its  decrees  should  have  any  weight  with  thinking  men,  save 
what  might  seem  legitimately  to  belong  to  the  character  and  wis- 
dom of  the  persons  who  composed  the  council.  Personal  judg- 
ment is  on  the  throne,  and  will  remain  there,  — personal  judg- 


752  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

ment,  enlightened  by  all  the  wisdom,  past  or  present,  which  it 
can  summon  to  its  aid,  but  forming  finally  its  own  conclusions 
and  standing  by  them  in  the  sight  of  God,  whether  it  stands  in 
a  great  company  or  stands  alone. 

Mr.  Brooks  preached  the  Baccalaureate  Sermon  at  Harvard 
before  the  class  of  1890,  and  performed  the  same  service  for 
the  graduating  class  of  the  Institute  of  Technology.  In  the 
year's  record  of  preaching,  two  sermons  stand  out  with  pecul- 
iar vividness,  where  he  seized  the  allegories  of  history  and 
brought  them  home  to  the  individual  soul.  They  are  both 
of  them  poems,  where  the  tragic  element  is  supreme :  "  The 
Egyptians  dead  upon  the  Seashore"  and  the  "Feast  of  Bel- 
shazzar."  These  were  written  sermons,  while  for  the  most 
part  his  preaching  was  extempore.  In  the  year  1890  he 
wrote  but  six  sermons.  He  was  not  satisfied  with  himself, 
and  bemoaned  the  days  when  the  sermon  was  the  event  of 
the  week.  He  told  one  of  his  friends  at  this  time  that  he 
intended  to  give  up  extempore  preaching  and  go  back  again 
to  the  written  sermon.  From  this  account  of  his  preaching 
we  turn  to  his  letters,  which  cover  the  year.  To  Dr.  Farrar 
he  writes :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  Januaiy  12,  1890. 
My  very  dear  Archdeacon,  —  This  New  Year  .  .  .  starts 
well,  I  think,  in  spite  of  a  thousand  perverse  things  and  people 
which  one  would  like  to  rectify  or  obliterate,  and  cannot.  The 
thing  which  grows  on  me  most  is  the  splendid  sense  of  liberty  which 
is  everywhere,  which  no  sight  of  the  extravagances  and  enormities 
to  which  it  gives  place  can  make  to  seem  anything  but  splendid.  I 
rather  think  that  there  has  never  been  a  time  to  which,  if  we  were 
suddenly  transferred,  we  should  not  feel  as  if  we  woke  up  in  a  sti- 
fling dungeon  with  chains  at  hand  and  heel.  So  let  us  rejoice  and 
hope  great  things  of  1890.  I  cannot  picture  your  house  with  the 
changed  look  that  it  must  have  now  that  your  children  have,  so 
many  of  them,  gone.  But  be  thankful  that  you  are  not  a  miser- 
able celibate,  whose  being  is  bounded  by  the  ground  his  two  feet 
stand  on.  Browning  and  Lightfoot  both  are  gone,  and  the  world 
is  vastly  poorer.  I  think  of  both  of  them  as  you  gave  me  the 
privilege  of  seeing  them  at  your  house,  and  their  great  work  is 
nearer  and  more  real  to  me  because  of  your  kindness.  I  will  not 
believe  that  the  new  great  Poet  is  not  near  at  hand.     I  thought  I 


^T.  54]     EXTRACTS  FROM   LETTERS        753 

met  him   in  the  street  yesterday,    but  perhaps  I  was  mistaken. 
But  he  will  come  soon! 

Eef  erring  to  the  death  of  Professor  Bo  wen,  who  had  been 
his  instructor  at  Harvard,  he  says  in  a  letter  to  Rev.  Arthur 
Brooks :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  January  23,  1890. 

Professor  Bowen  is  dead.  The  old  Cambridge  is  fast  disap- 
pearing. Childs  and  Lane  and  Cooke  are  the  veterans  now. 
There  was  a  great  deal  of  humanity  in  Bowen;  at  least  he  knew 
what  it  was  to  be  a  philosopher  if  he  was  not  one  himself,  and 
he  was,  and  dared  to  call  himself,  a  Christian. 

While  staying  in  New  York  at  the  time  when  he  was 
giving  his  addresses  at  Trinity  Church,  a  gentleman  called 
upon  him  for  the  purpose  of  interviewing  him  and  of  pub- 
lishing the  results  of  the  interview  in  a  Philadelphia  paper. 
When  the  article  appeared  headed  "Phillips  Brooks's  Broad 
Views  about  Modern  Christianity  —  Truth,  not  Dogmas, 
Wanted,"  Mr.  Cooper  was  disturbed  at  the  unqualified,  al- 
most excited  tone  of  the  remarks  reported  by  the  inter- 
viewer, and  wrote  to  know  if  he  had  been  reported  correctly. 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  5,  1890. 

My  deak  Cooper,  —  One  day  last  week,  when  I  was  staying 
with  Arthur  in  New  York,  a  most  respectable  man  called  on  me 
and  introduced  a  friend  whose  name  I  did  not  catch.  We  talked 
for  about  half  an  hour.  In  the. course  of  conversation  he  said  that 
he  had  something  to  do  with  the  New  York  "Sun."  I  have  not 
the  slightest  recollection  of  his  mentioning  any  Philadelphia  paper, 
or  of  his  saying  anything  about  reporting  our  conversation.  If 
he  had  asked  my  consent  I  should  certainly  have  refused  it. 

This  is  the  report  which  you  have  sent  me  in  "  The  Press." 
As  to  the  matter  of  it,  it  follows  the  general  line  of  our  conversa- 
tion, and  I  recognize  a  remark  of  mine  here  and  there.  I  hope  I 
do  not  wholly  talk  like  that.  The  whole  thing  teaches  me  again 
not  to  talk  freely  with  any  living  fellow  creature,  unless  you  want 
to  see  what  he  thinks  you  said,  or  thinks  that  you  ought  to  have 
said,  in  the  next  newspaper.  Of  course  there  is  nothing  to  be 
done  about  it.  It  will  die  the  quiet  death  which  comes  to  rub- 
bish, and  the  world  will  go  on  very  much  the  same. 

The  report  presents  him  as  a  radical  reformer,  eagerly 
vol.  n 


754  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

awaiting  some  great  religious  revolution  in  the  near  future. 
But  it  should  be  said,  in  justice  to  the  interviewer,  that  it 
was  a  very  difficult  thing  to  give  Phillips  Brooks  either  in 
preaching  or  in  conversation.  He  once  delivered  an  impor- 
tant address,  when  two  stenographers  took  down  his  words, 
but  their  reports  when  written  out  differed  so  greatly  that  it 
was  impossible  to  determine  which  was  correct,  and  the  pro- 
posal to  publish  his  speech  was  in  consequence  abandoned. 
Many  reports  of  interviews  with  Mr.  Brooks  have  found 
their  way  into  print,  which  must  be  read  with  allowance  for 
the  personal  equation  of  those  who  talked  with  him.  He  had 
a  way  of  making  those  with  whom  he  talked  feel  that  he 
agreed  with  them,  for  he  was  quick  to  recognize  the  many 
aspects  of  truth  and  the  many  attitudes  of  men  in  regard  to 
it.  His  sympathy,  his  carelessness  about  qualification  of  his 
remarks,  led  to  misapprehension.  He  was  more  comprehen- 
sive, and  also  more  conservative,  than  reports  of  his  conver- 
sations would  imply. 

Among  the  letters  he  wrote  to  those  who  thanked  him  for 
his  services  in  New  York  is  one  to  Bishop  Potter,  who  had 
also  enclosed  to  him  a  newspaper  cutting  containing  his  por- 
trait :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  6,  1890. 

My  dear  Henry,  —  I  thank  you  truly  for  your  most  kind 
letter,  and  for  what  you  say  about  my  visit  to  New  York.  It 
was  full  of  interest  to  me,  and  did  me  good.  If  it  did  anybody 
else  good,  and  the  Bishop  of  the  diocese  is  satisfied  that  it  did 
nobody  harm,  I  am  devoutly  grateful  and  glad. 

I  was  deeply  impressed  and  touched  by  Dr.  Dix's  courtesy  and 
generous  spirit,  first,  in  inviting  me,  and  then,  in  the  welcome 
which  he  gave  me  when  I  came.  I  am  sorry  that  I  did  not  get 
sight  of  you;  but  they  were  not  very  happy  days  for  social 
pleasures. 

And  Smedley  says  I  looked  like  this!  I  hope  that  you  are 
well  and  happy,  and  I  am 

Ever  faithfully  yours,  P.  B. 

On  May  14  Mr.  Brooks  was  in  Pittsfield,  visiting  the 
Rev.  William  Wilberforce  Newton,  and  preaching  the  ser- 
mon  on   the   occasion  of  the  opening  of  the  new  church. 


^T.  54]   EXTRACTS   FROM   LETTERS         755 

Many  of  the  clergy  of  the  diocese  were  present,  and  also  the 
pastors  of  the  various  churches  in  Pittsfield.  One  of  the 
interesting  events  of  the  morning  service  was  the  baptism  by 
Mr.  Brooks  of  the  infant  daughter  of  the  rector.  A  photo- 
graph was  afterwards  taken  of  Mr.  Brooks  holding  the  child 
in  his  arms,  which  has  caught  a  characteristic  expression 
given  in  no  other  portrait.^  People  from  far  and  near  had 
come  to  Pittsfield  attracted  by  the  occasion  of  the  opening  of 
the  church  and  by  the  reputation  of  Phillips  Brooks.  Among 
others  was  a  Shaker  brother,  from  a  neighboring  settlement, 
who  was  anxious  to  show  him  that  his  tenets  were  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  Shaker  creed.  Failing  to  reach  him,  he 
wrote  a  long  letter,  expounding  the  faith  as  held  by  the 
Shaker  community.  The  letter  was  addressed  to  "Pastor 
Phillips  Brooks,  the  Celebrated  Preacher."     In  a  letter  to 

Rev.  C.  A.  L.  Richards  he  says :  — 

Boston,  May  24,  1890. 
Thank  you  for  sending  me  the  Martineau  article  [a  notice  of 
the  Seat  of  Authority  in  Religion].  How  much  better  and  de- 
vouter  such  books  are  than  all  the  "Lux  Mundi  "  sort  of  thing 
which  is  pulling  and  hauling  at  systems  and  truths  to  make  them 
fit  one  another,  which  they  don't  and  won't. 

It  had  been  Mr.  Brooks's  intention  to  spend  the  summer 
at  North  Andover,  and  he  had  so  informed  his  friends ;  but 
he  seems  to  have  suddenly  changed  his  mind  and  decided 
upon  a  summer  in  Europe.  From  Switzerland  he  writes  to 
Rev.  Reuben  Kidner,  and  speaks  his  mind  on  surpliced 
female  choirs :  — 

Hotel  Clekc,  Mabtiony,  August  17,  1890. 

Dear  Kidkek,  —  Thank  you  for  your  letter,  and  here  I  send 
you  greeting  of  the  kindest  kind. 

Not  a  surpliced  female  choir,  my  dear  friend !  Almost  any- 
thing but  that !  But  let  us  set  ourselves  against  that  most  fan- 
tastic and  frivolous  affectation  which  has  turned  up  in  these  days, 
when  surely  the  Church  is  young-ladyish  enough  without  putting 
young-ladyism  decorated  for  a  spectacle  in  the  seat  of  prominence 
and  honor.  Surely  it  is  amazing  how  much  attention  clothes  en- 
list in  all  the  operations  of  our  great  Communion.      Let  us  keep 

1  The  portrait  is  published  in  The  Child  and  the  Bishop  :  Memorabilia  of  Et. 
Rev.  Phillips  Brooks,  by  an  Old  Friend.     Boston,  1894. 


756  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1890 

our  simplicity,   and  so,   no  vested  female  choirs!     Almost  any- 
thing but  that ! 

I  hope  you  and  Roland  Cotton  Smith  and  the  others  are  work- 
ing out  the  question  of  the  Vincent  Hospital,  and  that  I  shall 
find  it  all  arranged  on  my  return.  It  is  a  pretty  problem  with 
diflBculties  of  its  own,  but  I  am  sure  that  it  is  capable  of  being 
worked  out  into  a  beautiful  and  unique  institution.  Pray  use  all 
your  ingenuity  and  get  it  done. 

In  a  letter  to  Rev.  John  C.  Brooks  he  speaks  of  a  visit  to 

Tennyson :  — 

Lucerne,  August  25,  1890. 

I  had  a  delightful  little  visit  to  Tennyson  at  his  house  at  All- 
worth.  He  has  grown  very  old,  but  is  bright  and  clear-headed, 
and  may  give  us  some  new  verses  yet.  Just  after  I  left  England 
Newman  died,  and  all  the  pulpit  and  press  have  been  full  of  the 
laudation  and  discussion  of  him  ever  since.  He  was  a  remark- 
able man,  by  no  means  of  the  first  class,  for  he  never  got  a  final 
principle  nor  showed  a  truly  brave  mind;  but  there  was  great 
beauty  in  his  character,  and  his  intellect  was  very  subtle. 

This  summer  in  Europe  was  a  happy  one.  Mr.  Brooks 
was  furnished  with  letters  of  introduction  by  his  English 
friends,  which  enabled  him  to  see  what  he  wished  in  places 
not  hitherto  visited.  He  wandered  through  Devonshire  and 
Cornwall,  going  also  to  the  English  Andover  out  of  respect 
for  its  associations.  While  he  was  in  London  he  was  moved 
once  more  to  the  writing  of  sonnets.  It  was  now  many  years 
since  his  poetic  mood  had  tempted  him  in  this  direction. 
One  of  these  sonnets  was  entitled 

HAPPINESS   AND   CONTENT 

Now  will  I  find  the  traitor  where  he  hides, 

The  culprit.  Happiness,  who  did  me  wrong. 
He  came  to  me  with  trumpet  and  with  song, 

Even  as  he  comes  to  Victory  and  to  brides. 

With  rich  delights  he  hung  my  sombre  walls. 

And  taught  gay  dances  to  the  serious  hours, 

His  footsteps  thronged  the  vacant  mead  with  flowers, 

His  breath  with  music  filled  the  silent  halls. 

And  then  he  vanished.      But,  the  day  he  went, 
The  central  jewel  of  my  house  he  stole. 
The  precious  jewel  which  is  called  Content, 


^T.  54]  SONNETS  757 

Without  which  no  man  keeps  a  living  soul. 
The  thief  I  '11  find.      The  theft  he  shall  restore, 
Then  he  may  go.      I  covet  him  no  more. 

Another  sonnet  was  inspired  by  Titian's  Madonna  and 
Child  in  the  National  Gallery :  — 

MADONNA   AND   CHILD 

He  's  hers!     He  's  all  the  world's,  yet  still  he  's  hers! 

The  Christ-child  smiling  upon  Mary's  knee! 
'Mid  the  world's  worship  still  her  heart  avers, 

"The  child  divine  belongeth  unto  me." 
So  kneel,  sweet  Catherine,  and  tell  thy  love ; 

Haste,  John,  thy  flowery  tribute  to  present ; 
A  holier  heaven  is  beaming  from  above 

In  the  young  mother's  face  of  calm  content. 
All  else  are  restless ;  she  alone  is  still ; 

In  pure  devotion  all  desire  doth  cease; 
There  is  no  tide  of  thought  or  wind  of  will 

On  the  broad  ocean  of  her  perfect  peace. 
No  fear  of  pain  to  come  her  spirit  stirs, 

Handmaid  and  mother  she !      And  he  is  hers ! 

Immediately  on  liis  return  to  Boston  he  wrote  to  Professor 
F.  G.  Peabody  that  he  was  ready  to  take  up  his  work  at 
Harvard :  — 

Boston,  September  13,  1890. 

Dear  Dr.  Peabody,  —  I  have  landed  to-day  and  found  your 
note  of  the  29th  of  August.  It  is  good  to  get  tidings  of  the 
chief,  and  to  know  that  he  is  well  and  eager  for  the  fray.  .  .  . 
Yes,  I  will  do  what  you  want  of  me  as  far  as  ever  I  can.  I  will 
come  on  the  evening  of  September  28  and  speak  my  little  piece. 
I  will  take  morning  chapel  from  Monday,  October  13,  to  Satur- 
day, November  1,  inclusive,  and  Sunday  evening,  November  19 
and  26.  Anything  else  that  you  want  me  to  do  and  that  I  can 
do,  I  will  do  gladly,  and  I  am  ever 
Faithfully  yours, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

In  letters  to  his  friends  he  makes  allusion  to  tbe  summer 
wanderings  in  Europe :  — 

I  have  had  a  bright,  pleasant  summer  of  the  kind  which  makes 
no  history,  but  leaves  a  pleasant  taste  in  the  mouth.      And  now 


758  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

even  the  door  bell  has  a  pleasant  sound,  because  it  means  the  old 
familiar  life  and  work. 

It  was  a  quiet  little  thing,  the  journey  was,  but  very  pleasant. 
Two  placid  voyages  with  interesting  people  enough  on  board ; 
three  weeks  in  England  and  three  weeks  in  Switzerland ;  the  old 
places  which  we  knew  so  well,  —  Chamouni  and  Interlaken, 
and  Lucerne,  Paris,  and  London,  all  very  delightful  and  refresh- 
ing. It  went  without  an  accident  or  disappointment,  and  when 
we  stepped  ashore  on  Saturday,  it  seemed  easy  enough  to  be 
thankful. 

The  burden  of  the  familiar  letters  from  233  Clarendon 
Street,  which  went  forth  at  once  to  his  friends,  was  an  ur- 
gent invitation  to  come  and  see  him.  He  should  be  expect- 
ing them  at  every  ring  of  the  door  bell.  "Come  at  once." 
"I  will  put  prohibitory  marks  against  the  calendar."  Even 
the  "precious  fragments"  of  their  time  were  besought  amid 
many  engagements,  some  of  them  "vexatious."  The  Church 
Congress  was  to  meet  in  Philadelphia  in  November,  when  he 
was  to  read  a  paper  entitled  "The  Conditions  of  Church 
Growth  in  Missionary  Lands."  ^  But  the  prospect  of  a  visit 
to  Philadelphia  seemed  to  loom  up  more  largely  to  his  im- 
agination than  the  subject  of  his  paper.  How  he  looked  for- 
ward to  the  visit  is  shown  by  this  letter  to  McVickar :  — 

233  CiARENDON  Street,  Boston,  November  8,  1890. 
Dear  William,  —  You  do  not  know  how  I  am  counting  on 
next  week ;  it  is  gilding  everything  and  making  the  roughest  sur- 
faces run  smoothly.  I  don't  care  what  happens  to-day  or  to- 
morrow, for  to-morrow  night  I  take  the  train  for  New  York.  I 
shall  arrive  there  early  on  Monday  morning,  and  break  my  fast 
with  Arthur.  Then  I  have  one  or  two  errands  to  do  in  the  great 
city,  and  in  the  afternoon  I  shall  get  aboard  a  train  and  come 
to  you.  I  will  not  be  later  than  five  o'clock  in  presenting  myself 
at  your  hospitable  door,  and  then  a  good  long  week  of  brotherly 
intercourse  and  mutual  improvement,  and  a  high  old  time !  Ah, 
it  is  these  oases  that  make  the  desert  of  my  life  worth  travelling, 
but  how  thirsty  one's  lips  do  get  for  them,  sometimes,  and  when 
they  seem  to  be  close  at  hand  how  hard  it  is  to  wait  until  day 
after  to-morrow !     It  was  good  of  you  to  want  to  keep  me  over 

1  Cf .  Essays  and  Addresses,  pp.  198  £f. 


^T.  54]  SERMONS  759 

the  following  Sunday ;  I  will  stay  with  delight.  Early  on  Mon- 
day morning,  the  17th,  I  must  be  off  and  reach  Boston  that 
night,  because  on  Tuesday,  the  18th,  ten  million  women  are  to 
hold  an  assembly  in  Trinity  Church,  and  I  am  to  preside  over 
what  they  are  pleased  to  call  their  deliberations.  But  how  far 
off  that  seems,  and  not  till  it  is  many  days  nearer  than  it  seems 
now  will  I  give  myself  the  least  particle  of  trouble  concerning  it. 
Somehow  I  find  myself  thinking  very  little  about  the  Congress, 
even  about  "the  conditions  of  church  growth  in  foreign  lands," 
and  very  much  about  you  and  the  happy  idle  days !  But  no  doubt 
the  Congress  will  be  interesting  enough  when  one  gets  into  it. 
Only  there  must  be  hours  when  we  forget  it  all  and  simply  revel 
in  idleness  and  friendship. 

Good-by.     Soon  after  you  get  this  you  will  see  me. 

Affectionately  yours,  P.  B. 

Late  in  the  fall  Mr.  Brooks  published  his  fifth  and  last 
volume  of  sermons,  dedicating  it,  "  To  the  memory  of  my 
brother,  George  Brooks,  who  died  in  the  great  war."  Many 
sermons  are  here  which  must  be  counted  among  his  best, 
such,  for  example,  as  "Backgrounds  and  Foregrounds"  and 
"The  Planter  and  the  Kain,"  both  written  in  1889.  An 
important  sermon  is  "The  Seriousness  of  Life,"  from  the 
text,  "Let  not  God  speak  to  us  lest  we  die,"  which  has  been 
mentioned  in  a  previous  chapter,  where  the  impression  it 
made  was  described.  Another  sermon,  written  from  the 
depths  of  his  own  experience,  is  the  "Silence  of  Christ,"  — 
"But  He  answered  her  not  a  word."  "The  Priority  of 
God  "  was  a  sermon  whose  idea  was  long  in  his  mind  before 
he  wrote,  where  the  God-consciousness  is  presented  in  which 
he  lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being.  He  here  contrasts 
the  phrase  "the  religious  world"  as  employed  in  the  news- 
papers with  the  reality,  the  religious  world  as  it  should  be :  — 

What  a  poor,  petty,  vulgar  thing  that  old  phrase,  "the  reli- 
gious world, "  has  often  been  made  to  mean,  —  a  little  section  of 
humanity  claiming  monopoly  of  divine  influences,  and  making  the 
whole  thought  of  man's  intercourse  with  God  cheap  and  irreverent 
by  vicious  quarrels  and  mercenary  selfishness ;  the  world  of  eccle- 
siastical machinery  and  conventions  and  arrangements.  But  look ! 
See  what  the  religious  world  really  is  in  its  idea,  and  shall  be 
when  it  shall  finally  be  realized  -     A  world  everywhere  aware  of 


76o  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1890 

and  rejoicing  in  the  priority  of  God,  feeling  all  power  flow  out 
from  Him,  and  sending  all  action  back  to  report  itself  to  Him 
for  judgment,  —  a  world  where  goodness  means  obedience  to  God, 
and  sin  means  disloyalty  to  God,  and  progress  means  growth  in 
the  power  to  utter  God,  and  knowledge  means  the  understanding 
of  God's  thought,  and  happiness  means  the  peace  of  God's  ap- 
proval.     That  is  the  religious  world. 

The  sermon  is  also  here  which  Principal  TuUoch  pro- 
nounced the  finest  he  had  ever  heard,  "The  Opening  of 
the  Eyes,"  where  Christ  seems  to  stand  forth  in  visible  pre- 
sence so  vivid  is  the  insight  into  His  personality.  But  Mr. 
Brooks  gave  the  precedence  in  his  own  judgment  to  the  ser- 
mon "The  Light  of  the  World,"  whence  the  volume  takes  its 
title.  There  is  here  also  what  seems  like  prophetic  intima- 
tion, in  the  sermon  which  closes  the  book,  "The  Certain 
End."  These  are  some  of  the  titles;  one  would  like  to  give 
them  all,  for  every  sermon  has  its  peculiar  beauty  and  sig- 
nificance. And  yet  the  volume  fails  to  represent  him  in  the 
fulness  of  his  power,  in  these  last  years,  when  in  extempora- 
neous utterances,  whose  inspiration  was  in  the  passing  mo- 
ment, he  seemed  to  transcend  himself  and  to  produce  effects 
ever  to  be  remembered,  but  impossible  to  describe. 

To  the  Rev.  C.  A.  L.  Richards,  who  had  called  attention 
to  an  obscure  sentence  in  the  sermon  "The  Light  of  the 
"World,"  he  wrote:  — 

Boston,  December  18,  1890. 

Thank  you  for  what  you  kindly  say  about  the  sermons.  I  have 
looked  at  the  particularly  bad  slough  on  p.  14,  and  I  am  ashamed 
to  say  that  it  is  just  as  I  wrote  it,  and  just  as  I  read  it  in  the 
proof.  There  is  no  misprint,  no  stupid  compositor  to  hide  be- 
hind. I  did  it.  It  is  very  bad.  All  I  can  think  is  that,  in 
delivery,  it  was  made  a  bit  less  meaningless  than  it  appears  in 
print;  and  that  when  I  read  it  in  the  proof  the  sound  of  its  deliv- 
ery was  still  in  my  ears.  Sermons  ought  not  to  be  printed,  any- 
how. What  the  sentence  needs  is  a  plentiful  interspersing  of  the 
words  "  He  is  "  in  various  places,  and  then  I  think  it  would  mean 
something,  whether  it  meant  right  or  wrong.  I  thank  you  for 
telling  me  of  it. 

On  December  4  he  went  to  Philadelphia  to  preach  the 


^T.  54]  CHURCH  OF  THE  ADVENT    761 

sermon  at  the  Church  of  the  Advent,  where  he  began  his 
ministry  over  thirty  years  before.  The  occasion  was  the 
fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  establishment  of  the  church.  His 
text,  "I  will  not  let  thee  go  except  thou  bless  me,"  had  long 
been  in  his  mind,  as  suggestive  of  the  mystery  of  the  spirit- 
ual life,  —  the  mystery  of  the  withholding  of  spiritual  gifts, 
when  God  is  willing  to  give  and  man  is  desirous  to  receive, 
and  yet  the  blessing  does  not  come.  "The  meaning  of  it 
must  be  that  there  is  some  inability  to  take  the  gift."  From 
the  subject  of  his  sermon  he  turned  to  the  occasion,  recalling 
to  the  congregation  how  he  had  kept  the  twentieth  anniver- 
sary with  them  in  1860.  He  dwelt  lovingly  on  the  "little 
church,"  the  "simple  service,"  the  "voluntary  choir,"  the 
"great  Sunday-school,"  the  "people's  love  for  the  church," 
all  still  fresh  in  his  memory.  He  enumerated  the  names  of 
those  with  whom  he  had  been  associated.  He  touched  on 
the  war  and  its  experiences.  Then  he  reviewed  the  years 
that  had  passed  since  he  left  them,  the  new  congregation, 
the  more  elaborate  service,  the  freer  thought,  the  new  sense 
of  God,  personal  liberty,  greater  work,  and  the  truer  mission- 
ary spirit.  "  And  so,  let  the  future  come.  It  is  better  than 
the  past,  by  the  past." 

So  the  year  1890  came  to  an  end.  He  kept  his  twenty- 
first  anniversary  as  rector  of  Trinity  Church,  which  was  to 
be  also  his  last.  His  fifty-fifth  birthday  was  commemorated 
as  usual  by  some  of  his  more  intimate  friends  who  met  him 
at  luncheon.  He  came  to  Christmas  with  its  festivities,  the 
last  he  should  celebrate  in  the  dear,  familiar  way,  for  a 
change  was  impending  in  his  life,  and  "new  experiences,"  of 
which  he  often  spoke,  were  to  open  before  him. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

1859-1893 

CHARACTERISTICS.       REMINISCENCES.       ANECDOTES.      PARISH 
MINISTRY.      ESTIMATES 

In  the  following  chapter,  reminiscences  of  Phillips  Brooks 
are  brought  together  from  many  sources,  including  reports  of 
conversations  and  extracts  from  private  letters.  It  has  not 
been  thought  necessary  in  every  case  to  give  the  names  of  the 
contributors,  but  it  may  be  said  of  them  all  that  they  stood 
close  to  Phillips  Brooks,  and  of  some  that  they  had  been 
admitted  to  his  more  intimate  friendship. 

Among  his  personal  characteristics,  as  Bishop  McVickar 
has  remarked,  was  the  power  of  making  his  residence  home- 
like. This  had  been  true  of  his  rooms  in  the  Hotel  Kempton, 
and  of  the  house  he  rented  for  a  few  years,  175  Marlborough 
Street.  It  appeared  more  clearly  in  the  house  on  Clarendon 
Street,  built  as  the  rectory  of  Trinity  Church,  but  designed 
by  Richardson  primarily  to  suit  the  purposes  of  Mr.  Brooks. 
Its  personal  adaptedness  appeared  at  once  on  entering  it ;  it 
had  no  drawing-room,  but  in  its  place  on  the  first  floor  was 
the  large  study.  He  did  not  throw  open  his  house  for  recep- 
tions of  a  general  character,  whether  social  or  parochial. 
But  the  study  was  the  home  of  the  Clericus  Club,  so  ample  in 
its  accommodation  that  the  twenty-five  or  thirty  members 
who  assembled  there  never  gave  it  the  look  of  being  crowded. 
Here  also  once  a  year  he  invited  the  members  of  the  Trinity 
Club.  It  was  a  most  attractive  and  beautiful  room,  luxurious 
even  in  its  appointments,  reflecting  everywhere  his  culture 
and  refinement.  The  massive  fireplace  built  of  large  blocks 
of  unhewn  stone  was  the  central  feature,  at  once  arresting  the 
attention  as  characteristic  and  appropriate.     The  walls  were 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  763 

lined  with  books  on  all  sides  of  the  room,  halfway  to  the  ceil- 
ing, and  above  the  bookcases  every  available  space  was  de- 
voted to  pictures.  It  was  the  same  in  the  small  reception 
room  next  the  study,  where  the  books  overflowed  and  where 
pictures  abounded.  Mr.  Brooks  was  particularly  fond  of  por- 
traits :  whether  of  his  friends  or  of  the  great  men  whom  he 
admired.  Prominent  in  his  study  was  the  portrait  of  Maurice. 
On  one  of  his  visits  to  London  he  had  bought  the  copies  re- 
maining of  this  engraved  portrait  of  Maurice,  presenting  them 
to  his  friends  when  he  returned.  There  were  also  marble 
busts  of  Coleridge  and  Kingsley,  replicas  of  those  in  West- 
minster Abbey,  and  a  smaller  bust  of  Stanley.  Of  one  of  the 
ornaments  in  his  study  he  was  specially  proud,  —  the  image 
of  Pico  of  Mirandola  carved  in  wood.  From  India  he  had 
brought  the  image  of  Buddha.  There  was  a  cast  of  Crom- 
well's face  and  another  of  Lincoln's.  Many  interesting  and 
beautiful  objects  the  room  contained,  wherever  the  eye  might 
turn.  And  all,  books  and  pictures,  were  closely  associated 
with  the  deeper  experiences  of  his  life ;  so  that  the  room 
became  the  reflex  of  the  man. 

There  was  his  working  table,  carefully  constructed  for  him- 
self, large  and  inconveniently  high  for  any  one  else ;  the  writ- 
ing table  of  Dean  Stanley,  sent  to  Mr.  Brooks  after  Stanley's 
death,  on  which,  according  to  tradition,  had  been  written  the 
"  History  of  the  Jewish  Church."  On  another  table,  movable 
at  pleasure,  often  drawn  up  in  front  of  the  fireplace,  lay  the 
latest  books  and  magazines.  This  was  to  many  the  most 
attractive  feature  of  the  room.  It  was  a  source  of  wonder 
how  he  seemed  to  secure  in  advance  whatever  was  valuable  in 
recent  literature,  and  to  have  read  it  before  others  were  aware 
of  its  appearance.  The  study  never  gave  the  appearance  of  a 
working  room,  or  depressed  one  with  a  sense  of  the  strenuous- 
ness  of  its  owner,  —  but  as  rather  devoted  to  leisure  and  social 
converse.  Much  of  his  work  was  done  in  a  large  alcove  on 
the  second  story,  above  the  front  door,  where  the  walls  were 
lined  with  books  of  reference.  His  bedroom  was  over  the 
study,  corresponding  to  it  in  size,  and  opposite  was  the  guest 
room,  often  occupied.  He  slept  on  his  mother's  bed,  which 
had  been  enlarged  to  suit  his  convenience. 


764  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

Those  who  enjoyed  his  hospitality  know  how  rich  and 
abounding  it  was,  what  power  of  welcome  he  could  offer.  His 
letters  already  given  show  how  he  was  constantly  beseeching 
his  friends  for  visits,  or  the  short  notes  he  was  constantly 
writing :  "  Come,  won't  you  ?  The  years  are  not  so  many 
as  they  were."  He  had  the  capacity  for  mental  concentra- 
tion, so  that  the  presence  of  others  or  the  talk  going  on 
around  him,  even  an  interruption  from  a  caller,  was  no  dis- 
turbance or  injury  to  his  work.  He  rather  looked  down  on 
ordinary  mortals  who  were  obliged  to  shut  themselves  up  to 
their  task.  It  was  very  impressive,  impressive  beyond  mea- 
sure, to  be  with  him  on  Sunday  and  watch  him  as  he  pre- 
pared himself  to  preach  at  the  afternoon  service.  There  was 
no  appearance  of  nervous  anxiety,  no  exigency  in  the  manner, 
but  a  calmness  and  serenity  that  went  deeper  than  words  can 
describe,  his  face  aglow  with  spiritual  beauty.  He  would 
answer  questions  with  a  gentle  refinement  and  sweetness  of 
tone,  but  beneath  the  appearance  there  was  the  intense  con- 
centration of  the  whole  man  upon  some  theme  he  was  in- 
wardly revolving,  to  whose  power  he  seemed  to  be  submitting 
himself.  He  held  a  scrap  of  paper  which  he  would  glance  at 
quickly  for  a  moment,  —  the  only  apparent  aid  in  his  pre- 
paration. 

I  recall  an  incident  [says  a  friend  of  Phillips  Brooks]  which 
happened  on  some  occasion  when  he  had  invited  a  number  of 
young  men  to  his  house.  Among  them  was  a  theological  student, 
whom  I  observed  to  be  moving  about  in  the  study  in  a  wild,  dis- 
tracted manner,  scanning  the  books,  even  getting  down  on  his 
hands  and  knees  in  order  to  read  the  titles  in  the  lower  book- 
shelves. As  Mr.  Brooks  was  not  in  the  room  at  the  time,  I  took 
the  liberty  of  asking  him  if  there  was  anything  he  was  searching 
for.  He  replied,  "I  am  trying  to  find  out  where  he  gets  it  from." 
When  I  asked  of  him  if  he  had  found  the  source,  he  replied,  tap- 
ping his  forehead,   "He  gets  it  here." 

Among  the  relics  in  the  study  was  the  sermon  of  Dean 
Stanley  preached  at  Trinity  Church,  whose  chirography  it 
was  impossible  to  decipher ;  the  last  sermon  preached  by  Dr. 
Vinton ;  a  sermon  by  Dr.  Sears,  of  Weston,  and  another  by 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  765 

Dean  Farrar.  When  he  was  visiting  Tennyson,  he  asked  for 
the  clay  pipe  just  finished,  and  about  to  be  thrown  into  the 
fireplace.  Tennyson  had  hesitated  a  moment,  and  saying, 
"  Do  you  want  it,  mon  ?  "  had  handed  it  to  him.  He  called 
upon  the  widow  of  Rev.  F.  D.  Maurice  in  London,  and  re- 
ceived from  her  a  manuscript  of  one  of  Maurice's  sermons. 
So  highly  did  he  value  the  gift  that  he  had  it  bound  up  with 
"  Maurice's  Life  and  Letters,"  in  the  richest  of  red  morocco. 
Red  was  his  favorite  color.  In  ordering  prayer  books  and 
hymnals  for  Trinity  Church,  he  specified  that  they  must  be 
bound  in  red.  He  liked  to  collect  autographs,  pasting  the 
autograph  letters  of  authors  in  their  books. 

He  had  the  gift  of  home-making,  and  he  had  also  the  gift 
of  housekeeping.  His  house  was  in  scrupulous  order.  He 
was  annoyed  by  the  signs  of  shiftlessness,  when  there  was  no 
necessity  for  it,  on  account  of  straitened  income.  He  ordered 
the  meals  himself  every  morning,  regulating  in  a  few  words 
the  household  affairs  for  the  day. 

He  was  careful  in  little  things,  in  his  dress  observing  gipat 
neatness,  not  growing  careless  with  the  years,  but  avoiding,  on 
principle,  every  badge  of  clerical  dress.  A  Scotch  clergyman, 
who  wrote  under  the  initials  A.  K.  H.  B.,  was  surprised  when  he 
met  him  travelling  abroad  in  the  garb  of  what  seemed  like  a  well- 
to-do  gamekeeper. 

Great  conscientiousness  marked  his  conduct,  not  only  in  dealing 
with  others,  but  with  himself.  When  he  returned  to  his  house, 
after  an  absence  or  journey,  to  find  many  invitations  awaiting  him, 
he  followed  the  rule  to  accept  them  in  the  order  in  which  he  opened 
the  letters,  not  allowing  himself  to  choose  which  he  would  prefer. 
It  was  a  principle  with  him  never  to  decline  an  invitation  to 
preach  unless  prevented  by  some  previous  engagement. 

He  was  particular  in  the  matter  of  correspondence,  in  the  later 
years  always  answering  letters  so  promptly  that  one  hesitated  to 
write  to  him  for  fear  of  increasing  his  burden.  It  was  of  no 
avail  to  tell  him  that  a  letter  required  no  answer.  He  wrote  his 
letters  with  his  own  hand,  and  in  his  most  beautiful  handwriting, 
seeming  to  take  pride  in  their  appearance.  He  was  severe  in 
his  strictures  upon  illegible  or  even  ungraceful  handwriting,  think- 
ing there  was  no  necessity  for  it.  He  became  very  skilful  in 
turning  out  letters.     In  the  case  of  his  call  to  Harvard  he  wrote 


766  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

two  hundred.  But  he  repeated  himself  and  did  not  seek  to  vary 
his  responses.  He  had  a  large  number  of  formulas  for  different 
occasions,  which  made  it  easy  for  him  to  meet  them,  and  this  ex- 
plains his  boast  that  he  could  write  a  letter  in  three  minutes. 
But  this  was  not  the  case  with  letters  of  friendship. 

He  liked  to  have  things  beautiful  around  him ;  he  enjoyed  a 
woman's  beautiful  dress  as  he  did  a  poem.  He  hesitated  about 
buying  for  his  study  some  convenient  arrangement  for  holding 
books,  on  the  ground  that  as  a  piece  of  furniture  it  was  ugly. 
His  admiration  for  precious  stones  was  noticeable,  as  shown  in  his 
sermons,  where  the  simile  of  the  jewel  often  occurs,  and  becomes 
the  occasion  of  beautiful  description.  The  ground  of  his  admira- 
tion was  the  intrinsic  beauty  of  the  precious  stone,  which  no  com- 
monness would  reduce. 

I  was  impressed  with  the  circumstance  [says  one  who  often 
stayed  at  his  house  overnight]  that  from  the  earliest  moment 
when  I  heard  him  stirring  in  the  morning,  he  was  singing  to  him- 
self, not  exactly  a  tune,  but  the  effort  at  one;  he  continued  it 
during  his  bath,  and  until  the  breakfast  hour. 

His  hours  were  regular  in  the  later  years ;  he  rose  at  seven,  and 
breakfasted  at  eight ;  then  followed  a  short  interval  of  work  be- 
fore the  crowd  of  callers  came.  He  would  have  no  office  hours, 
nor  would  he  refuse  to  see  any  one  who  called.  Lunch  was  at  one. 
In  later  years  he  might  fall  asleep  afterwards  for  a  moment  over 
his  cigar,  but  quickly  recovered.  After  lunch  came  calls  on  the 
sick,  or  meetings  of  various  kinds.  He  made  few  parochial  calls. 
Six  was  the  dinner  hour.  He  sometimes  found  it  hard  to  go  out 
in  the  evening.  Often  there  were  callers.  At  ten  o'clock  the 
house  was  shut,  and  at  eleven  he  was  in  bed. 

He  worked  hard  in  the  mornings  and  seemed  to  be  wonderfully 
free  from  moods  or  depression.  He  could  drop  his  work  and 
take  it  up  again,  without  suffering  from  any  interruption.  He  la- 
bored most  diligently  on  his  sermons,  and  on  every  address  he 
was  to  make. 

In  the  evenings,  when  he  did  not  go  out,  and  there  were  no 
callers,  he  was  most  delightful.  He  used  me  as  a  sort  of  con- 
science, taking  the  opportunity  of  any  casual  remarks  I  made  to 
deliver  his  thoughts  at  some  length.  He  would  lecture  me  on  my 
delinquencies;  he  was  not  in  the  habit  of  paying  compliments  to 
any  one.  It  was  easy  to  rouse  him  to  tremendous  explosions  of 
wrath.  Once  as  he  sat  taking  a  survey  of  the  things  in  his  study, 
he  said  they  did  n't  amount  to  much,  or  were  of  no  great  value, 
but  he  should  miss  them  if  they  were  not  there. 

The  portrait  which  he  liked  most  was  the  drawing  of  the  head 


JET.  23-57]        CHARACTERISTICS  767 

of  Christ,  by  Leonardo.  William  Blake's  pictures  he  admired. 
He  greatly  liked  Kipling,  especially  the  India  stories.  Talking 
once  about  Bryce's  "American  Commonwealth, "  he  admitted  that 
the  republican  form  of  government  could  not  produce  the  highest 
result,  but  that  it  had,  on  the  other  hand,  great  advantages.  He 
had  no  exalted  opinion  of  the  Mugwump  movement  in  politics, 
and  refused  to  follow  it.  The  best  Englishmen,  he  said,  were 
better  than  the  best  in  any  other  country,  and  the  rest  were  poorer 
than  the  poorest  elsewhere.  He  was  very  loyal  to  his  friends. 
One  of  them  said  to  him  once,  "Phillips,  if  you  like  a  man  you 
swallow  him  whole." 

He  advised  me  never  to  go  to  the  theatre.  In  speaking  of  the 
histrionic  art,  he  said  that  it  demanded  for  success  weakness 
rather  than  strength  of  character.  The  occasion  which  led  him 
to  speak  on  the  subject  was  an  effort  he  was  making  to  prevent  a 
young  girl  from  going  on  the  stage. 

He  preached  a  sermon  at  Trinity  Church  one  Sunday,  in  which 
he  guardedly  intimated  that  prohibition  might  not  be  the  best 
way  of  dealing  with  intemperance.  Then  there  came  at  once  sev- 
eral letters  on  the  subject,  from  good  men  who  complained  of  his 
attitude.  In  one  of  the  letters  the  writer  said,  "You  have  sold 
yourself  to  a  rich  congregation.  Your  Christianity  is  spurious." 
"They  won't  allow  me,"  he  said,  "the  courtesies  of  ordinary 
politeness.  It  is  a  matter  of  indifference  to  Trinity  Church  which 
attitude  I  took." 

He  was  very  generous  in  his  Christmas  presents,  spending  much 
time  and  thought  over  what  he  was  to  give,  and  careful  that  no 
one  should  be  omitted  whom  he  wished  to  remember. 

The  career  of  Phillips  Brooks  always  looked  to  those  about 
him  as  one  line  of  unbroken  prosperity.  There  had  been  no 
check  to  his  success,  no  halt  in  his  triumphs.  "  Perennial 
sunniness,"  says  one  who  crossed  the  ocean  with  him,  was  his 
characteristic.  He  was  accustomed  to  say  of  himself  that  his 
life  had  been  one  of  the  happiest.  In  the  later  years,  and 
after  the  death  of  his  mother,  the  sense  of  loneliness  in- 
creased. He  began  to  realize  how  the  course  of  his  life  con- 
demned him  to  increasing  loneliness  for  the  remainder  of  his 
days.  He  yearned  and  hungered  for  human  affection.  This 
was  the  royal  avenue  to  his  soul  for  those  who  knew  how  to 
take  it.  To  Bishop  McVickar  he  admitted  that  it  had  been 
the  mistake  of  his  life  not  to  have  married.     Sometimes,  in 


768  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

the  happy  homes  of  his  younger  friends,  he  seemed  to  resent 
their  happiness,  as  though  they  taunted  him  in  his  greatness 
with  the  inability  he  had  shown  for  human  love.  More  than 
once  he  is  known  to  have  said,  "  The  trouble  with  you  mar- 
ried men  is  that  you  think  no  one  has  been  in  love  but  your- 
selves ;  I  know  what  love  is ;  I  have  been  in  love  myself." 
He  wanted  to  enter  every  great  human  experience.  Life 
grew  sad  in  the  retrospect  when  he  thought  that  he  had  been 
shut  out  from  the  greatest  of  all  experiences,  —  marriage  and 
wife  and  children.  But  he  forced  himself  to  look  upon  the 
brighter  side  of  things.  Out  of  his  loneliness  there  came  con- 
solation to  himself  and  others.  Thus  in  one  of  his  sermons 
he  says : — 

Sometimes  life  grows  so  lonely.  The  strongest  men  crave  a 
relationship  to  things  more  deep  than  ordinary  intercourse  in- 
volves. They  want  something  profounder  to  rest  upon,  —  some- 
thing which  they  can  reverence  as  well  as  love ;  and  then  comes 
God. 

Call  ye  life  lonely  ?     Oh,  the  myriad  sounds 
Which  haunt  it,  proving  how  its  outer  bounds 
Join  with  eternity,  where  God  abounds ! 

Then  the  sense  of  something  which  they  cannot  know,  of  some 
one  greater,  infinitely  greater  than  themselves,  surrounds  their  life, 
and  there  is  strength  and  peace,  as  when  the  ocean  takes  the  ship 
in  its  embrace,  as  when  the  rich,  warm  atmosphere  enfolds  the 
earth. 

A  statement  regarding  the  name  of  Phillips  Brooks,  that 
he  was  called  after  his  uncle  John  Phillips,  may  be  corrected 
on  his  father's  authority,  wh*^  writes  in  his  journal :  "  Phil- 
lips was  born  in  High  Street,  December  13, 1835,  —  a  stormy, 
cold,  icy  night.  His  name  was  taken  from  the  surname  of 
his  mother's  family." 

His  love  of  clear  and  simple  humor  was  marked  ^.nd  emphatic, 
and  he  had  a  rippling  way  of  describing  ludicrous  scenes  which 
was  like  nothing  so  much  as  a  bubbling,  gurgling  brook,  laughing 
its  way  over  rock  and  stone  and  moss.^ 

When  I  think  of  Phillips  Brooks,  I  recall  the  remark  of  Dr. 
Johnson,  that  "the  size  of  a  man's  understanding  may  be  justly 
1  Cf.  The  Child  and  the  Bishop,  by  Rev.  W.  W.  Newton. 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  769 

measured  by  his  mirth. "  Mr.  Brooks  seemed  to  me  to  have  what 
has  been  called  "the  deep  wisdom  of  fine  fooling;"  he  had 
attained  what  so  few  possess,  —  the  dignity  of  joyousness. 

These  are  some  of  the  stories  told  by  those  who  knew  him 
personally :  — 

Once,  at  a  marriage  service  at  Trinity  Church,  the  gentleman 
who  was  to  give  away  the  bride  became  confused,  and  asked  what 
he  should  do,      "Anything  you  please;  nobody  will  care." 

He  had  his  version  of  the  "Jonah  "  narrative,  but  whether  it  is 
original  I  do  not  know.  When  some  one  was  wondering  at  the 
possibility  of  Jonah  being  swallowed  by  the  whale,  he  said,  "There 
was  no  difficulty.      Jonah  was  one  of  the  Minor  Prophets." 

A  poor  woman,  whose  business  was  to  scrub  the  floors  of  Trin- 
ity Church,  came  to  him  about  the  marriage  of  her  daughter,  ask- 
ing the  use  of  the  chapel.  "Why  not  take  the  church?  "  "But 
that  is  not  for  the  likes  of  me."  "Oh  yes,  it  is,  for  the  likes 
of  you,  and  the  likes  of  me,  and  the  likes  of  every  one.  The  rich 
people,  when  they  get  married,  want  to  fling  their  money  about ; 
but  that  is  not  necessary  in  order  to  be  married  at  Trinity  Church." 
And  so  the  marriage  took  place  in  Trinity  Church,  and  the  gfeat 
organ  was  played  as  if  it  were  the  wedding  of  a  daughter  of  the 
rich. 

His  reticence  about  his  methods  of  work  is  shown  by  this  anec- 
dote. A  clerical  friend  entering  his  study  took  up  from  the  table 
the  plan  of  a  sermon  just  finished.  "Oh,  is  this  the  way  you  do 
it?  "  "Put  that  paper  down,"  said  Mr.  Brooks  sternly.  "No, 
I've  got  the  chance  and  I'm  going  to  know  how  it's  done." 
"Pwi  that  doivn  or  leave  the  room." 

To  a  young  man  in  his  congregation  who,  out  of  awkwardness, 
had  got  into  the  habit  of  saying  to  him,  "Mr.  Brooks,  that  was 
a  fine  sermon  you  gave  us  this  morning, "  he  replied,  after  endur- 
ing it  as  long  as  he  could,  "Young  man,  if  you  say  that  again  to 
me,  I  '11  slap  your  face." 

"Why  is  it,"  said  a  friend  to  him,  "that  some  of  these  men 
who  call  themselves  atheists  seem  to  lead  such  moral  lives  ?  " 
"They  have  to;  they  have  no  God  to  forgive  them  if  they  don't." 

His  power  of  repartee  was  great,  but  it  would  be  difficult 
to  illustrate.  Here,  however,  is  an  instance  which  may  bear 
relating :  — 

A  clergyman  who  was  going  abroad  to  study  said  in  jest  that 
when  he  came  back  he  might  bring  a  new  religion  with  him.     A 


770  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1859-93 

person  who  was  present  said,  "You  may  have  some  difficulty  in 
getting  it  through  the  custom  house."  "No,"  said  Mr.  Brooks, 
"we  may  take  it  for  granted  that  a  new  religion  will  have  no 
duties  attached." 

He  once  contrasted  the  ancient  church  with  the  modern  to  the 
effect  that  then  they  tried  to  save  their  young  men  from  heing 
thrown  to  the  lions ;  now  we  are  glad  if  we  can  save  them  from 
going  to  the  dogs. 

One  element  of  his  humor  consisted  in  assuming  that  he 
was  identified  with  the  world  and  carried  it  with  him,  so  that 
all  the  world  must  be  aware  of  his  environment,  and  be 
thinking  of  the  things  which  he  was  thinking  about.  From 
this  point  of  view,  it  was  possible  to  express  surprise  and  to 
call  things  "  queer "  which  differed  from  what  he  was  ac- 
customed to.  Thus  on  revisiting  a  place  in  Europe,  where 
he  had  once  passed  some  delightful  days  with  friends,  he 
writes :  "  It  seemed  so  strange  to  find  the  people  doing  the 
same  things,  the  same  guides  and  porters  and  landlords  that 
we  left.  I  kind  of  felt  they  must  have  stopped  it  all  when 
we  came  away." 

The  use  of  the  word  "queer"  is  common  in  his  "Letters  of 
Travel."  He  is  astonished,  on  reaching  Berlin,  that  he  hears 
nothing  about  the  squabbles  of  a  certain  church  at  home.  When 
he  was  asked  what  the  Queen  of  England  said  to  him  in  the  in- 
terview she  granted,  he  replied  that  her  first  remark  was,  "How 
is  Toody?  "  [his  little  niece].  "Not  that  she  said  it  in  so  many 
words,  but  that  was  what  was  in  her  mind."  He  represents  the 
letter-carrier  approaching  him  when  he  was  abroad  and  shouting 
so  that  all  could  hear,  awakening  the  interest  of  everybody  on  the 
street,  "A  letter  from  Tood!  A  letter  from  Tood!  "  The  hu- 
mor of  his  letters  to  children  is  something  rare  and  exquisite. 
It  consisted  in  putting  himself  in  their  place  and  talking  as  if  he 
were  one  of  them,  using  their  language,  keeping  within  the  circle 
of  their  ideas. ^ 

Many  of  his  references  to  smoking  should  be  humorously  con- 
strued. He  was  not  a  great  smoker,  although  this  impression 
might  be  gained  from  his  allusions  to  the  subject.  The  cigar  was 
a  symbol  of  social  enjoyment;  he  did  not  smoke  when  he  was 
alone. 

1  Cf .  The  Century,  August,  ISQSj'for  an  article  entitled  "  Phillips  Brooks  and 
his  Letters  to  Children." 


^T.  23-57]      CHARACTERISTICS  771 

Phillips  Brooks  always  retained  a  vivid  impression  of  the  call 
he  made  on  Dr.  Vinton,  just  after  his  failure  in  the  Boston 
Latin  School,  and  when  in  doubt  as  to  what  should  be  his  work 
in  life.  He  and  Dr.  Vinton  would  occasionally  revert  to  the 
subject  in  later  years,  trying  to  straighten  out  each  other's  recol- 
lections. Dr.  Vinton  would  insist  that  Brooks  while  in  college 
had  avoided  him,  in  order  to  prevent  any  conversation  on  the  sub- 
ject of  personal  religion.  When,  therefore,  Dr.  Vinton  got  the 
chance  he  improved  it  to  the  utmost.  Brooks  had  resented  at  the 
time  this  attempt  to  introduce  religion  as  if  it  were  an  affront, 
and,  grateful  as  he  was  for  what  Dr.  Vinton  had  done  for  him, 
could  never  recall  the  circumstance  without  the  memory  of  that 
sense  of  injury  done  to  his  personality.  He  would  say  to  Dr. 
Vinton  whenever  the  subject  came  up,  "All  the  same,  it  was 
mean  in  you  to  get  a  fellow  in  a  corner  and  throw  his  soul  at 
him."  Dr.  Vinton  was  fond  of  recalling  that  when  he  tried  to 
get  from  Brooks  some  idea  of  what  he  would  like  to  do  in  life. 
Brooks  had  replied,  "I  cannot  express  myself  very  clearly  about 
it,  but  I  feel  as  if  I  should  like  to  talk." 

Dr.  Vinton  was  not  afraid  of  his  young  prot^g^,  and  did  not 
hesitate,  if  occasion  demanded,  to  rebuke  him.  Once,  when 
Brooks  had  been  talking  with  a  lady  at  an  evening  party  in  Dr. 
Vinton's  house,  he  turned  his  chair  around  and  sat  with  his  back 
to  her.  Dr.  Vinton,  seeing  the  situation,  came  up  to  him. 
"Brooks,  get  up  a  moment."  Then,  turning  the  chair  around, 
"Now,  sit  down  again.      That  is  the  proper  position." 

Brooks  was  very  much  at  home  at  Dr.  Vinton's  house.  Some- 
times he  displayed  strange  moods.  He  had  remained  talking 
with  the  doctor  in  his  study  one  night  till  it  got  to  be  twelve 
o'clock,  when  he  displayed  an  unaccountable  aversion  to  going 
back  to  his  house.  Dr.  Vinton  at  once  proposed  that  he  should 
spend  the  night,  and  a  room  was  made  ready  for  him.  But  after 
waiting  for  some  two  hours  longer,  he  rose,  and  saying  he  would  n't 
make  a  fool  of  himself  he  went  home. 

Dr.  Vinton  did  not  understand  Brooks's  rapidity  of  utterance, 
and  once  asked  him  to  preach  slowly,  that  he  might  form  some 
judgment  of  the  effect.  His  advice,  after  hearing  this  attempt, 
was,  "You  had  better  go  it  your  own  gait,  two-forty,  or  what- 
ever it  may  be." 

I  took  Mr.  Gardner,  the  head  master  of  the  Latin  School, 
to  hear  Mr.  Brooks  preach  at  Trinity  Church.  He  made  no 
comment  on  the  sermon,  but  called  attention  to  the  ungrammati- 
cal  construction  of  a  sentence. 

While  Mr.  Brooks  was  in  Philadelphia,  at  the  Church  of  the 


772  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

Holy  Trinity,  a  study  of  his  character  was  made  from  his  hand. 
These  were  some  of  the  inferences :  "  The  line  of  heart  shows 
a  nature  more  susceptible  through  the  imagination  than  through 
sentiment.  .  .  .  The  line  of  life  is  steady  and  unbroken,  but 
does  not  indicate  longevity.  .  .  .  The  balance  between  the  mate- 
rial and  the  spiritual  is  remarkably  even.  The  man  is  devotional 
from  principle  rather  than  from  sentiment;  but  is  of  a  pure  and 
truthful  nature,  honest  and  generous,  and  kindly  in  all  his  in- 
stincts," 

As  illustrating  his  preference  for  city  over  coimtry  life,  I  am 
particularly  fond  of  this :  "  The  Bible  shows  how  the  world  pro- 
gresses.     It  begins  with  a  garden,  but  ends  with  a  holy  city." 

To  a  lady  on  shipboard  who  was  nervous  in  a  storm,  he  said 
there  was  no  better  way  of  dying  than  to  go  down  in  a  shipwreck. 

Commenting  upon  a  meeting  of  the  Church  Congress,  from 
which  he  had  just  returned,  he  said  the  speeches  were  like  towing 
ideas  out  to  sea  and  then  escaping  by  small  boats  in  the  fog. 

Talking  with  an  American  gentleman  one  clear  evening  in 
Japan,  about  some  late  discoveries  in  astronomy  and  the  enor- 
mous number  of  the  stars,  the  gentleman,  who  was  engaged  in  a 
study  of  Buddhism,  said,  "If  we  have  a  life  to  live  in  each  one 
of  the  three  hundred  and  fifty  millions  we  have  quite  a  row  to 
hoe."  "Ah,  well,"  said  Mr.  Brooks,  "if  they  are  as  beautiful 
as  this  I  am  willing." 

One  of  his  closest  and  oldest  friends,  when  explaining  to  some 
one  how  he  should  ever  have  been  admitted  to  his  friendship, 
said,  "He  allowed  us  to  crawl  up  on  him  a  little  way,  where  we 
might  better  look  up  to  see  him." 

You  felt  you  did  not  get  into  the  inner  citadel  of  his  soul  in 
any  conversation,  said  one  who  knew  him  better  than  most. 
But  you  got  there  when  you  made  no  effort,  and  were  there  some- 
times when  you  did  not  realize  it. 

It  was  because  he  felt  it  to  be  great  to  live,  and  had  such  an 
abounding  sense  of  life,  that  he  walked  the  earth  like  a  king  and 
seemed  to  fill  every  day  with  the  grandeur  and  fulness  of  eter- 
nity.     In  the  words  of  Shelley :  — 

All  familiar  things  he  touched, 

All  common  words  he  spoke,  became 

Like  forms  and  sounds  of  a  diviner  world. 

The  same  charm  which  he  exerted  in  the  pulpit  was  felt  in  the 
consciousness  of  his  presence  in  social  festivities,  or  in  the  private 
room.  No  one  else  seemed  to  be  present  when  he  was  there.  He 
filled  the  room. 


^T.  23-57]      CHARACTERISTICS  773 

I  can  remember  (writes  an  English  bishop)  with  highest  plea- 
sure a  visit  with  which  he  honored  me  in  my  room  at  the  Divinity 
School,  Cambridge.  His  genial  presence  seemed  to  fill  it,  and 
spread  around  an  atmosphere  of  energetic  life. 

An  English  lady,  an  authoress  and  highly  cultivated,  spoke 
of  him  as  the  "  enchanter  of  souls." 

He  possessed  that  "mysterious  gift  of  charm  which,  like  magic, 
gives  to  some  men  and  women  a  wholly  unexplained  influence 
and  ascendency  over  their  kind.  We  now  and  again  come  across 
some  persons  to  whom  all  things  are  forgiven  because  they  possess 
this  extraordinary  charm.  No  one  can  say  in  what  it  consists. 
It  neither  belongs  especially  to  beauty,  nor  yet  to  talent,  nor  to 
goodness  in  life.  It  is  impossible  to  get  behind  the  secret  of 
charm." 

Mr.  Brooks  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  so-called  psycho- 
logical investigations,  whose  object  was  to  communicate  with  the 
departed.  "Why  is  it,"  he  once  said  to  me,  "that  mediums 
always  live  at  the  South  End  ?  " 

A  lady  told  him  that  her  grandfather  said  that  Bishop  Bass, 
who  was  an  ancestor,  looked  in  his  picture  like  a  judge  who  had 
just  given  a  wrong  decision.  "He  is  the  first  person,"  said  Mr. 
Brooks,  "that  found  any  expression  whatever  in  Bishop  Bass's 
face." 

Speaking  once  of  High  Churchmen,  he  remarked,  "What  they 
lack  is  a  sense  of  humor." 

He  walked  across  Green  Park  behind  three  English  bishops, 
and  was  inwardly  chuckling  over  their  gestures.  When  they 
came  to  a  fence,  they  put  their  hands  on  the  top  and  jumped 
over,  while  he  meekly  went  round,  not  despising  the  aprons  so 
much. 

He  burst  out  once  when  we  talked  of  a  person  with  rather 
affected  manners,  "  If  only  people  would  be  simple !  "  Very 
reserved  people  he  did  not  get  on  well  with,  —  he  was  too 
reserved  himself  at  once,  and  too  sensitive  to  atmosphere.  "If 
they  would  only  once  express  themselves^"  he  said.  He  loved 
people  as  people,  and  always  wanted  to  "hear  about  folks."  In 
one  of  his  sermons  he  speaks  of  what  I  know  he  felt  about  the 
city  streets.  "To  prosperous  men,  full  of  activity,  full  of  life, 
the  city  streets,  overrunning  with  human  vitality,  are  full  of  a 
sympathy,  a  sense  of  human  fellowship,  a  comforting  companion- 
ship in  all  that  mass  of  unknown  and,  as  it  were,  generic  men  and 
women,  which  no  utterance  of  special  friendship  or  pity  from  the 
best  known  lips  can  bring.      The  live  and  active  man  takes  his 


774  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1859-93 

trouble  out  on  the  crowded  streets,  and  finds  it  comforted  by  the 
mysterious  consolation  of  his  race.  He  takes  his  perplexity  out 
there,  and  its  darkness  grows  bright  in  the  diffused,  unconscious 
light  of  human  life." 

Did  you  ever  hear  how  his  carriage  failed  to  come  one  day  till 
it  was  too  late  to  get  him  to  a  meeting,  that  he  expressed  him- 
self with  considerable  impatience,  and  then  the  next  morning 
went  over  to  the  livery  stable  office  at  the  Brunswick  and  apolo- 
gized for  his  hastiness? 

His  impatience  was  sometimes  quite  evident  in  the  way  he 
touched  the  bell  in  the  Sunday-school  if  there  wasn't  silence  at 
the  first  ring. 

He  was  sometimes  bitterly  deceived  in  people,  but  it  was  not 
from  lack  of  discernment,  — he  was  very  discerning,  I  think,  — 
but  because,  like  that  old  friend  of  God,  "through  grace  he  re- 
garded them  not  as  they  now  were,  but  as  they  might  well  be- 
come. "  When  he  finally  made  up  his  mind,  he  was  capable  of 
much  righteous  indignation.  Besides,  every  one  showed  him  their 
"star  side." 

Some  one  accused  him  once  of  always  addressing  men  in  his 
sermons,  and  adding  women  and  mothers  and  girls  as  an  after- 
thought; and  I  remember  our  laughing  at  him  once  because,  after 
admiring  the  beauty  of  a  fancy  ball,  he  added  that  "ordinary 
parties  were  all  black."  It  was  evident  what  part  of  the  party 
he  was  thinking  of. 

Once  here  at  tea,  where  he  was  the  only  man,  he  spoke  of  the 
strange  willingness  Englishmen  showed  to  change  their  names, 
forgetting,  as  some  one  told  him,  that  "all  the  ladies  present 
either  had  or  intended  to  change  theirs." 

Little  children  turned  to  him  like  flowers  to  sunshine,  and  I 
think  his  expression  when  he  looked  down  at  them,  or  held  a 
baby  in  his  arms,  was  the  most  tender  thing  I  ever  saw. 

And  manhood  fused  with  female  grace 

In  such  a  sort,  a  child  would  twine 

A  trustful  hand,  unmasked  in  thine, 
And  find  his  comfort  in  thy  face. 

"  In  Memoriam  "  is  full  of  him,  and  how  fond  he  was  of  it ! 
He  used  to  talk  to  us  a  great  deal  about  Tennyson,  and  about 
"our  set,"  as  we  called  them, — Maurice,  and  Stanley,  and 
Kingsley.  I  remember  his  saying  Coleridge  was  one  of  the  most 
interesting  and  puzzling  of  men,  but  Newman,  "after  all,  was 
only  a  second-class  mind."  He  agreed  with  Lowell's  remark 
that  Newman  made  the  great  mistake  of  thinking  that  God  was 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  775 

the  great  "I  Was  "  rather  than  the  great  "I  Am."  He  laughed 
over  a  photograph  in  which  Maurice,  in  an  ill-fitting  coat,  hangs 
on  big  Tom  Hughes's  arm:  "No  matter  how  spiritual  a  man  is 
if  his  coat  sleeves  are  too  long!  " 

On  hearing  that  Esther  Maurice  was  accused  of  destroying 
some  of  the  Hare  family  letters,  he  said,  "If  even  more  had  been 
lost  to  the  world,  I  think  I  could  have  forgiven  her." 

He  impressed  me  as  having  the  gift  for  administration.  He 
was  to  Trinity  Church  what  a  good  housekeeper  is  in  a  family. 
He  had  his  eye  on  everything,  knew  all  that  was  going  on,  and 
seemed  to  be  everywhere.  He  was  very  positive,  but  the  people 
liked  it.  When  anybody  wanted  to  do  anything,  he  would  make 
himself  master  of  the  situation  in  five  minutes.  Any  one  could 
get  hold  of  him,  if  only  there  was  earnestness  and  he  saw  that  he 
was  really  wanted  and  needed.  But  he  dreaded  machinery  in 
a  parish,  and  was  fearful  that  organization  might  tyrannize  over 
parishes.  He  did  not  at  first  welcome  the  St.  Andrew's  Brother- 
hood. He  had  already  his  Bible  class,  and  thought  that  was 
enough.  It  was  the  same  with  the  Woman's  Auxiliary.  Some 
thought  he  was  opposed  to  "churchly"  ways;  but  that  was  not 
the  reason. 

He  was  the  most  sensitive  of  men  if  he  was  not  approached  in 
the  right  way.  He  told  me  once  that  he  didn't  like  being  fifty. 
He  said  he  did  n't  want  to  be  left  behind.  Some  one  had  re- 
marked to  him,  "Your  generation  was  occupied  with  slavery; 
ours  has  taken  up  sociology."  "And  so,"  he  remarked,  "the 
inference  is  that  I  am  to  be  thrown  out." 

He  never  could  be  alone  except  when  he  was  travelling. 
"Travelling  is  the  only  place  on  this  footstool  where  I  can  be  by 
myself."  "Why  don't  you  have  a  prophet's  chamber?"  He 
said  he  did  want  one  sometimes,  but  that  his  mission  was  to  see 
people.  That  was  what  he  was  here  for.  After  he  had  been  two 
weeks  by  himself,  he  hungered  for  people.  It  was  the  possibilities 
in  people  that  made  them  interesting. 

He  was  always  reading  while  he  was  travelling.  The  others 
might  be  looking  out  of  the  windows,  the  days  might  be  hot  and 
dusty,  but  he  continued  to  read.  He  tlirew  the  books  out  of  the 
window  when  he  had  finished  them.  You  might  trace  him  in  his 
journeys  by  the  trail  of  books. 

He  used  to  talk  to  me  of  himself  and  about  his  preaching.  J 
asked  him  once  whether  it  was  easier  to  preach  extempore  or 
written  sermons.  "In  preparation  there  should  be  no  difference. 
But  extempore  preaching  depends  on  moods."  In  his  preaching 
he  was  always  gathering  hints  from  those  who  had  talked  with 


776  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

him.  He  would  take  up  their  remarks  in  an  impersonal  way. 
It  was  always  so  in  every  sermon.  He  preached  a  sermon  in 
Huntington  Hall  on  the  "  Martyrs  heneath  the  Throne, "  and 
was  depressed  because  he  had  failed:  "I  haven't  told  the  people 
what  was  in  that  text."  In  his  morning  sermons  he  was  more 
formal,  and  at  times  seemed  to  be  disturbed  and  even  violent, 
but  as  the  day  went  on  he  came  to  himself  and  was  more  calm. 
There  was  a  tone  of  sadness  occasionally  in  the  later  sermons. 
He  told  me  once  that  he  did  not  come  of  a  long-lived  race. 

When  he  was  in  Germany  he  had  tried  going  to  the  German 
churches  in  order  to  get  religion  and  German  at  the  same  time; 
but  he  discovered  he  was  not  good  enough  to  do  without  going  to 
his  own  church  twice  every  Sunday.  He  said  this  to  a  young 
married  woman  who  told  him  she  only  went  to  church  once  on 
Sundays. 

When  people  were  in  trouble  he  would  go  and  sit  with  them 
without  saying  anything,  and  let  them  talk. 

He  once  said  to  me  that  he  felt  this  burden  of  souls. 

He  would  say  that  he  did  n't  know  anything  about  music,  but 
if  you  assumed  that  he  didn't  know  anything  about  it  he  was 
indignant.  He  wanted  to  be  thought  to  know  about  music.  He 
wanted  to  enter  into  every  experience,  and  fretted  that  he  could 
not.  He  liked  a  great  congregation  singing,  or  a  musical  band, 
—  anything  that  was  big. 

The  stricter  Unitarians,  I  know,  couldn't  go  to  hear  him. 
They  admired  him,  but  they  could  n't  take  the  truth  as  he  pre- 
sented it.  Once,  after  he  had  preached  in  the  Hollis  Street 
Church,  I  heard  these  two  reports:  "I  think  it  was  an  insult 
for  him  to  preach  that  sermon  in  this  church ;  "  and  the  other, 
"That  was  a  good  Unitarian  sermon." 

His  tendency  to  stumble  in  preaching,  till  sometimes  it  seemed 
doubtful  whether  he  would  extricate  himself  from  the  snarl  of 
words  in  which  he  had  become  entangled,  was  owing  to  his  habit 
of  using  a  lead  pencil  to  make  corrections,  interlining  words  and 
phrases,  while  he  was  reading  his  sermon  over  before  preaching, 
and  especially  before  preaching  a  sermon  a  second  time.  These 
intercalated  words  and  phrases  were  written  in  a  fine  handwrit- 
ing, and  looked  somewhat  dim  compared  with  the  bold  man- 
ner of  his  manuscript.  When  he  came  to  them  in  preaching  they 
were  like  obstructions  thrown  across  the  track  of  the  rushing 
engine. 

When  he  preached  extemporaneously,  he  reminded  me  of  a 
hound  who  does  not  at  once  catch  the  scent,  but  having  caught 
it,  goes  off  with  a  rush  at  his  highest  speed. 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  777 

"  Phillips  always  hated,"  says  his  brother  John,  "  to  have 
people  remark  that  he  could  n't  help  being  good."  A  friend 
of  Mr.  Brooks  calls  attention  to  this  passage  in  Caird's 
"  Philosophy  of  Religion  "  (p.  289)  as  bearing  on  the  sub- 
ject :  — 

The  moral  life  is  not  a  passionless  life.  Benevolence,  patriot- 
ism, heroism,  philanthropy,  are  not  the  unemotional  pursuit  of 
abstractions,  virtues  which  live  in  a  vacuum.  The  noblest  moral 
natures,  the  men  who  live  most  and  do  most  for  mankind,  are 
not  strangers  to  feeling,  untouched  by  the  desires  and  passions 
of  the  common  heart.  On  the  contrary  their  very  greatness  is 
often  due,  in  part  at  least,  to  the  keenness  and  quickness  of  their 
sensibilities,  to  the  intensity  of  that  original  impulse  and  feeling 
which  is  the  natural  basis  of  their  spiritual  life. 

But  still  more  to  the  point  is  an  extract  from  a  sermon  of 
Phillips  Brooks,  "  The  Sea  of  Glass  :  "  — 

You  may  go  on  through  the  crowded  streets  of  heaven,  asking 
each  saint  how  he  came  there,  and  you  will  look  in  vain  every- 
where for  a  man  morally  and  spiritually  strong,  whose  strength 
did  not  come  to  him  in  struggle.  Will  you  take  the  man  who 
never  had  a  disappointment,  who  never  knew  a  want,  whose 
friends  all  love  him,  whose  health  never  knew  a  suspicion  of  its 
perfectness,  on  whom  every  sun  shines,  and  against  whose  sails 
all  winds,  as  if  by  special  commission,  are  sent  to  blow,  who  still 
is  great  and  good  and  true  and  unselfish  and  holy,  as  happy  in 
his  inner  as  in  his  outer  life.  Was  there  no  struggle  there  ?  Do 
you  suppose  that  man  has  never  wrestled  with  his  own  success 
and  happiness,  that  he  has  never  prayed  and  emphasized  his 
prayer  with  labor,  "In  all  time  of  my  prosperity,  Good  Lord,  de- 
liver me !  "  "  Deliver  me !  "  That  is  the  cry  of  a  man  in  danger, 
of  a  man  with  an  antagonist.  For  years  that  man  and  his  pro- 
sperity have  been  looking  each  other  in  the  face  and  grappling  one 
another,  —  and  that  is  a  supremacy  that  was  not  won  without 
a  struggle,  than  which  there  is  no  harder  on  the  earth.  ^ 

The  moral  character  of  Phillips  Brooks  stands  out  clearly 
in  his  sermons.  Only  the  man  who  realized  in  himself  the 
ideal  he  was  perpetually  holding  up  to  his  hearers  could  have 
dared  to  enforce  it  as  he  did.  He  left  the  impression,  by 
his  appeara'jce  and  his  speech,  of  absolute  goodness  and  of 
^'  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  iv.  p.  119;  see,  also,  vol.  v.  p.  155. 


778  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

inward  purity.  The  world  was  right  in  fastening  upon  his 
true  and  genuine  manhood  as  his  predominant  characteristic. 
Every  sign  by  which  we  judge  of  life  would  fail  us  if  in  this 
case  the  reality  did  not  correspond  with  the  appearance. 
One  might  illustrate  in  many  ways  how  he  seemed  to  carry 
virtue  to  its  highest  point.  He  was  like  Luther  —  a  com- 
parison which  is  constantly  recurring  —  in  his  tender  con- 
science, which  inclined  him  to  regard  the  slightest  fault  as 
a  great  sin. 

He  once  said  to  Bishop  Clark  with  great  solemnity,  "How 
wretched  I  should  be  if  I  felt  that  I  was  carrying  about  with  me 
any  secret  which  I  should  not  be  willing  that  all  the  world  should 
know. " 

By  nature  he  was  quick-tempered,  given  to  forming  hasty  and 
sometimes  severe  judgments,  and  it  was  hard  for  him  to  over- 
come prejudices.  But  if  he  had  wronged  any  one,  or  said  any- 
thing which  seemed  incompatible  with  the  relations  of  friendship, 
he  would  put  himself  to  much  trouble  to  make  amends.  "You 
will  not  think  for  a  moment,  will  you,  that  I  could  have  meant 
to  say  anything  which  I  thought  could  hurt  your  feelings,  or  that 
I  could  have  been  willing  to  do  so  ?  "  was  the  apology  he  went 
some  distance  to  make  when  he  heard  he  had  been  misunderstood. 

However  it  may  be  with  the  transmission  of  moral  qualities 
by  descent,  there  is  no  doubt  regarding  the  reappearance  of 
physical  peculiarities  after  the  lapse  of  generations.  Let  any 
one  compare  the  photographs  of  Phillips  Brooks  with  the 
portraits  of  his  ancestors  and  the  resemblance  is  apparent. 
His  great  stature  and  the  large  dark  eye  came  from  Phoebe 
Foxcroft,  his  great-grandmother.  He  most  resembled  his 
mother  in  his  features,  a  resemblance  which  became  more 
marked  in  his  later  years.  The  face  of  Phillips  Brooks  is  to 
be  classed  among  the  few  beautiful  faces  which  the  world 
cherishes.  "  He  was  the  most  beautiful  man  I  ever  saw," 
said  Justice  Harlan  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States ;  "  I  sat  opposite  to  him  once  at  dinner,  and  could  not 
take  my  eyes  off  him."  His  photographs,  after  he  allowed 
them  to  be  published,  were  to  be  found  in  every  household. 
A  commercial  traveller,  who  had  gone  into  almost  every  town 
in  the  State  of  Massachusetts,  was  struck  with  the  fact  that 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  779 

everywhere  he  found  the  portrait  of  Phillips  Brooks,  without 
regard  to  difference  of  race  or  of  religion.  A  Roman  Catho- 
lic Sister  of  Charity  writes  on  receiving  his  photograph  :  — 

I  can't  begin  to  tell  you  how  grateful  I  am  for  that  lovely 
picture  of  one  of  the  loveliest  men  this  world  has  ever  known. 
...  I  like  any  one  who  likes  Phillips  Brooks.  What  a  hand- 
some face !  His  eyes  seem  to  be  looking  for  what  has  been  much 
sought,  but  looking  still,  searching  patiently,  satisfied  that  be- 
yond these  "mists  and  vapors"  and  "darkened  glasses"  all  is 
clear.  I  can  never  say  exactly  what  an  impression  Phillips 
Brooks  has  always  made  on  me.  I  feel  a  queer  sort  of  soul  kin- 
dred with  him.  I  should  like  to  have  known  and  talked  with 
him.  Though  we  would  not  have  agreed  on  all  points,  I  am  sure 
we  would  have  been  friends,  —  queer  presumption,  but  you  know 
what  I  mean.  I  'm  not  speaking  of  the  intellectual,  the  scholarly, 
the  official  Phillips  Brooks,  but  of  the  natural  man,  that  looks 
out  of  those  honest  eyes.  I  like  the  mouth,  too,  expressive  of 
the  firmness  and  fulness  and  compassion  and  truth  of  him.  The 
picture  now  hangs  alongside  of  a  beautiful  photograph  copy  of 
Hofman's  famous  Christ,  and  seems  at  home  there. 

At  times  he  appeared  to  rejoice  in  his  large  stature,  as  when  on 
coming  into  a  friend's  house  he  would  easily  place  his  hat  on 
some  tall  bookcase  or  other  object  where  any  one  else  would  have 
to  mount  on  steps  to  reach  it ;  or  would  light  his  cigar  from  a 
street  lamp.  Yet  at  times,  also,  he  felt  his  height  as  an  annoy- 
ance, saying  that  it  made  him  feel  awkward  to  be  looking  down 
on  every  one  in  the  room.  But  the  worst  of  it  was  that  it  made 
others  feel  and  act  awkwardly  in  his  presence.  It  was  difficult 
for  some  people  to  know  how  to  approach  him.  Very  much  as 
when  Heine  had  prepared  himself  to  meet  Goethe  for  the  first 
time,  and  when  he  stood  before  him  only  managed  to  stammer 
something  to  the  effect  that  the  day  was  fine.  Those  who  were 
not  afraid  of  him  had  no  trouble.  He  would  talk  freely  enough 
with  his  friends,  always  within  certain  limits,  and  at  times  even 
about  himself.  He  was  more  communicative  with  women  than 
with  men,  as  indeed  he  was  dependent  on  their  friendship.  With 
young  men  he  would  be  quite  unreserved,  even  singularly  gracious 
and  kind,  saying  things  about  himself  and  his  experiences,  — 
intimate  avowals  which  surprised  those  who  had  known  him  long. 
When  he  did  talk,  it  was  often  so  freely  that  the  wonder  was  he 
did  not  get  himself  into  trouble.  He  put  restraint  on  his  humor 
and  his  power  of  satire,  but  it  was  withering  when  he  gave  it  full 


78o  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1859-93 

scope.  Of  some  one  whose  folly  or  perversity  provoked  him,  he 
remarked,  "I  suppose  there  must  be  something  good  in  that  man." 

When  children  were  present,  he  became  almost  oblivious  of  the 
presence  of  others.  It  was  sometimes  annoying  that  he  would 
not  talk  when  he  was  expected  to  do  so,  maintaining  his  silence 
when  people  had  been  invited  to  meet  him.  On  one  of  his  visits 
to  England,  the  American  minister,  Mr.  Lowell,  gave  him  a 
dinner,  to  which  among  others  he  had  invited  Mr.  Huxley,  under 
the  supposition  that  the  two  men  would  enjoy  meeting  each  other. 
Mr.  Huxley  talked,  and  Mr.  Brooks  was  silent,  till  Mr.  Lowell 
feared  he  had  made  a  mistake ;  but  Mr.  Brooks  afterwards  ex- 
pressed himself  as  having  found  great  pleasure  in  Huxley's  con- 
versation. Mr.  Brooks  was  not  given  to  telling  stories,  though 
no  one  liked  more  to  hear  them  from  others.  He  did  not  culti- 
vate the  art  of  conversation.  He  sometimes  appeared  to  eschew 
the  formalities  and  conventionalities  of  social  life,  and  yet  no  one 
could  be  more  formal  when  he  chose  to  be.  A  great  part  of  con- 
versation consists  in  turning  over  lightly  ideas  and  opinions. 
There  was  what  amounted  to  positive  disability  in  Brooks  to 
take  part  in  such  talk.  Ideas  aroused  him.  He  kept  them 
sacred,  to  be  used  only  for  moral  ends.  Perhaps  there  is  here 
an  explanation  in  some  part  of  that  jovial,  boisterous  manner, 
which  treated  all  things  in  humorous  fashion.  It  was  his  way 
of  staving  off  serious  conversation  and  saving  himself  from  its 
effects.  He  is  remembered  once,  in  his  capacity  as  a  visitor  of 
some  theological  institution,  sitting  through  the  hour  while  the 
lecture  was  given,  but  after  it  was  over  breaking  out  into  indig- 
nation at  the  students  that  they  could  remain  passive  in  seeming 
indifference  to  what  was  being  said. 

A  clergyman  for  whom  he  felt  a  strong  liking,  although  promi- 
nent in  what  was  known  as  the  "ritualistic  "  party,  undertook  to 
define  his  views  on  all  the  points  of  difference  which  separated 
them.  After  listening  to  him  patiently  until  the  exposition  was 
finished,  Mr.  Brooks  gave  this  response:  "It  has  all  been  very 
interesting,  and  I  haven't  imderstood  a  word  of  what  you  have 
been  saying." 

The  following  reminiscence  is  by  a  member  of  the  Clericus 
Club ;  its  truth  all  the  members  of  the  club  will  recog- 
nize :  — 

Through  all  those  years  what  he  was  to  us  I  cannot  find  words 
to  say.  It  would  be  to  tell  the  story  of  evenings  that  burn  in 
memory  now,  —  evenings,  so  many  of  them,  made  memorable  and 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  781 

sacred  by  the  recollection  of  his  welcome,  which  seemed  to  draw 
us  into  his  great  soul;  his  brilliant  essay  read  faithfully  when 
his  turn  came;  his  talk  when  taking  part  in  the  discussion,  — 
talk  never  abundant,  but  even  in  its  great  brevity  illuminating 
the  subject  so  that  none  of  us  felt  that  we  could  add  a  ray  of 
light,  although  some  of  us  would  pretend  to  do  so.  He  was  so 
determined  to  get  at  the  central  truth  of  whatever  topic  might  be 
under  discussion  that  his  words  always  had  that  tone  of  genuine- 
ness, of  reality,  which  never  seemed  like  argument,  but  rather 
like  the  movement  of  his  mind  in  quick  recognition  of  some 
deeper  truth  which  we  all  had  missed,  and  which,  when  indicated 
by  him,  seemed  to  close  the  whole  question  then  and  there. 

Sometimes  when  one  or  other  of  us  would  be  tempted  to  talk 
for  the  sake  of  talk,  or  merely  to  make  a  point,  his  silence  was 
an  eloquent  admonition.  And  the  quick  glance  of  intelligent 
sympathy  which  he  always  turned  toward  any  speaker  in  whom 
he  recognized  something  of  his  own  sincerity  of  mind  was  like  an 
encouraging  cheer  from  a  hero  to  a  struggling  companion  in 
arms. 

The  intellectual  constitution  of  Phillips  Brooks  puzzled 
some  of  his  contemporaries.  The  intellect  was  so  permeated 
witli  the  power  of  feeling  and  the  moral  sense  that  its  sepa- 
rate action  could  not  always  be  traced.  The  following  pas- 
sage is  from  a  sermon  by  Rev.  George  A.  Gordon,  who  after 
he  became  pastor  of  the  Old  South  Church  entered  into  the 
circle  of  Phillips  Brooks's  friends :  — 

The  intellect  of  Phillips  Brooks  was  as  striking  as  the  man 
himself.  There  was  in  it  a  platonic  subtlety,  sweep,  and  pene- 
tration, a  native  capacity  for  the  highest  speculations,  —  a  capacity 
that  did  not  always  become  apparent,  because  he  passed  at  once, 
like  a  flash  of  lightning  to  the  substance  of  things,  and  because 
he  believed  that  the  forms  of  the  understanding,  into  which  the 
highest  in  man  throws  its  findings,  are  at  best  only  inadequate 
symbols.  He  could  not  endure  the  men  who  say  that  nothing 
can  be  known,  nor  could  he  abide  those  who  say  that  everything 
can  be  known.  .  .  .  There  was  in  his  mind  a  Hindu  swiftness, 
mobility,  penetrativeness,  and  mysticism.  .  .  .  Had  he  chosen, 
he  could  have  been  one  of  the  subtlest  metaphysicians,  or  one  of 
the  most  successful  analysts  of  the  human  heart,  throwing  upon 
his  screen  the  disentangled  and  accurately  classified  contents  of  the 
soul.  But  he  chose,  as  indispensable  for  his  calling,  to  let  the 
artist  in  him  prevail,  to  do  all  his  thinking  through  the  forms  of 


782  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

the  imagination,  and  to  give  truth  a  body  corresponding,  as  far  as 
possible,  to  its  own  ineffable  beauty.  Thus  it  happens  that  the 
sermons  with  the  noblest  form,  with  the  greatest  completeness, 
and  the  finest  artistic  quality  have  come  from  his  mind.^ 

The  Rev.  William  R.  Huntington,  rector  of  Grace  Church, 
New  York,  bears  similar  testimony :  — 

Some  intellects  enjoy  parcelling  out  truth  into  its  component 
parts,  just  as  a  botanist  pulls  a  flower  to  pieces  that  he  may  the 
better  understand  it ;  others  would  rather  contemplate  the  object 
of  their  study  in  its  wholeness,  eager  most  of  all  to  catch  and  to 
appreciate  the  total  effect.  The  one  temper  is  that  of  the  meta- 
physician, the  other  that  of  the  poet  and  the  artist.  Each  type 
of  mind  has  its  value  in  connection  with  religion,  but  it  is  hard 
for  the  men  of  the  one  make  to  do  justice  to  the  men  of  the 
other.  The  powerful  intellect  of  Phillips  Brooks  was  not  of  the 
dogmatic  bent.  Had  it  been,  he  never  could  have  done  the  work 
he  did,  for  religion  in  Boston  had  suffered  in  times  past  from 
overmuch  dogmatizing,  and  men  were  weary  of  that  vein ;  they 
thought  of  it  as  worked  out.  But  this  new  teacher,  himself  es- 
sentially a  poet,  came  to  them  holding  up  splendid  pictures  of 
truth.  "I  do  not  care  to  argue  it  out  with  you,"  he  seemed  to 
say,   "only  look  and  see!  " 

In  the  constitution  of  every  man  of  genius  there  is  perpet- 
uated the  heart  of  childhood  ;  in  the  words  of  Balzac,  "  Dans 
tout  I'homme  de  genie,  il  y  a  un  enfant."  In  one  of  his 
pocket  note-books,  Phillips  Brooks  has  pencilled  these  words : 
"The  need  of  something  childlike  in  the  fullest  character. 
A  man  wholly  manlike  is  only  half  a  man."  There  is  no  bet- 
ter authority  for  the  definition  of  genius  than  Coleridge,  and 
it  gives  new  force  to  his  words  as  we  apply  them  to  Phillips 
Brooks :  "  Every  man  of  genius  possesses  deep  feeling." 
And  again  to  quote  from  Coleridge  :  — 

I  define  genius  as  originality  in  intellectual  construction ;  the 
moral  accompaniment  and  actuating  principle  of  which  consists 
perhaps  in  the  carrying  on  the  freshness  and  feelings  of  childhood 
into  the  powers  of  manhood.  .  .  .  To  combine  the  child's  sense 
of  wonder  and  novelty  with  the  appearances  which  every  day  for 
perhaps  forty  years  has  rendered  familiar,  this  is  the  character 
and  privilege  of  genius  and  one  of  the  marks  which  distinguish 

^  Cf.  Phillips  Brooks ;  a  Memorial  Sermon,  pp.  15,  16. 


^T.  23-57]        CHARACTERISTICS  783 

genius  from  talent.  And  so  to  represent  familiar  objects  as  to 
awaken  in  the  minds  of  others  like  freshness  of  sensation  concern- 
ing them  is  the  prime  merit  of  genius  and  its  most  unequivocal 
mode  of  manifestation.^ 

In  the  light  of  these  passages,  the  meaning  of  that  deep  re- 
serve which  characterized  Phillips  Brooks  from  his  young 
manhood  becomes  more  clear.  Its  secret  was  the  child  heart 
that  survived  in  him  till  his  latest  years.  For  very  shame  he 
must  conceal  it,  so  exquisitely  simple  was  it,  so  transparent 
and  pure  when  it  should  be  known.  Upon  this  subject  there 
are  sentences  in  a  sermon  from  the  text,  "  The  secret  of  the 
Lord  is  with  them  that  fear  Him,"  which  are  worth  recall- 
ing:— 

Every  living  thing  which  is  really  worth  the  knowing  has  a 
secret  in  it  which  can  only  be  known  to  a  few. 

The  essential  lives  of  things  are  hidden  away  where  some 
special  sympathy  must  find  them. 

There  is  something  that  every  man  holds  back  from  us ;  and 
the  more  of  a  man  he  is,  the  more  conscious  we  are  of  this 
reserve. 

The  more  of  a  man  a  man  is,  the  more  secret  is  the  secret  of 
his  life,  and  the  more  plain  and  frank  are  its  external  workings. 
Anybody  may  know  what  he  does  and  where  he  goes,  yet  all  the 
while  every  one  who  looks  at  him  will  see  that  there  is  something 
behind  all  which  escapes  the  closest  observation. 

We  all  know  how  little  other  people  know  about  us.  The 
common  saying  that  other  people  know  us  better  than  we  know 
ourselves  is  only  very  superficially  true.  They  do  see  certain 
tricks  in  us  which  we  are  not  aware  of;  but  if  we  are  at  all 
thoughtful  and  self-observant  they  do  not  get  at  the  secret  of  our 
life  as  we  know  it. 

What  is  necessary  before  one  can  read  another's  secret?  It  is 
not  mere  curiosity,  — we  know  how  that  shuts  up  the  nature 
which  it  tries  to  read.  It  is  not  mere  awkward  good  will;  that, 
too,  crushes  the  flower  which  it  tries  to  examine. 

A  man  comes  with  impertinent  curiosity  and  looks  into  your 
window,  and  you  shut  it  in  his  face  indignantly.  A  friend  comes 
strolling  by  and  gazes  in  with  easy  carelessness,  not  making  much 
of  what  you  may  be  doing,  not  thinking  it  of  much  importance, 
and  before  him  you  cover  up  instinctively  the  work  which  was 
serious  to  you  and  make  believe  you  were  playing  games. 
1  Cf .  The  Friend,  vol.  ii.  pp.  104,  384. 


784  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

When  men  try  to  get  hold  of  the  secret  of  your  life,  no  friend- 
ship, no  kindliness,  can  make  you  show  it  to  them  unless  they 
evidently  really  feel  as  you  feel  that  it  is  a  serious  and  sacred 
thing.  There  must  be  something  like  reverence  or  awe  about  the 
way  that  they  approach  you.  It  is  the  way  in  which  children 
shut  themselves  up  before  their  elders,  because  they  know  their 
elders'have  no  such  sense  as  they  have  of  the  importance  of  their 
childish  thoughts  and  feelings.^ 

In  regard  to  his  intellectual  habits  and  methods,  one  thing 
is  clear,  that  Phillips  Brooks  worked  through  the  poetic  im- 
agination rather  than  by  the  process  of  dialectics,  although  he 
could  show  great  dialectic  subtlety  when  occasion  demanded. 
When  we  conjoin  this  power  of  the  poetic  imagination  and 
his  other  gifts,  the  "  unparalleled  combination  of  intensity  of 
feeling  with  compi'ehensiveness  of  view  and  balance  of  judg- 
ment," we  can  understand  how  he  could  quickly  penetrate  to 
the  heart  of  intellectual  systems,  how  a  hint  to  his  mind  was 
like  a  volume  to  others,  and  he  preferred  to  work  out  the  hint 
in  his  own  way.  He  left  the  impression  of  a  man  versed  in 
the  best  literature,  who  could  have  won  high  distinction  as  a 
literary  artist ;  he  seemed  familiar  with  the  recondite  bear- 
ings of  philosophical  thought  or  at  home  in  the  philosophy 
of  history.  He  had  the  gift  of  speaking  to  specialists  in 
their  lines,  and  showing  them  the  relations  and  significance 
of  their  work,  and  could  bring  inspiration  to  all.  He  made 
no  mistakes  or  blunders  through  ignorance  of  the  field  where 
he  was  travelling. 

There  was  one  other  estimate  which  deserves  brief  notice  as 
connected  with  his  intellectual  habits.  It  was  often  said  that 
he  was  no  controversialist,  and  lived  above  the  atmosphere  of 
controversy.  This  indeed  was  in  general  the  impression  he 
made  in  his  preaching.  There  was  truth  in  it  to  a  certain 
degree ;  he  did  seek  to  lift  men  out  of  the  straitened  ruts  of 
theological  controversy,  but  in  order  to  that  end  he  passed 
through  it  before  he  rose  above  it.  One  reason  why  he  kept 
out  of  ecclesiastical  controversy  may  have  been  his  dread  of 
a  certain  aptness  for  it.    His  first  impulse  was  to  rush  into  it. 

1  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  viii.  pp.  272-275. 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  785 

He  had  an  instinctive  tendency  to  oppose  any  formal  utter- 
ance which  assumed  to  be  the  whole  truth,  or  any  dogmatic 
assertion  of  opinion.  His  own  experience  had  taught  him 
that  all  such  assertions  were  one-sided,  containing  at  best 
only  one  aspect  of  the  truth.  His  mind  at  once  began  to  look 
for  other  aspects,  —  the  neglected,  obscure  intimations  of 
truth  on  the  other  side.  He  was  ready  to  challenge  any  state- 
ment in  the  interest  of  the  other  side.  He  had  a  natural 
sympathy  for  the  "  under  dog  "  in  the  fight.  All  this  points 
to  a  controversial  habit  of  mind.  But  the  process  did  not 
stop  here.  The  next  step  was  to  bring  these  opposite  or  con- 
trasted aspects  of  truth  together  and  from  them  to  deduce 
some  higher  truth.  It  was  not  until  he  had  accomplished 
this  result  in  his  own  mind  that  he  was  ready  to  speak. 
There  were  occasions,  some  of  which  have  been  mentioned, 
when  he  acted  and  spoke  under  the  controversial  impulse  of 
contradicting  some  half-true  assertion.  But  these  were  rare. 
When  he  was  prepared  to  speak,  it  was  as  one  who  stood 
above  the  conflicts  of  opinion,  taking  some  larger  ground 
where  opponents  could  meet  in  harmony.  There  are  many 
illustrations  of  this  to  be  seen  in  his  sermons.  A  sermon 
was  born  when  he  had  heard  or  read  some  statement  which 
roused  an  inward  antagonism.  Thus  he  listened  once,  and 
this  is  a  typical  case,  to  some  lecturer  who  was  pointing  out 
how  the  natural  sciences  had  hurt  the  aptitude  for  spiritual 
things.  That  might  be  true,  but  if  so  it  did  not  prove  that 
the  pursuit  of  the  natural  sciences  was  responsible  for  this 
result.  There  was  some  defect  in  the  spiritual  attitude  or  it 
could  not  have  been  hurt  by  an  inquiry  into  the  mind  of  God 
in  the  natural  order.  The  conclusion  was  that  when  the  right 
kind  of  spiritual  men  appeared  they  would  be  able  to  appro- 
priate without  injury  all  that  science  could  reveal. 

So  deep  was  the  inward  contradiction  in  the  man  that 
there  were  moments  when  it  might  seem  as  if  the  two  sides  of 
his  being  were  not  thoroughly  fused  together.  To  the  last  he 
remained  jealous  of  religion  lest  it  should  be  treacherous  to 
humanity.  He  seemed  like  a  humanist  trying  to  restore  to 
man  the  blessings  of  which  he  had  been  robbed  in  the  name 

VOL.   II 


786  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

of  religion.  He  loved  with  a  passionate  devotion  this  pre- 
sent world  and  the  good  and  beautiful  things  which  human 
life  yields  with  its  seed  in  itself  after  its  kind.  But  if  he 
were  tempted  on  the  one  side  to  overvalue  them,  and  to  love 
them  for  their  own  sake,  yet  he  could  not  accept  the  alter- 
native of  renouncing  them  altogether  for  the  love  of  God. 
That  method  had  been  tried  and  had  failed.  The  deepest  in- 
stincts of  his  nature  rebelled  against  it;  he  dreaded  it  for 
himself  and  for  those  whom  he  loved.  There  was  only  one 
way  of  escape  from  the  dilemma,  and  into  that  he  entered  by 
continued  struggle,  —  to  love  life,  and  the  beautiful  gifts  of 
life,  in  God,  as  having  His  consecration,  as  revealing  His 
goodness  and  love. 

There  were  some  contradictory  aspects  of  truth  which  he 
made  no  attempt  to  reconcile,  unless  it  were  that  he  did  not 
allow  them  to  appear  in  the  same  sermon.  Thus  at  one  time 
he  sympathized  with  the  Credo  quia  impossihile  of  Tertullian 
and  at  another  time  condemned  it.  How  his  mood  about  life 
could  vary  is  shown  in  these  two  extracts  from  his  sermons :  — 

Once  or  twice  in  our  lives  we  have  stood  by  the  grave-sides  of 
young  men  which  were  too  solemn  for  regret.  We  complain  that 
life  is  short.  It  is  not  time  you  want,  but  fire.  The  cloud  lies 
on  the  mountain  top  all  day,  and  leaves  it  at  last  just  as  it  found 
it  in  the  morning,  only  wet  and  cold.  The  lightning  touches  the 
mountain  for  an  instant,  and  the  very  rocks  are  melted,  and  the 
whole  shape  of  the  great  mass  is  changed.  Who  would  not  cry 
out  to  God:  "Oh,  make  my  life  how  short  I  care  not,  so  that 
it  can  have  the  fire  in  it  for  an  hour.  If  only  it  can  have  inten- 
sity, let  it  but  touch  the  tumult  of  this  world  for  an  instant. 
Then  let  it  go  and  leave  its  power  behind."  ^ 

But  now  on  the  other  side :  — 

To  lose  any  of  the  legitimate  experiences  of  a  full  human 
career  is  a  loss  for  which  one  will  be  poorer  forever.  This  is  the 
reason  of  the  sadness,  which  no  faith  in  immortality  can  dissipate, 
belonging  to  the  death  of  those  who  die  in  youth,  the  sense  of 
untimeliness  which  we  cannot  reason  down.'^ 

It  would  be  unjust  to  Phillips  Brooks  to  class  him  either 
as  a  radical  or  a  conservative.     He  clung  to  old  ways,  held 
1  Cf.  The  Spiritual  Man,  etc.,  p.  85.  ^  Cf.  Sermons,  vol.  vi.  p.  333. 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  787 

the  past  in  profound  reverence,  and  at  the  same  time  had  a 
strange  liking  for  new  things  and  new  ways,  till  it  was  almost 
a  presumption  in  favor  of  any  movement  that  it  had  the 
charm  of  novelty.  This  was  his  feeling  about  many  of  the 
movements  of  his  time.  Thus  he  sympathized  with  the  cause 
of  Woman  Suffrage,  though  he  never  publicly  advocated  it ; 
he  accepted  the  principle  of  "  cremation,"  giving  the  use  of 
his  name  to  further  its  adoption.  He  thought  there  was  some 
truth  in  the  modern  theory  of  the  power  of  mind  in  healing 
disease,  and  welcomed  it  as  a  protest  against  the  current  long- 
established  methods  of  medical  practice.  But  he  condemned 
as  irrational  the  so-called  metaphysical  or  scientific  principles 
by  which  it  was  explained  or  vindicated.  He  did  not  commit 
himself  to  any  methods  of  sociological  reform,  dreading  in 
this  line  of  work,  as  in  ecclesiastical  affairs,  the  danger  of 
relying  on  machinery,  of  treating  men  as  a  class,  rather  than 
as  individuals.  Thus  he  speaks  of  the  subject  in  his  charac- 
teristic way  in  a  private  letter :  — 

How  good  it  is  when  the  gospel  and  the  ministers  get  at  work 
at  these  questions  which  the  business  folks  are  muddling  so,  and 
let  them  see  how  simple  they  really  are.  They  are  really  simple 
if  only  the  business  folks  would  go  at  them  gospel-fashion.  I 
delight  in  your  picture  of  the  workmen's  heads  out  one  window, 
and  the  capitalists'  heads  out  the  other,  and  the  big  jaw  going 
on  between  them.  It  will  get  settled  somehow,  and  things  will 
be  juster  than  they  are  to-day. 

He  was  conscious  of  the  bitter  mood  engendered  by  the 
long  strife. 

He  was  sensitive  as  to  what  people  might  be  thinking  of  him. 
As  he  stepped  upon  a  street  car  he  wondered  what  the  conduc- 
tor's feeling  toward  him  might  be;  or  on  shipboard  he  was  uneasy 
as  he  thought  of  the  steerage  passengers  in  their  discomfort,  and 
of  the  social  usage  which  enforced  such  a  distinction. 

I  was  sitting  with  Mr.  Brooks  in  the  study  of  his  house  on 
Clarendon  Street.  In  the  course  of  some  remarks  upon  the  work 
of  the  Christian  ministry  he  said,  "I  suppose  that  there  are  men 
passing  this  house  every  day,  wearing  overalls  and  carrying  their 
dinner  in  tin  pails,  who,  if  they  happen  to  know  where  I  live, 
look  up  at  this  house  and  say  with  a  sneer,  *  There  is  that  grand 


788  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

house,  and  a  clergyman  lives  there,  — a  teacher  of  the  religion 
of  Jesus  Christ.  A  fine  sort  of  Christian  teacher  he  must  be  to 
live  in  a  grand  house  like  that.'  But  I  believe  that  I  have  a 
right  to  live  here,  with  this  beauty  and  luxury  about  me.  I  enjoy 
it  all,  and  I  do  my  work  as  a  Christian  minister  better  for  having 
these  surroundings.  A  man  is  no  better  Christian  for  wearing 
overalls  than  for  working  in  a  beautifully  furnished  study.  He 
can  be  one  in  either  situation,  if  only  he  have  the  spirit  of  Christ." 

Yet  Phillips  Brooks  had  won  the  affection  and  the  con- 
fidence of  the  poor  in  an  extraordinary  degree.  They  re- 
cognized his  genuineness  and  sincerity,  even  those  who  had 
become  disaffected  toward  church  and  religion.  His  method 
was  simple,  —  he  let  his  heart  go  out  toward  them,  not  merely 
as  to  a  class,  but  to  individuals,  and  on  the  ground  of  their 
divine  humanity.  He  put  himself  to  much  trouble  to  wait 
upon  any  one  who  called  for  his  aid.  He  interested  himself 
in  special  cases,  —  and  there  were  many  of  them,  —  not  only 
making  contributions  of  money,  but  going  in  person.  And 
wherever  he  went  his  personality  carried  power,  courage,  and 
hopefulness.  He  watched  by  their  bedside  when  sick  and 
dying. 

How  wonderful,  how  glorious  it  was,  the  way  he  talked  to  that 
audience  at  Faneuil  Hall!  These  were  some  of  his  sentences  as 
he  closed  his  sermon:  "Try  to  go  to  church.  Not  that  there 
is  any  charm  in  going  to  church,  but  it  is  the  place  where  every 
one  is  praying  and  worshipping  God,  where  we  all  feel  how  great 
it  is  to  be  good.  I  invite  you  to  Trinity  Church.  I  know  that 
every  church  will  welcome  you.  The  days  are  past  when  the 
church  did  not  welcome  every  one.  Come  to  the  evening  services 
at  Trinity,  which  begin  in  March!  Come  to  the  morning  ser- 
vices now!  Come!  I  feel  as  if  I  knew  you  after  these  four 
meetings,  and  as  if  you  knew  me. 

"You  must  remember  what  I  have  said  to  you.  Do  not  only 
try  to  be  good  yourselves,  but  try  to  help  others.  You  all  have 
a  chance,  I  am  sure,  to  say  a  kind  word  or  do  a  kind  deed. 
Try!  Try  to  live  nobler,  higher  lives;  do  not  yield  to  your 
temptations,  but  struggle  against  them,  and  remember  that  the 
strength  of  Almighty  God  is  behind  you.  Trust  in  Him,  pray 
to  Him,  and  He  will  uphold  you."  Then  he  made  an  extempore 
prayer,  and  closed  by  saying,  "Now  let  us  all  stand  up  and  sing 
together  '  Just  as  I  am,  without  one  plea. '  " 


^T.  23-57]        CHARACTERISTICS  789 

As  a  parish  minister  Phillips  Brooks  retained  the  ideal  of 
his  youth,  when  the  organization  of  a  parish  was  simple,  when 
the  duty  of  a  pastor  was  to  preach,  to  administer  the  sacra- 
ments, to  visit  the  sick  and  the  dying,  and  to  comfort  those 
in  affliction.  To  the  end  of  his  rectorship  of  Trinity  Church 
he  was  inwardly  critical  of  what  seemed  to  him  the  feverish 
activity  which  found  vent  in  a  complex  organization  of  varied 
interests,  societies,  and  guilds  for  every  conceivable  philan- 
thropic or  charitable  work.  Yet  under  his  ministry,  Trinity 
Church  was  changing  as  the  age  was  changing,  and  he  recog- 
nized the  obligations  it  imposed  on  him.  When  he  assumed 
the  rectorship,  he  found  what  would  be  called  a  church  rela- 
tively small  in  the  number  of  its  communicants,  estimated  at 
400,  with  a  depleted  congregation,  worshipping  in  a  building 
left  stranded  in  the  business  part  of  the  city.  After  a  minis- 
try of  twenty-two  years,  when  he  resigned  from  its  rectorship 
he  left  it  with  the  grandest  church  edifice  in  New  England, 
if  not  in  the  country ;  its  communicants  increased  more  than 
fourfold,  and  its  activities  multiplied  till  it  had  become  the 
strongest  church  in  Boston  in  its  contributions  to  charitable 
work  of  every  kind ;  with  its  host  of  workers  under  his  super- 
vision, zealous  in  promoting  every  agency  for  good  which 
ingenuity,  combined  with  Christian  sympathy,  could  devise. 
He  stood  at  the  head  of  an  institutional  church,  whose  suc- 
cessful administration  alone  commanded  respect  and  admira- 
tion. So  natural  and  inevitable  had  been  the  growth  that 
when  people  paused  to  consider  the  work  he  was  carrying  on 
through  these  diverse  agencies,  they  began  to  wonder  at  the 
administrative  power  which  seemed  to  match  the  greatness 
revealed  in  the  pulpit. 

But  whatever  may  have  been  Phillips  Brooks's  natural 
capacity  for  the  work  of  administration,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  he  took  but  little  interest  in  the  details  of  what  is  called 
working  a  parish.  He  kept  his  eye  on  every  agency  at  work, 
he  scrutinized  plans  projected,  he  knew  what  each  helper  or 
each  society  was  doing,  or  was  capable  of  doing ;  where  it 
was  strong  or  where  it  was  weak ;  he  encouraged  and  stim- 
ulated every  enterprise   of  which  he  approved.     His  mind 


790  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

was  so  comprehensive  that  he  easily  carried  the  work  that 
was  done  under  him  in  whole  or  in  part;  but  there  his 
apparent  interest  and  activity  ended.  It  was  not  he  that  pro- 
jected the  plans  or  sought  to  enlarge  the  range  of  activities 
by  schemes  of  his  own.  That  was  done  for  him  by  others, 
who  saw  the  opportunities  and  brought  them  to  him  for 
approval.  Whatever  may  have  been  his  own  latent  capacity 
for  creating  openings  or  originating  methods,  he  did  not 
avail  himself  of  it;  he  preferred  to  stimulate  others,  and 
profit  by  their  creative  enterprise.  If  we  may  call  him  suc- 
cessful as  an  administrator,  it  was  because  he  knew  how  to 
concentrate  his  strength  on  what  was  essential,  and  disem- 
barrass himself  of  the  detail  and  labor  necessary  for  its 
accomplishment.  He  was  accustomed  to  allude  to  these 
things  in  a  humorous  way.  Thus  on  one  occasion,  at  the 
beginning  of  Lent,  he  issued  a  pastoral  letter,  calling  upon 
the  men  in  the  congregation  to  make  more  use  of  the  fre- 
quent services.  Sending  a  copy  to  his  brother  Arthur  he 
wrote  on  the  back  of  it,  "  I  want  you  to  see  what  a  tremen- 
dous pastor  I  am  getting  to  be.  I  hope  to  be  famous  yet  for 
'  executive  ability  '  and  '  administrative  talent.'  " 

It  is  an  instance  of  his  lack  of  interest  in  the  detai]  of 
administration  that  he  kept  no  list  of  the  communicants  of 
Trinity  Church,  and  had  no  conception  of  their  actual  num- 
ber. Nor  had  he  any  basis  for  computation,  except  to  add 
each  year  the  number  of  those  confirmed  to  the  original 
number  reported  when  he  came  to  Trinity.  From  1869  to 
1870  his  report  reads  "about  450;"  in  1871  "about  480;" 
for  the  next  four  years  successively  he  added  50  for  each 
year,  and  in  1875  and  1876  he  reports  "  about  600 ; "  in 
1878  "about  700;"  in  1879  "about  750;"  in  1880  "about 
900."  He  seems  to  have  been  afraid  of  overstating  the 
number,  preferring  to  err  in  the  opposite  direction.  But  in 
1880  he  was  seriously  remonstrated  with  for  placing  the 
number  of  communicants  far  below  what  it  was  evident  they 
were  by  actual  count  at  the  monthly  communions.  He  then 
seems  to  have  determined  upon  forming  a  complete  list,  and 
in  1881  issued  a  printed  card,  which  was  distributed  widely, 


^T.  23-57]      TRINITY   CHURCH  791 

calling  on  each  communicant  for  signature  of  name  with  the 
time  and  place  of  confirmation.  While  the  effort  was  not 
successful  in  obtaining  the  desired  information,  it  led  him 
to  report  the  number  of  communicants  in  1881  as  "  about 
1000."  At  this  figure  he  allowed  it  to  remain  for  the  next 
seven  years,  making  no  further  effort  to  be  exact.  But  what 
mental  process  allowed  him  to  keep  the  figures  stationary  for 
seven  years,  when  each  year  there  were  large  accessions  by 
confirmation,  does  not  appear,  unless  it  were  an  unwillingness 
to  seem  to  be  magnifying  the  growth  of  his  work.  Once 
more,  after  another  remonstrance,  he  concluded  to  report  an 
increase,  and  in  the  year  1888  he  gave  the  number  as  "  about 
1200."  His  report  in  1889  was  "  about  1250,"  and  in  his 
annual  statements  for  the  following  years  beyond  that  figure 
he  did  not  go.  The  probability  is  that  the  actual  number  of 
those  who  regularly  communed  at  Trinity  Church  was  larger 
by  several  hundreds. 

The  wisdom  and  the  power  of  Phillips  Brooks  as  the  ad- 
ministrator of  a  large  parish  lay  in  giving  freedom  to  his 
assistant  ministers  and  other  helpers  to  seek  and  find  opportu- 
nities for  beneficent  work.  And  for  the  rest  he  so  stimu- 
lated the  energies  of  his  people  that  we  do  not  wonder  at  the 
variety  of  the  activities  and  the  vitality  which  pervaded  the 
parish.  This  would  have  been  his  method  of  promoting  the 
growth  of  any  of  the  higher  institutions  of  learning  to  which 
he  was  called,  had  he  accepted  such  a  position.  He  would 
have  made  an  ideal  provost  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania, 
or  president  of  Columbia  University,  to  both  of  which  posts 
he  was  invited,  for  he  had  the  power  to  infuse  life  and  enthu- 
siasm and  to  inspire  confidence.  Because  he  was  abounding 
in  vitality  he  could  not  but  communicate  his  gift,  till  the 
things  about  him  grew  and  thrived.  It  might  not  be  called 
administrative  ability  or  executive  talent,  but  it  produced  the 
same  if  not  a  higher  result. 

The  list  is  a  long  one  of  the  societies  and  organizations  in 
Trinity  Church  which  alike  looked  to  the  rector  for  sup- 
port and  inspiration.  In  the  Industrial  Society,  the  Em- 
ployment Society,  the  Visiting  Society,  work  was  done  for  the 


792  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1859-93 

poor.  The  Indian  Mission  Association  had  for  its  object  to 
aid  those  who  sought  to  protect  the  American  Indians  in  the 
far  West  from  political  and  mercenary  adventurers,  and  to 
promote  their  spiritual  interests.  There  was  a  woman's 
Bible  class  largely  attended  and  under  most  efficient  instruc- 
tion which  combined  instruction  with  missionary  zeal.  The 
Zenana  Mission  supported  a  missionary  at  Calcutta,  and  the 
Zenana  Band  was  allied  with  it  in  promoting  the  better  con- 
dition of  women  in  India.  The  Trinity  Club  was  a  social 
organization  of  the  young  men  of  the  parish,  but  efforts  were 
expected  from  it,  and  were  always  in  process  for  the  exten- 
sion of  the  religious  influence  in  the  city  of  Boston.  There 
was  a  Home  for  Aged  Women  primarily  for  the  needs  of 
Trinity  Church,  but  open,  when  there  was  room,  for  those 
outside  of  its  fold.  Trinity  House,  situated  at  13  Burroughs 
Place,  was  fruitful  in  beneficent  charities  with  its  Laundry 
and  its  Day  Nursery.  In  the  Girls'  Industrial  Classes,  for 
a  long  time  associated  with  Trinity  House,  instruction  was 
given  in  cooking,  laundry  work,  housekeeping  and  domestic 
service,  sewing,  mending,  and  dressmaking.  All  of  these 
agencies  needed  money  for  their  establishment  and  success- 
ful prosecution  of  their  work.  During  the  years  that  Mr. 
Brooks  was  the  rector  of  Trinity,  the  annual  contributions 
for  charitable  purposes  averaged  some  $50,000  a  year. 

To  this  list  must  be  added  the  organized  charities  con- 
nected with  St.  Andrew's,  the  mission  church  of  Trinity,  un- 
der the  charge  of  Rev.  Reuben  Kidner.  Here,  in  addition  to 
societies  of  a  similar  nature  to  those  above  mentioned,  there 
was  a  mission  for  deaf  mutes ;  in  the  Trinity  Dispensary 
four  physicians  gave  their  services  gratuitously,  —  advice 
and  treatment  for  the  sick,  with  a  mere  nominal  charge  for 
medicine  and  hygienic  instruction  in  order  to  the  best  health 
standards  for  workers  and  breadwinners.  Connected  with  the 
dispensary  was  the  Vincent  Memorial  Hospital.  Regarding 
these  various  organizations  Mr.  Kidner  writes  :  — 

Brooks  encouraged  and  cheered  us,  as  was  his  wont,  but  did  not 
take  the  initiative.  So  far  as  my  experience  goes,  he  never  initi- 
ated or  suggested  anything.     He  never  came  to  any  of  us  and 


^T.  23-57]      TRINITY   CHURCH  793 

said,  "I  should  like  you  to  try  this  or  that."  Not  one  single 
method  or  plan  of  parish  work  was  original  with  him.  When- 
ever we  wanted  to  do  anything,  if  it  commended  itself  to  him, 
he  was  enthusiastic,  and  gave  us  the  warmest  support.  But  he 
would  not  give  his  sanction  to  any  scheme  based  on  the  recogni- 
tion of  divisions  or  classes  among  men. 

After  Trinity  Church  had  been  completed,  an  important 
work  still  remained  to  be  done  in  its  interior  decoration,  and 
in  this  Phillips  Brooks  had  his  share.  Many  of  his  letters 
written  while  abroad  are  occupied  with  commissions  he  had 
undertaken  for  the  perfecting  of  the  decorations  with  its  am- 
ple opportunities  for  memorial  windows.  During  the  years 
that  he  remained  as  rector,  its  interior  continued  to  grow 
richer  as  window  after  window  was  added,  till  it  became,  in 
the  estimate  of  competent  judges,  "  the  most  important  build- 
ing in  the  history  of  art  in  this  country,  or  anywhere  in  the 
present  century."  ^  He  loved  the  church,  and  was  proud  of  it 
with  all  his  heart ;  he  gave  his  attention  to  every  detail  of  its 
enrichment.  It  was  he  who  caused  the  ivy  to  be  planted 
which  now  covers  a  large  part  of  its  walls.  While  in  India  he 
thought  of  its  care,  and  wrote  requesting  that  its  roots  should 
be  protected  during  the  winter,  —  a  task  which  he  had  al- 
ways superintended.  Among  other  things  which  to  his  mind 
added  distinction  and  historical  interest  to  the  church  was 
the  bust  of  Dean  Stanley.  Its  donor  was  Lady  Frances 
Baillie,  who  took  a  special  interest  in  Trinity  Church  because 
in  years  gone  by  the  funeral  services  had  been  read  there 
over  the  body  of  her  brother,  Sir  Frederick  Bruce,  then  the 
British  minister  at  Washington.  To  Mr.  Brooks  she  wrote, 
making  the  inquiry  whether  the  gift  would  be  acceptable, 
only  requesting  that  the  name  of  the  giver  should  be  with- 
held. The  Proprietors  of  Trinity  Church  having  at  Mr. 
Brooks's  suggestion  accepted  the  gift,  he  wrote,  on  the  ar- 
rival of  the  bust,  to  the  donor  :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  November  20,  1883. 

Dear  Lady  Frances,  —  The  bust  has  come,  and  this  after- 
noon it  has  been  carefully  unpacked  and  now  stands  in  my  study, 

1  Among  the  many  articles  written  describing'  the  interior  decoration  of  Trin- 
ity Chm-ch,  cf.  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  May,  1879. 


794  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

where  it  will  await  its  formal  acceptance  and  the  preparation  of 
a  fit  place  for  it  in  the  church,  of  which  it  will  be  always  one 
of  the  very  chiefest  treasures.  I  need  not  try  to  tell  you  with 
what  true  reverence  I  took  it  in  my  hands  and  set  it  up.  It  was 
almost  as  if  he  had  really  come  to  us  himself.  His  inspiration 
and,  I  hope,  something  of  his  spirit  have  been  with  us  ever  since 
his  never-forgotten  visit.  Indeed,  they  had  been  with  us  long 
before  he  visited  us.  Now,  in  the  setting  up  of  his  almost  speak- 
ing face,  where  ministers  and  people  will  always  see  it,  it  seems 
as  if  the  seal  was  set  upon  our  possession  of  him,  so  that  he  can 
never  be  taken  from  us.  I  love  to  think  how  the  preachers  who 
will  come  after  me  will  treasure  this  memorial  of  him,  and  how 
it  may  have  some  power  to  purify  and  enlarge  and  enlighten  the 
teaching  of  the  church  which  I  love  very  dearly,  long  after  I  am 
gone. 

I  must  not  attempt  to  thank  you,  my  dear  friend,  but  I  know 
you  will  be  glad  to  think  how  much  joy  and  help  your  noble  gift 
will  be  the  means  of  bringing  to  this  far-away  church,  and  minis- 
ter, and  congregation.  It  shall  be  very  sacredly  honored  and 
preserved. 

By  and  by  I  will  tell  you  of  the  final  installation  of  the  bust 
in  its  permanent  place.  But  I  could  not  help  sending  you  this 
little  word  of  gratitude  at  once. 

I  hope  that  you  are  very  well  and  very  happy,  as  you  ought  to 
be.      Pray  let  me  count  myself, 

Ever  sincerely  your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

The  inscription  beneath  the  bust  was  written  by  the  late 
Mr.  Kobert  C.  Wintlirop. 

There  was  a  memorial  window  to  Frederick  Brooks,  erected 
by  the  generous  kindness  of  Mr.  C.  J.  Morrill,  between  whom 
and  Phillips  Brooks  was  a  beautiful  friendship,  dating  from 
the  early  years  of  his  ministry. 

Another  historical  feature  added  to  Trinity  Church  in  1890 
were  the  stones  from  St.  Botolph's  Church  in  the  English 
Boston,  which  now  form  an  arched  opening  in  the  side  of  the 
cloister  leading:  from  the  eastern  entrance  of  the  church  to 
Clarendon  Street.  It  had  been  the  original  intention  to  send 
the  stones  from  the  central  doorway  in  the  great  tower.  Had 
this  plan  been  carried  out,  it  would  have  perpetuated  an  in- 
teresting memorial  of  Rev.  John  Cotton,  for  beneath  those 
stones  he  had   gone   in   and   out  twenty  years  while  vicar 


^T.  23-57]       PARISH  MINISTRY  795 

of   St.  Botolph's,  and  a  minister  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land. 

At  this  point  we  pause  for  a  moment  to  call  attention  to  an 
important  feature  of  the  parish  ministry.  Enough  has  already 
been  said  regarding  the  primary  conviction  of  Phillips  Brooks, 
which  underlay  his  life  and  preaching,  that  all  men  were  by 
nature  and  by  grace  the  children  of  God.  He  held  that  this 
truth  found  emphatic  expression  in  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer,  that  it  was  not  hidden  in  a  corner,  but  assigned  a 
place  of  honor  and  prominence  in  the  Church  Catechism,  to 
be  taught  to  every  child.  It  constituted  the  fundamental  dif- 
ference between  the  Anglican  and  the  Roman  communions,  — 
a  truth  from  which  the  Puritan  churches  of  the  seventeenth 
century  had  departed,  —  the  sonship  of  all  humanity  and  the 
universal  redemption.  Phillips  Brooks  gave  to  this  conviction 
such  prominence,  such  force,  as  to  make  it  seem  like  some  new 
discovery.  To  him  also  it  seemed  an  inevitable  inference  from 
the  truth  of  the  Incarnation.  That  doctrine  lost  its  full  mean- 
ing and  became  something  accidental  or  exceptional  instead 
of  essential,  unless  humanity  as  a  whole  were  conceived  as  the 
body  of  Christ. 

But  now  we  turn  to  another  aspect  of  the  subject.  It  was 
the  strict  and  uniform  usage  of  Phillips  Brooks  to  require 
from  those  coming  to  confirmation  unmistakable  evidence 
that  they  were  actuated  by  the  motive  of  conscious  love 
toward  God  and  the  purpose  to  devote  themselves  to  His 
service.  So  insistent  was  he  upon  this  requirement  that  to 
some,  even  in  his  own  congregation,  it  looked  as  if  he  were 
adopting  the  Puritan  stringency,  departing  from  the  Anglican 
position  which  called  only  for  the  ability  to  "say  the  Creed, 
the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  the  Ten  Commandments,  and  to  an- 
swer to  such  other  questions  as  in  the  Short  Catechism  are 
contained."  Thus  he  received  a  remonstrance  from  one  of 
his  parishioners,  the  late  Mr.  John  C.  Ropes,  who,  in  addition 
to  his  ability  as  a  military  critic,  was  also  versed  in  theology. 
In  a  letter  dated  March  6,  1899,  shortly  before  his  death, 
Mr.  Ropes  in  reverting  to  the  subject  wrote  :  — 


796  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

The  attitude  of  Phillips  Brooks  was  calculated  to  deter  all  who 
had  not  gone  through  a  real  "  religious  experience  "  in  the  Evan- 
gelical sense  of  that  expression,  no  matter  how  innocent,  how 
manly,  womanly,  sound,  affectionate,  true-hearted  boys  and  girls 
they  might  be,  no  matter  how  unreservedly  they  were  willing  to 
make  their  vows  "to  renounce  the  devil  and  all  his  works,"  etc. 
This  it  was  which  awakened  my  opposition,  for  I  had  been 
brought  up  in  an  Orthodox  [Congregational]  church,  and  had  been 
(in  my  junior  year)  received  into  one  on  "Profession  of  Faith." 
I  revere  the  Orthodox  Congregational  churches,  but  I  must  say 
that  they  lose  a  great  many  young  men  and  women  who  are  per- 
fectly willing  and  serious  to  come  into  full  communion  with  the 
church  of  Christ,  but  who  cannot  meet  these  requirements. 

On  this  point  Mr.  Brooks  never  changed  his  attitude.  He 
called  for  no  conventional  tests  as  evidence  of  such  a  love, 
but  in  conversation  with  the  candidate  he  satisfied  himself  of 
the  beginning  of  a  new  life.  In  these  personal  interviews  he 
was  gentle  and  tender,  yet  searching,  appreciative  always  of 
the  faintest  signs  of  the  awakening  spiritual  life.  He  never 
forgot  that  it  was  God's  own  child  with  whom  he  was  convers- 
ing, or  whom  he  was  examining,  in  order  to  know  if  the  rela- 
tionship to  the  Eternal  Father  were  consciously  felt  and 
acknowledged.  He  preserved  in  a  separate  package  the  let- 
ters written  to  him  by  young  boys  and  girls,  where  wifch  im- 
perfect, inadequate  language  was  expressed  the  desire  to  live 
for  God;  he  kept  them  as  if  he  attached  some  special  value 
or  saw  some  special  beauty  in  the  way  these  souls  were  open- 
ing toward  the  great  reality.  But  that  much  he  insisted  on, 
—  some  evidence  of  a  beginning  of  a  conscious  sense  of  love 
toward  God.  Whether  this  were  the  attitude  of  the  Anglican 
Church  may  perhaps  be  an  open  question.  But  it  must  be 
remembered  that  he  had  been  brought  up  from  his  childhood 
on  the  Church  Catechism,  as  well  as  learned  religion  from 
his  mother's  teaching.  And  in  the  Catechism  it  is  said  that 
two  things  are  to  be  learned  from  the  Ten  Commandments, 
"  My  duty  toward  God  and  my  duty  toward  my  neighbor." 
And  further  in  the  reply  to  the  question,  "  What  is  thy  duty 
toward  God?"  the  child  is  taught  to  answer:  "  My  duty  toward 
God  is  to  believe  in  Him,  to  fear  Him,  and  to  love  Him  with 


MT.  23-57]        PARISH   MINISTRY  797 

all  my  heart,  with  all  my  mind,  with  all  my  soul,  and  with 
all  my  strength."  Words  like  these  to  a  sensitive  child  with 
the  aptitude  for  spiritual  things,  such  as  Phillips  Brooks 
possessed,  are  apt  to  bury  themselves  deep  in  the  heart,  con- 
stituting a  deterrent  from  lightly  assuming  the  vows  of  con- 
firmation. This  must  be  taken  into  consideration  in  deter- 
mining the  attitude  of  the  Anglican  Church. 

To  the  communion  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  Phillips  Brooks 
attached  the  highest  importance,  seeking  to  make  it  impres- 
sive and  memorable  to  every  recipient.  It  was  in  order  that 
its  full  significance  as  the  rite  of  Christian  fellowship  might 
not  be  obscured,  that  he  steadfastly  refused  to  multiply  com- 
munion services  and  kept  the  feast  only  on  one  Sunday  in  the 
month,  and  then  at  the  mid-day  service.  When,  however, 
the  number  of  communicants  became  inconveniently  large,  he 
made  one  concession,  and  on  the  first  Sunday  in  the  month 
allowed  an  earlier  communion.  A  communion  service  at 
Trinity  Church  became  one  of  the  most  impressive  of  reli- 
gious spectacles  anywhere  to  be  witnessed,  when  the  congrega- 
tion seemed  to  rise  as  a  whole  and  press  forward  to  surround 
the  Lord's  Table.  To  the  influence  of  this  service,  a  young 
Japanese  student  confessed  that  he  owed  his  conversion  to 
Christianity. 

Another  feature  of  the  parish  ministry  of  Phillips  Brooks 
was  his  desire,  to  use  his  own  words,  that  "  Trinity  Church 
should  be  the  most  hospitable  church  in  Boston."  The  effort 
no  doubt  had  its  inconveniences,  but  the  parishioners  sup- 
ported the  rector  and  allowed  his  wish  to  prevail.  This  was 
an  expansion  of  the  parish  ministry,  for  the  number  of  those 
who  sought  access  to  Trinity  was  large  and  always  increas- 
ing, till  the  pastor  seemed  to  stand  in  pastoral  relations  to 
all  Boston  and  its  suburbs.  This  open-hearted  hospitality, 
which  refused  to  draw  any  limits  to  its  exercise,  extended  still 
further.  Not  only  did  the  young  men  and  young  women  in 
Boston  feel  a  special  relationship  with  Phillips  Brooks,  but 
from  every  part  of  the  country  they  came  to  Boston,  and  from 
England  also,  with  letters  entrusting  them  to  his  care,  opening 
with  the  familiar  formula,  "  May  I  introduce  and  commend  to 


798  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

your  confidence  as  if  he  were  my  own  son,  my  young  friend," 
etc.  His  correspondence  abounds  with  appeals  from  anxious 
parents  whose  children  were  going  out  into  the  world,  from 
the  ministers  of  churches  of  every  denomination,  concerned 
for  the  welfare  of  their  young  people,  all  alike  earnestly 
requesting  his  interest,  from  his  personal  friends  also  who 
entrusted  their  sons  and  daughters  to  his  solicitude.  The 
burden  was  immense,  but  he  appeared  to  carry  it  easily, 
knowing  how  to  utilize  agencies  of  every  sort  to  his  purpose. 
He  did  not  neglect  these  commissions,  for  he  knew  how  much 
they  meant  to  those  who  sent  them.  There  were  cases  when 
all  the  other  interests  of  his  life  were  placed  aside,  in  order 
that  he  might  devote  himself  to  one  single  case  of  need  where 
his  personal  supervision  and  sense  of  responsibility  had  be- 
come to  him  the  one  absorbing  duty  of  the  moment. 

The  exacting  requirements  of  such  a  pastorate,  as  thus  far 
described,  would  seem  a  sufficient  task  for  any  man,  quite  as 
much  as  the  strongest  man  could  carry.  We  must  recall  his 
literary  work  also,  costing  no  slight  effort,  surely,  and  the 
range  of  his  philanthropic  efforts  and  sympathies.  But  even 
with  all  this,  we  have  far  from  exhausted  the  list  of  efforts 
put  forth  by  Phillips  Brooks  in  his  beneficent  work.  It  is  in 
his  relations  with  schools  and  colleges,  and  the  higher  institu- 
tions of  learning,  that  we  discern  another  and  most  important 
phase  of  his  pastoral  activity  and  influence.  He  was  called 
upon  constantly  and  from  far  and  near  to  preach  and  to  make 
addresses  to  young  men  in  the  centres  of  education,  whether 
secular  or  religious.  The  list  is  a  long  one,  and  it  would  be 
wearisome  to  attempt  it,  of  institutions  which  asked  for  his 
presence.  He  had  his  preferences,  we  may  suppose,  among 
the  schools  and  colleges,  but  he  had  the  gift  of  making  it 
appear  that  each  one  was  his  special  favorite  and  came  closest 
to  his  heart.  Yale  University  came  among  the  first  in  the 
order  of  discovery  of  his  efficiency.  He  went  there  often  to 
lecture,  at  the  request  of  President  Porter.  Although  he  had 
delivered  a  course  of  lectures  on  Preaching  on  the  Sage  Foun- 
dation in  1877,  yet  he  was  invited  to  deliver  a  second  course 
on  the  same  foundation  in  1885.    "Among  all  the  inhabitants 


^T.  23-57]  SCHOOLS  AND  COLLEGES        799 

of  the  globe,"  so  runs  the  invitation,  "  you  are  our  first  choice ; 
if  you  cannot  write  lectures,  bring  any  of  your  old  sermons." 
To  Cornell  University  he  went  as  early  as  1875,  initiating  an 
annual  course  of  sermons  to  become  a  fixed  feature  of  the 
institution,  of  which  President  White  says  to  him :  "  I  do  not 
suppose  that  any  college  chapel  ever  before  exhibited,  Sunday 
after  Sunday,  so  many  attractive  faces.  The  new  organ  in 
the  chapel  is  one  of  the  tangible  monuments  of  your  success 
here." 

The  Institute  of  Technology  in  Boston  was  certainly  one 
of  the  institutions  whose  well-being  he  cherished  deeply,  and 
so  often  was  he  there  on  representative  occasions  that  he 
seemed  to  be  in  some  official  relationship.  He  went  often  to 
Williams  College  at  the  request  of  President  Carter,  who 
writes  to  him  in  1882,  "  I  have  long  felt  that  your  influence 
as  a  preacher  of  the  manliness  of  Christ  ought  not  to  be  con- 
fined to  the  young  men  of  Boston."  In  1884  he  was  elected 
president  of  the  Harvard  Alumni  Association.  He  was  in- 
vited to  the  opening  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  Hospital  in  1885, 
where  the  President  of  the  United  States  was  to  be  present, 
the  governor  of  the  state,  the  various  medical  faculties,  and 
representatives  of  philanthropic  institutions,  when  from  every 
point  of  view  the  occasion  would  be  one  of  mark.  The  invi- 
tation to  make  the  address  was  very  urgent,  "the  wish  to 
have  you  is  unanimous."  In  1886  Dr.  McCosh  invited  him 
to  Princeton  to  give  the  address  on  Graduates'  Day.  He 
went  to  Washington  and  Lee  University  in  Virginia  in  1888. 
He  was  asked  to  give  a  course  of  lectures  before  the  students 
of  Johns  Hopkins  University  in  1890 :  "  You,  better  than 
any  one  else  that  we  can  think  of,  can  reach  the  minds  of 
those  who  will  be  here  assembled."  In  the  same  year  he  had 
two  other  similar  invitations,  one  to  give  the  Baldwin  Lec- 
tures, at  Ann  Arbor,  where  he  was  assured  of  "  a  throng  of 
students ; "  and  another  to  the  Ohio  Wesleyan  University, 
where  a  new  lecture  foundation  had  just  been  established  by 
ex-President  Herrick,  who  had  named  Phillips  Brooks  as  his 
first  choice. 

He  was  one  of  the  trustees  of  Groton  School,  of  which  Rev. 


8oo  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

Endicott  Peabody  was  head  master,  having  taken  the  deepest 
interest  in  the  inception  of  the  school,  and  visiting  it  often, 
not  only  in  his  official  capacity,  but  as  a  friend  of  the  boys, 
who  felt  that  in  some  peculiar  way  he  belonged  to  them.  In 
1887  he  wrote  the  Groton  School  Hymn,  which  ever  since 
has  been  sung  on  the  greater  days  in  the  school  life. 

Theological  seminaries  seemed  to  be  placed  under  his  spe- 
cial charge,  always  standing  open  to  him  with  a  peculiar 
welcome.  This  was  true  of  Andover  and  of  Cambridge,  and 
appears  to  have  been  more  emphatically  true  of  the  Metho- 
dist Divinity  School  connected  with  Boston  University,  where 
he  made  his  influence  felt  for  twenty  years  upon  every  class 
going  forth  from  its  walls. 

His  interest  in  young  men  while  in  college,  says  Bishop 
Lawrence,  surpassed  the  interest  he  felt  in  them  after  they 
had  entered  upon  their  course  of  professional  study.  So 
long  as  there  was  the  open  possibility  his  interest  was  at  the 
height,  for  his  imagination  was  touched  at  the  prospect.  In 
his  conversation  with  young  men  he  was  remarkably  frank, 
drawing  out  their  best  as  he  gave  of  his  best  in  return.  He 
would  reveal  his  inmost  experience,  or  relate  his  history, 
placing  the  accumulated  wealth  of  his  inner  life  at  their 
disposal.  In  the  reports  of  conversations  with  them,  of  which 
there  are  many,  we  see  almost  a  different  man,  so  fully  does 
he  speak  of  himself,  and  unbosom  his  deepest,  most  sacred 
hopes  and  aspirations. 

But  the  story  of  the  relation  of  Phillips  Brooks  to  young 
men  must  be  supplemented  with  the  record  of  his  relations 
to  young  women  to  whom  the  college  had  thrown  open  simi- 
lar opportunities.  The  relation  was  as  influential  as  with 
young  men.  Thus  he  was  elected  as  an  honorary  member  of 
the  class  of  1889  at  Wellesley  College,  of  the  class  of  1890 
at  Mt.  Holyoke  College,  and  of  the  class  of  1891  at  Whea- 
ton  Seminary.  One  of  the  members  of  the  class  of  1889  at 
Wellesley  writes :  — 

His  association  with  the  class  was  highly  prized  by  all  of  us, 
and  none  but  members  of  '89  can  know  what  inspiration  his  con- 
nection with  us  was.     "We  were  privileged  to  know  something  of 


^T.  23-57]    WELLESLEY   COLLEGE  801 

the  tender  thoughtfulness  and  eager  sympathy  with  which  he  could 
enter  into  our  plans  and  pleasures.  We  shall  never  forget  the 
fine  courtesy  with  which  he  wore  the  tassel  of  his  Oxford  cap  on 
the  B.  A.  side  on  our  Senior  Tree  Day  because  he  belonged  to 
'89.  The  eagerness  with  which  he  demanded  a  class  pin,  and 
the  faithfulness  with  which  he  wore  it  on  subsequent  visits  to  the 
college,  the  glee  with  which  he  shouldered  our  poor  dead  class 
tree  and  bore  it  away  that  we  might  have  our  picture  taken  with 
it,  —  these  and  many  more  instances  are  cherished  by  us. 

When  we  first  asked  him  to  be  an  honorary  member  of  our 
class,  and  he  had  actually  said  that  he  would  be,  we  were  in- 
clined to  be  a  little  shy,  for  we  had  been  told  that  "he  was  very 
fond  of  boys,  but  didn't  like  girls."  But  the  first  time  we  met 
him  socially,  all  that  fear  vanished,  either  because  the  hearsay 
was  false,  or  because  of  the  great-souled  humanity  that  loved  all. 

There  were  times  at  Wellesley,  as  the  students  were  gathered 
around  him  asking  questions,  when  there  came  a  strange  solemnity 
upon  him,  and  he  was  moved  as  he  spoke.  One  of  these  times 
was  when  the  talk  turned  upon  immortality.  There  would  be 
moments  also  when  the  students  were  loath  to  leave  him,  keeping 
up  the  talk,  or  the  merriment  it  might  be,  until  the  bell  rang  for 
the  chapel  service.  Then  he  would  take  his  place  and  preach  to 
the  students  as  no  one  else  could  do. 

That  was  a  charmed  circle,  of  which  Dr.  Brooks  made  the 
centre,  and  truly,  the  hearts  of  those  girls  burned  within  them  as 
they  talked  with  him.  How  full  of  questions  those  hours  were ! 
As  if  a  group  of  college  girls  were  the  one  element  in  which  he 
found  himself  most  at  home.  Dr.  Brooks  would  turn  from  one  to 
another  of  his  listeners,  now  sportively  laying  claim  to  some  class 
or  college  privilege,  then  joining  in  a  hearty  laugh  at  the  difficul- 
ties in  his  way. 

Again  the  conversation  would  take  a  serious  turn.  The  heart 
of  a  new  book  would  be  laid  bare,  the  progress  of  some  social 
movement  in  all  its  vital  relations  to  life.  Perhaps  the  question 
turned  on  the  subject  of  a  preceding  talk  or  sermon,  and  then,  in 
a  simple  way,  the  spiritiial  life  of  each  was  quickened  and  stirred 
by  the  pure  fire  of  the  soul  which  touched  it  in  an  answer. 

And  always  with  the  thought  of  Dr.  Brooks  will  rise  to  mind 
the  evening  chapel  hour,  —  a  room  crowded  to  overflowing,  the 
swaying  of  that  majestic  form  behind  the  desk,  the  full  torrent 
of  words,  the  breathless  hush,  and  last  of  all,  the  heart  of  the 
listener  glowing  from  the  warm  touch  of  Divine  love  through 
God's  inspired  prophet.^ 

^  Cf .  The  Wellesley  Magazine,  March,  1893,  for  these  and  other  reminiscences. 
VOL.  II 


8o2  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

What  Phillips  Brooks  was  to  Harvard  has  been  made 
apparent  to  some  extent  in  the  foregoing  chapters.  In  his 
relation  to  its  students  he  has  been  compared  to  Dr.  Arnold 
at  Rugby.  "  His  influence,"  writes  a  Harvard  student,  "  was 
tremendous  and  was  much  needed  :  "  — 

That  intellectual  paralysis  and  moral  dry-rot  which  some  of 
its  wretched  victims  complacently  style  "  Harvard  indifference  " 
could  not  endure  the  presence  and  inspiration  of  a  man  like  Phil- 
lips Brooks,  One  of  his  last  efforts  was  an  appeal  to  educate 
young  men  to  do  something.  He  lamented  that  so  many  delayed 
entering  upon  the  fight  of  life  until  they  had  passed  the  first  flush 
of  youthful  ardor.  "Do  something,"  he  adjured  them,  "do  some- 
thing, do  something."      It  was  his  last  appeal  to  young  men. 

It  has  often  been  the  complaint  in  these  later  years  that 
the  Christian  ministry  has  ceased  to  be  an  attractive  profes- 
sion to  young  men,  in  compai'ison  with  other  callings,  as  in- 
stanced by  the  relatively  small  number  of  graduates  from 
Harvard  and  other  large  colleges  whom  it  enlists  in  its  ranks. 
But  when  Phillips  Brooks  spoke  of  the  ministry  as  a  profes- 
sion to  Harvard  students,  it  seemed  as  if  no  other  calling 
could  for  a  moment  compete  with  it  in  its  human  attractive- 
ness and  importance.  It  was  in  1886  that  a  course  of  lectures 
was  projected  on  the  different  professions,  each  to  be  given  by 
one  who  occupied  the  foremost  rank,  Richardson  giving  the 
lecture  on  architecture  as  a  profession,  and  Judge  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  on  law.  Phillips  Brooks  was  to  speak  for 
the  ministry.  Each  lecturer  was  to  deal  with  the  practical 
side  of  the  subject,  the  qualifications  needed,  the  difficulties 
to  be  surmounted,  the  emolument,  in  a  word  all  that  might 
be  necessary  to  enable  the  student  to  make  an  intelligent 
choice.  One  who  was  present  when  Phillips  Brooks  talked 
on  the  ministry  writes :  — 

I  was  there  in  Sever  11,  and  it  was  an  occasion  in  the  life  of 
Brooks,  —  a  great  opportunity,  and  he  realized  it.  The  hall  was 
never  more  crowded.  Students  stood  and  sat  on  the  window- 
seats;  they  seemed  to  be  on  each  other's  shoulders.  He  tried  to 
be  cool  and  philosophical,  and  tell  them  what  the  ministry  was 
like,  as  previous  speakers  had  told  of  the  other  professions,  —  he 
started  in  that  way,   but  the  mass  of  the  young  men  and  the 


^T.  23-57]    HARVARD   UNIVERSITY  803 

upturned  faces  and  the  subject  got  the  better  of  him,  till,  throwing 
philosophy  and  cool  statement  to  the  winds,  he  broke  out,  "I 
can't  come  here  and  talk  to  you  of  the  ministry  as  one  of  the 
professions.  I  must  tell  you  that  it  is  the  noblest  and  most  glo- 
rious calling  to  which  a  man  can  give  himself."  The  torrent 
once  loose,  it  did  not  cease  till  it  reached  the  deep  calm  of  his 
closing  words.  One  was  almost  afraid  that  the  whole  body  of 
young  men  would  rise  on  the  impulse  and  cry,  "Here  am  I,  send 
me !  "      That  was  a  great  speech,  for  its  feeling  and  its  thought. 

Another  lecture,  "The  Minister  and  liis  People,"  given 
before  the  students  of  the  Divinity  School,  has  been  ever 
since  remembered,  often  spoken  of  as  one  of  his  most  charac- 
teristic and  powerful  speeches,  and  deserving  a  permanent 
place  among  his  writings.^  There  was  an  amusing  incident 
in  connection  with  it,  —  his  surprise  and  embarrassment  at 
finding  a  large  audience  when  he  had  expected  a  small  one, 
an  audience  in  which  the  women  seemed  to  predominate. 

He  was  a  stalwart  defender  of  Harvard  against  any  hostile 
criticism  which  might  be  made  on  the  score  of  religious 
dangers  to  be  encountered  there.  To  a  young  man  asking 
his  advice,  where  he  should  go  to  college,  he  wrote :  — 

233  CLAREifDON  Street,  Boston,  March  28,  1887. 

My  dear  Friend,  —  I  am  glad  that  you  are  thinking  of  com- 
ing to  Harvard  College,  and  hope  that  you  will  do  so.  I  think 
that  it  was  never  so  good  a  place  for  the  life  and  study  of  a 
young  man  as  it  is  to-day.  I  have  known  it  for  the  last  thirty- 
six  years,  and  watched  it  closely  all  that  time.  It  has  improved 
and  ripened  steadily,  until  it  may  be  said  to-day,  with  no  dispar- 
agement to  other  colleges,  that  nowhere  can  a  better  education  be 
obtained  than  at  Harvard. 

There  are  young  men  there  of  every  form  of  religious  faith, 
and  many  who  have  no  faith.  There  are  scoffers,  perhaps  there 
are  blasphemers.  There  are  also  earnest,  noble,  consecrated 
Christian  men,  and  many  souls  seeking  a  light  and  truth  which 
they  have  not  yet  found.  You  will  meet  in  the  college  what  you 
will  meet  in  the  world.  You  will  have  to  choose  what  you  will 
be,  as  you  will  have  to  choose  all  your  life.  You  will  find  all 
the  help  which  Christian  friends  and  Christian  services  can  give 
to  a  young  man  whose  real  reliance  must  be  on  God  and  his  own 
soul.      I  hope  that  you  will  come  and  be  the  better  and  not  the 

1  A  full  report  was  published  in  The  Christian  Register,  February  28,  1884. 


8o4  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

■worse  Christian  for  your  four  years'  course.  If  you  do  come  and 
I  can  serve  you,  I  shall  be  very  glad.  Pray  come  and  see  me  as 
soon  as  you  are  settled  here,  and  let  me  know  how  the  questions 
which  are  now  very  rightly  on  your  mind  find  their  solution. 

I  hope  you  will  write  to  me  again  if  there  are  any  special  ques- 
tions which  you  wish  to  ask  me,  and  I  am,  with  all  best  wishes, 
Yours  most  sincerely,  Phillips  Brooks. 

In  1892  he  was  present  in  New  York  at  the  annual  dinner 
of  the  Harvard  Club,  where  he  was  greeted  when  he  rose  to 
speak  with  prolonged  applause  and  cheers,  every  one  rising  to 
his  feet  to  do  him  honor.  What  was  an  unusual  thing  with 
him,  he  continued  to  talk  for  half  an  hour  in  a  half-serious, 
half -jocular  vein.  He  defended  the  change  to  voluntary 
prayers  at  Harvard  :  — 

I  trust  there  are  colleges  more  religious  than  Harvard.  It  is 
possible.  But  I  will  say  this  of  Harvard,  —  I  do  not  know  any 
other  community  in  Christendom  where  one  third  of  the  popula- 
tion, without  the  slightest  compulsion  of  law  or  public  opinion, 
deliberately  attends  religious  service. 

The  interest  of  Phillips  Brooks  in  Harvard,  as  in  other 
institutions  with  which  he  was  connected,  was  not  merely  a 
philanthropic  one,  in  some  vague  and  general  way,  leading 
him  to  the  utterance  of  fine  sentiments,  but  it  was  a  concrete, 
personal  relation,  where  he  carried  the  needs  of  many  indi- 
vidual students.  He  was  aiding  young  men  with  money  as 
well  as  with  advice,  —  young  men  with  their  pathetic  stories 
and  their  failures,  brought  to  him  in  the  conviction  that  he 
could  help,  if  any  mortal  could,  in  their  restoration. 

Harvard  students  became  familiar  with  the  sight  of  Phil- 
lips Brooks  both  in  the  chapel  pulpit  and  upon  the  college 
campus.     Here  is  a  description  of  his  appearance :  — 

Many  a  morning,  after  chapel,  one  might  see  President  Eliot 
and  the  great  divine  crossing  the  quadrangle  together,  or  coming 
down  the  avenue  in  front  of  Gore  Hall.  President  Eliot  is  him- 
self a  tall  and  stalwart  figure;  but  he  was  completely  dwarfed 
by  the  great  bulk  and  towering  height  of  his  companion.  Clad 
in  a  voluminous  ulster,  with  a  large,  broad-brimmed  silk  hat 
tipped  back  a  little  on  his  head,  and  usually  with  a  big  walking- 
stick  under  his  arm,  Dr.  Brooks  strode  along  in  Brobdingnagian 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  805 

ease,  looking  like  a  walking  tower.  His  face  in  repose  suggested 
benevolence  and  placidity  rather  than  power,  and  irreverent  col- 
lege younglings  used  to  comment  wittily  on  his  habit  of  keeping 
his  mouth  ajar  as  he  walked  along.  He  was  usually  wrapped  in 
profound  abstraction. 

Any  sketch  of  the  characteristics  or  of  the  pastoral  activity 
of  Phillips  Brooks  which  omitted  his  relation  to  children 
would  indeed  be  deficient.  He  read  children  by  the  power 
of  his  imagination,  but  not  without  close  experience  of  child 
life.  One  of  the  most  beautiful  as  well  as  practical  sermons 
he  ever  preached  was  on  the  education  of  children. ^  Beneath 
it  lay  the  love  and  devotion  which  had  gone  forth  from  their 
infancy  to  Agnes,  Gertrude,  and  Susan,  the  children  of  his 
brother  William.  Not  only  was  he  their  frequent  visitor,  but 
he  made  it  a  rule  to  go  to  his  brother's  house  whenever  he 
was  free  on  Sunday  evenings.  He  had  the  children  learn  the 
poems  which  he  liked,  and  preserving  the  tradition  of  his 
father's  household,  he  called  for  their  repetition,  as  a  sacred 
task.  He  took  the  children  with  him  when  he  went  to  buy 
the  Christmas  presents,  enjoining  them  to  forget  all  they 
knevir  about  them  until  Christmas  came.  It  was  a  rule,  and  a 
trying  one  for  the  children,  that  no  presents  were  to  be  looked 
at  until  Uncle  Phillips  came  to  dinner  on  Christmas  Day, 
after  his  service  in  church  was  over,  in  order  that  they  might 
be  opened  in  his  presence  and  he  might  share  in  the  joy. 
He  preserved  their  letters,  filing  them  in  the  order  of  their 
dates.  When  Gertrude  was  old  enough,  he  made  her  his 
companion,  taking  her  with  him  on  his  journeys  or  when 
going  to  Cambridge,  and  often  insisting  on  her  being  at  the 
rectory  for  breakfast.  When  Susan  was  old  enough  she  was 
to  share  in  the  privilege.  In  these  little  things  he  was  exi- 
gent, out  of  the  abundance  of  his  heart  concentrating  his 
affection. 

To  be  with  children  seemed  to  give  hira  more  pleasure  than 
anything  else  in  life.    He  was  much  in  demand  for  children's 

1  Cf.  "  The  Education  of  Children,"  in  the  Boston  Transcript  for  April  26, 
1890.  The  text  of  the  sermon  was  Luke  ix.  48 :  "  Whosoever  shall  receive  this 
child  in  my  name  receiveth  rae." 


8o6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

schools.  There  were  homes  for  poor  children  where  he 
visited  regularly,  going  quite  as  much  apparently  for  his  own 
pleasure  as  for  the  children's  profit.  He  is  recalled  on  one 
occasion  as  bitterly  disappointed,  and  showing  that  he  was  so, 
when  he  went  to  one  of  these  homes  in  the  suburbs  of  Boston 
one  Simday  afternoon,  expecting  a  good  time  in  playing  and 
even  romping  with  them,  to  find  that  advantage  had  been 
taken  of  his  coming  to  invite  an  audience  of  adults  to  meet 
him,  whose  contribution  to  the  support  of  the  home  it  was 
desirable  to  obtain.  When  he  realized  the  situation  he  went 
to  the  window  and  stood  there  in  silence,  after  having  made 
his  remonstrance.  There  were  not  only  the  children  in  vari- 
ous institutions  whom  he  carried  in  his  heart,  but  there  were 
the  children  in  hundreds  of  households  where  he  visited,  who 
rejoiced  at  his  coming  and  claimed  him  as  a  friend.  Number- 
less are  the  anecdotes  which  illustrate  this  mutual  devotion 
and  friendship.  The  story  of  Helen  Keller  may  be  recalled 
as  a  beautiful  instance  of  the  extraordinary  character  as  well 
as  range  of  his  parish  ministry.^  She  was  entrusted  to  his  care 
by  her  father,  who  was  anxious  that  her  first  religious  instruc- 
tion should  come  from  Phillips  Brooks.  The  story  need  not  be 
repeated  here,  for  it  has  had  wide  circulation,  how  he  sounded 
the  depths  of  that  young  soul,  shut  out  from  access  to  the  ordi- 
nary methods  of  acquiring  knowledge,  of  sight  and  of  hear- 
ing, and  gave  to  her  the  idea  of  God.  He  was  profoundly 
impressed  with  the  remark  she  made  after  the  first  conversa- 
tion, that  she  had  always  known  there  was  a  God,  but  had 
not  before  known  His  name.  She  continued  to  write  letters 
to  him  as  long  as  he  lived,  telling  him  about  herself,  her 
thoughts,  her  experiences.  In  one  of  his  letters  in  reply  he 
makes  one  of  those  profound  remarks  which  put  to  shame  the 
attempted  philosophy  of  life,  yet  so  simple  that  a  child  could 
understand  it,  and  so  true  that  it  called  for  no  evidence,  "  The 
reason  why  we  love  our  friends  is  because  God  loves  us." 

Still  another  sphere  into  which  the  ministry  of  Phillips 
Brooks  expanded  was  the  number  of  those  to  be  counted  by 
the  thousands  who  had  never  seen  or  heard  him  but  knew 
^  Cf.  Letters  of  Phillips  Brooks  to  Helen  Keller,  Boston,  1893. 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  807 

him  by  the  reading  of  his  books.  To  illustrate  the  nature 
and  extent  of  this  service,  it  would  be  necessary  to  reproduce 
the  letters  of  those  whose  gratitude  for  the  aid  and  comfort  he 
had  given  demanded  expression,  —  letters  constantly  coming 
to  him,  telling  him,  it  almost  seems  in  exaggerated  strain,  how 
he  had  been  the  means  of  imparting  faith  and  hope.  He 
needed  these  letters  for  his  own  encouragement ;  they  were  to 
him  like  the  staying  up  of  Moses'  arms  when  engaged  in 
prayer.  A  friend  of  his  recalls  his  words :  "  Do  not  be  chary 
of  appreciation.  Hearts  are  unconsciously  hungry  for  it. 
There  is  little  danger,  especially  with  us  in  this  cold  New  Eng- 
land region,  that  appreciation  shall  be  given  too  abundantly." 

The  power  of  Phillips  Brooks  in  the  sick  room  was  recog- 
nized as  something  wonderful  and  rare.  A  mysterious  influ- 
ence seemed  to  go  forth  from  him  for  good,  for  strength  and 
life,  even  when  he  sat  down  in  silence  by  the  bedside  and  no 
need  was  felt  for  words.  He  had  a  great  gift  for  inspiriting 
people  who  were  depressed  or  had  lost  heart  for  their  work. 
A  word  from  him  would  send  them  back  to  their  tasks  again, 
with  renewed  energy.  What  he  said  to  a  young  woman 
tired  out  with  the  care  of  an  invalid  mother  may  illustrate, 
even  without  his  voice  and  presence,  how  he  dealt  with  the 
disheartened,  "You  go  on  taking  care  of  your  mother,  and 
when  she  is  gone,  God  will  take  care  of  you." 

The  letters  he  wrote  to  people  in  affliction,  if  gathered  to- 
gether, would  form  a  considerable  volume.  He  seemed  to 
attract  them,  as  he  did  the  poor,  the  sick,  the  outcast,  by  some 
force  which  he  did  not  consciously  exercise,  and  yet  of  whose 
existence  he  was  aware.  He  had  made,  as  we  have  seen,  a 
study  of  the  art  of  consolation.  It  was  not  only  by  imagina- 
tion that  he  entered  into  the  woes  of  others,  though  imagina- 
tion helped  him  and  was  alert  on  the  slightest  appeal  to  his 
sympathy,  and  he  could  not  have  been  so  successful  without 
its  aid.  But  he  was  applying  the  consolation  to  himself  in 
the  first  instance,  and  testing  on  himself  its  power  before  he 
carried  it  to  others.  The  flight  of  time,  the  departure  of 
youth,  the  loss  of  friends,  the  changing  world  kept  his  mind 
and  heart  absorbed  with  the  problem  of  the  meaning  of  life, 


8o8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

—  the  purpose  of  God  in  giving  or  withholding  or  withdraw- 
ing his  gifts.  The  strange  mystery  of  it  all  was  a  burden  he 
could  not  throw  off ;  but  amidst  the  complications  of  life  one 
truth  stood  out  clearly  before  him,  —  we  find  it  in  his  letters  of 
condolence  as  early  as  1883,  when  he  was  writing  to  a  friend 
on  the  loss  of  two  children  who  died  together  in  infancy,  — 
and  this  truth  he  formulated  as  the  essence  and  final  result  of 
his  observation  of  life,  "  God  never  takes  away  any  gift  which 
He  has  once  given  to  His  children."  Out  of  these  many  letters 
of  consolation,  one  is  here  given  as  a  type  of  all :  — 

233  CilAjiendon  Street,  Boston,  November  19,  1891. 

Dear   Mr.    ,   I  have  thought   much  about  our  meeting 

last  Sunday,  and  the  few  words  we  had  together.  May  I  try  to 
tell  you  again  where  your  only  comfort  lies?  It  is  not  in  for- 
getting the  happy  past.  People  bring  us  well-meant  but  miser- 
able consolation  when  they  tell  what  time  will  do  to  help  our 
grief.  We  do  not  want  to  lose  our  grief,  because  our  grief  is 
bound  uj}  with  our  love  and  we  could  not  cease  to  mourn  without 
being  robbed  of  our  affections. 

But  if  you  know,  as  you  do  know,  that  the  great  and  awful 
change  which  has  come  into  your  life  and  wrought  you  such  dis- 
tress has  brought  your  dear  wife  the  joy  of  heaven,  can  you  not, 
in  the  midst  of  all  your  suffering,  rejoice  for  her? 

And  if,  knowing  that  she  is  with  God,  you  can  be  with  God 
too,  and  every  day  claim  his  protection,  and  try  to  do  his  will, 
may  you  not  still  in  spirit  be  very  near  to  her? 

She  is  not  dead,  but  living,  and  if  you  are  sure  of  what  care  is 
holding  her  and  educating  her,  you  can  be  very  constantly  with 
her  in  spirit,  and  look  forward  confidently  to  the  day  when  you 
shall  also  go  to  God  and  be  with  her. 

I  know  this  does  not  take  away  your  pain,  —  no  one  can  do 
that,  you  do  not  want  any  one  to  do  that,  not  even  God ;  but  it 
can  help  you  to  bear  it,  to  be  brave  and  cheerful,  to  do  your 
duty,  and  to  live  the  pure,  earnest,  spiritual  life  which  she,  in 
heaven,  wishes  you  to  live. 

It  is  the  last  effort  of  unselfishness,  the  last  token  which  you 
can  give  her  of  the  love  you  bear  her,  that  you  can  let  her  pass 
out  of  your  sight  to  go  to  God. 

My  dear  friend,  she  is  yours  forever.  God  never  takes  away 
what  He  has  once  given.  May  He  make  you  worthy  of  her !  May 
He  comfort  you  and  make  you  strong  I 

Your  friend  sincerely,  Phillips  Brooks. 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  809 

Many  were  the  attempts  to  fathom  the  secret  of  Phillips 
Brooks's  power  in  the  pulpit.  And  of  them  all  it  may  be 
said  that  they  were  so  many  contributions  to  the  solution  of 
the  problem,  while  yet  in  the  last  analysis  the  secret  re- 
mained, mysterious,  inexplicable.  Thus  was  he  placed  in 
comparison  with  famous  preachers  whose  reputation  is  cher- 
ished in  the  church's  tradition;  but  no  standard  of  judgment 
could  be  found,  and  in  the  comparison  the  difference  stood 
forth  more  prominent  than  the  resemblance.  No  one  was  a 
closer  student  of  Phillips  Brooks  in  the  pulpit  than  his  Eng- 
lish friend.  Professor  James  Bryce.  After  speaking  of  other 
preachers  whom  he  had  heard,  —  Bishop  Wilberforce,  Dr. 
Candlish,  Mr.  Spurgeon,  Dr.  Liddon,  and  Henry  Ward 
Beecher,  —  Mr.  Bryce  continues :  — 

All  these  famous  men  were,  in  a  sense,  more  brilliant,  that 
is  to  say,  more  rhetorically  effective,  than  Dr.  Brooks,  yet  none 
of  them  seemed  to  speak  so  directly  to  the  soul.  With  all  of 
them  it  was  impossible  to  forget  the  speaker  in  the  words  spoken, 
because  the  speaker  did  not  seem  to  have  quite  forgotten  himself, 
but  to  have  studied  the  effect  he  sought  to  produce.  With  him 
it  was  otherwise.  What  amount  of  preparation  he  may  have 
given  to  his  discourses  I  do  not  know.  But  there  was  no  sign  of 
art  about  them,  no  touch  of  self-consciousness.  He  spoke  to  his 
audience  as  a  man  might  speak  to  his  friend,  pouring  forth  with 
swift,  yet  quiet  and  seldom  impassioned  earnestness  the  thoughts 
and  feelings  of  a  singularly  pure  and  lofty  spirit.  The  listeners 
never  thought  of  style  or  manner,  but  only  of  the  substance  of 
the  thoughts.  They  were  entranced  and  carried  out  of  themselves 
by  the  strength  and  sweetness  and  beauty  of  the  aspects  of  reli- 
gious truth  and  its  helpfulness  to  weak  human  nature  which  he 
presented.  Dr.  Brooks  was  the  best  because  the  most  edifying 
of  preachers.  .  .  .  There  was  a  wealth  of  keen  observation,  fine 
reflection,  and  insight  both  subtle  and  imaginative,  all  touched 
with  a  warmth  and  tenderness  which  seemed  to  transfuse  and 
irradiate  the  thought  itself.  In  this  blending  of  perfect  simpli- 
city of  treatment  with  singular  fertility  and  elevation  of  thought, 
no  other  among  the  famous  preachers  of  the  generation  that  is 
now  vanishing  approached  him.^ 

Professor  A.  B.  Bruce,  of  Glasgow  University,  the  author 
of   important    books,  —  "The   Kingdom    of     God,"    "The 
1  Cf.  The  Westminster  Gazette,  February  6,  1893. 


8io  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

Humiliation  of  Christ,"  "The  Training  of  the  Twelve," 
"Apologetics,"  etc., — a  man  with  "strong,  clear,  Scotch 
intellect,"  when  he  was  in  this  country  delivering  a  course  of 
lectures  in  Union  Theological  Seminary,  took  the  opportunity 
to  hear  Phillips  Brooks. 

He  came  down  to  my  house  one  evening  [says  Rev.  E.  W. 
Donald],  full  of  enthusiasm  that  could  not  be  repressed,  because 
he  had  heard,  on  the  previous  Sunday,  three  sermons  by  Phillips 
Brooks.  He  had  gone  to  the  Church  of  the  Incarnation  in  the 
morning  out  of  a  mild  curiosity ;  had  broken  an  engagement  with 
a  friend  to  hear  a  minister  of  his  own  church  in  the  afternoon, 
that  he  might  again  hear  Mr.  Brooks ;  and  he  had  broken  still 
another  engagement  in  the  evening  also  to  listen  to  a  clergyman 
of  his  own  church,  that  he  might  hear  Mr.  Brooks  preach  once 
more.  When  I  asked  him,  "How  does  he  compare  with  your 
great  preachers  in  Scotland  and  England  ?  "  he  said,  with  a 
homely  and  yet  a  very  striking  figure,  "  It  is  this  way :  our  great 
preachers  take  into  the  pulpit  a  bucket  full  or  half  full  of  the 
Word  of  God,  and  then,  by  the  force  of  personal  mechanism, 
they  attempt  to  convey  it  to  the  congregation.  But  this  man  is 
just  a  great  water  main,  attached  to  the  everlasting  reservoir  of 
God's  truth  and  grace  and  love,  and  streams  of  life,  by  a  hea- 
venly gravitation,  pour  through  him  to  refresh  every  weary  soul." 

From  an  article  by  Rev.  H.  G.  Spaulding,  entitled  "The 
Preaching  of  Phillips  Brooks,"^  a  few  extracts  are  taken 
bearing  upon  his  power  and  the  secret  of  his  strength :  — 

Of  Phillips  Brooks  a  brother  clergyman  has  said,  "He  had  but 
to  stand  up  before  an  audience  and  let  himself  be  seen,  and  the 
day  was  won."  But  that  which  won  the  day  was  the  rare  combi- 
nation of  qualities,  —  the  magnificent  presence,  the  commanding 
stature,  the  flashing  eye,  the  sympathetic  voice  vibrant  with  emo- 
tion, the  swift  imagination,  and  the  wonderful  faculty  of  massing 
words  till  their  very  volume  became  the  fit  vehicle  of  the  rushing 
thoughts.  To  all  these  qualities  were  superadded  the  thorough 
manliness,  the  transparent  simplicity,  the  complete  Christlikeness, 
of  the  preacher's  character.  The  exhortation  to  diviner  living 
derived  its  potency  from  the  actual  divineness  of  the  life  from 
which  the  message  came.  .  .  .  "By  common  consent,"  as  Presi- 
dent Tucker,  of  Dartmouth,  well  says,  "no  one  has  translated  so 
much  of  the  Christian  religion  into  current  thought  and  life." 
1  Cf.  The  New  World,  March,  1895. 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  8 1 1 

Of  Phillips  Brooks  we  may  say,  as  was  said  of  Plato: 
"Because  he  was  also  an  artist,  he  immersed  his  thought  in  the 
warm  atmosphere  of  human  life,  and  at  every  stage  gave  it  the 
dramatic  interest  of  intimate  human  association." 

In  the  comparison  with    other  preachers,   Barrow,   Jeremy 
Taylor,  Fenelon,  and  Tauler  are  mentioned  :  — 

We  miss  in  their  works  the  hlood-veined  humanity,  the  spirit 
of  sonship,  and  the  broad  and  manly  sympathies  of  Phillips 
Brooks.  .  .  .  These  flush  his  eloquent  periods  with  a  fervor  that 
Barrow  altogether  lacked.  These  make  his  figures  of  speech  — 
many  of  which  are  as  beautiful  as  any  that  Jeremy  Taylor  used 
—  resemble  flowers  freshly  plucked,  glittering  with  the  yet  un- 
wasted  dew,  and  clothe  his  mysticism  with  a  lifelikeness  and 
reality  for  want  of  which  the  discourses  of  the  earlier  mystics 
seem  but  pallid  ghosts  and  empty  semblances  of  truth. 

The  late  Rev.  R.  S.  Storrs,  of  Brooklyn,  himself  an  eminent 
preacher,  enumerates  the  gifts  of  Phillips  Brooks  which  con- 
stituted his  power :  — 

Thus  there  was  in  him  a  majesty  and  strength  of  spirit,  as  of 
person,  which  all  had  to  recognize,  and  were  glad  to  recognize; 
but  with  this  was  the  utmost,  loveliest  gentleness  and  tenderness 
which  made  a  sunshine  in  the  shadiest  places,  among  the  humblest 
families  whom  he  visited.  There  was  that  unsurpassed  affluence 
of  nature  and  of  culture,  but  with  it  there  was  the  beautiful  sim- 
plicity of  spirit,  as  of  the  vital  air,  as  of  the  sunshine  which 
irradiates  and  bathes  the  earth,  —  a  simplicity  as  childlike  as  one 
ever  saw  in  a  human  soul.  There  was  his  utter  devotion  to  the 
highest  ideals  of  duty  and  of  truth,  and  his  keenest  apprehension 
of  the  beauty  and  authority  of  these  ideals ;  and  yet  there  was 
with  this  the  most  sympathetic  interest,  habitual  and  spontaneous, 
in  humble  persons,  and  in  the  common  affairs  of  life,  his  own  or 
others.  There  was  that  marvellous  eloquence,  yet  consecrated 
always,  in  its  utmost  reach  and  rush,  to  the  service  of  the  Master, 
to  the  giving  of  the  message  which  the  Master  had  given  him  for 
the  souls  of  men.  And  with  all  the  self-respecting  consciousness 
which  he  could  not  but  possess,  and  with  all  the  admiration  and 
love  and  honor  which  have  surrounded  him  as  almost  no  other  of 
his  time,  there  was  that  marvellous  modesty,  which  shrank  from 
anything  of  self-assertion  or  assumption  over  others,  and  which 
showed  to  the  last  no  more  of  either  of  these  than  when  he  had 
been  a  boy  in  school,  or  a  freshman  in  college.     It  was  this  com- 


8i2  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

bination  of  qualities,  interblending  with  each  other,  representing 
the  golden  hemispheres  of  the  perfect  globe,  which  gave  a  some- 
thing unique  and  mystical  to  the  spirit  of  Phillips  Brooks. 

The  Rev.  J.  R.  Day,  a  distinguished  Methodist  clergyman, 
was  impressed  by  the  universal  sympathy  of  Phillips  Brooks, 
his  power  to  enter  into  the  lives  of  men  of  every  class,  and 
make  them  his  own ;  — 

Marvellously  did  he  bring  out  of  that  wonderful  gospel  teach- 
ings which  appeal  to  the  profound  and  the  learned,  and  plain 
lessons  which  also  help  the  unlettered;  so  that  the  deep- thinking 
were  introduced  to  the  profoundest  philosophy,  and  the  hurried 
man  felt  that  somehow  the  hour  and  the  lesson  were  for  him,  and 
that  he  could  go  out  and  work  noble  manhood  out  of  the  common- 
est callings  of  life.  The  scholar  said,  "He  is  of  us,"  and  the 
unlettered  said,  "He  is  of  us."  The  poor  said,  "He  is  of  us," 
and  the  rich  said,  "He  is  of  us."  To  the  young  he  was  full  of 
mirth  and  buoyancy ;  to  the  troubled  he  was  a  man  deeply  ac- 
quainted with  grief.  All  men,  of  all  classes  and  conditions, 
claimed  him,  because  in  his  magnificent  heart  and  sympathy  he 
seemed  to  be  all  men,  and  to  enter  into  their  disappointments 
and  into  their  successes,  and  to  make  them  his  own.  This  was 
rare  genius.     This  was  large  capacity. 

Others  who  were  studying  Phillips  Brooks  found  his  power 
to  lie  in  the  essential  nature  of  what  is  called  genius,  and 
carried  the  examination  no  further.  He  had  "the  genius 
for  religion  and  for  preaching."  He  was  to  the  pulpit  what 
great  poets  are  who  have  given  the  highest  and  fullest  ex- 
pression to  life.  Bishop  Clark  took  the  boldest  comparison, 
calling  him  "the  Shakespeare  of  the  pulpit."  In  the  preach- 
ing of  Phillips  Brooks  there  was,  as  with  Shakespeare,  the 
absence  of  personal  peculiarities. 

If  he  is  nearly  as  impersonal  as  Shakespeare  [says  Rev.  H.  G. 
Spaulding],  it  is  because,  when  he  preaches,  he  becomes  almost 
as  completely  the  voice  of  the  spirit  as  Shakespeare  is  the  voice 
of  nature.  He  draws  his  illustrations  not  from  his  religious 
autobiography,  but  from  the  spiritual  biography  of  the  race. 

In  an  admirable  study  of  Phillips  Brooks  as  a  preacher, 
by  the  late  Professor  Everett,  of  Harvard,  the  same  compari- 
son is  employed  and  expanded :  — 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  813 

We  have,  then,  to  recognize  that  Phillips  Brooks  was  a  man  of 
genius.  He  was  as  truly  such  as  any  of  our  great  poets.  It  is 
not  important,  nor,  indeed,  would  it  be  possible,  to  make  a  com- 
parative estimate  of  his  genius  with  that  of  any  specified  poet  or 
artist.  All  that  is  to  our  purpose  is  to  notice  the  fact  of  his 
wonderful  genius,  and  to  illustrate,  as  may  be  possible,  its  nature 
and  its  methods.  The  genius  that  Phillips  Brooks  possessed 
was  that  of  the  preacher  as  truly  as  that  of  Longfellow  or  of 
Tennyson  was  that  of  the  poet.  I  cannot  say  under  what  other 
forms  this  genius  might  have  manifested  itself.  What  was  ac- 
tually displayed  in  his  life  was  the  genius  of  the  preacher.  Some 
preachers  do  helpful  service  by  their  reasoning.  Some  inspire  by 
the  power  of  their  imagination.  There  are  comparatively  few 
in  whom  the  special  genius  which  marks  the  truest  preacher  as 
such  makes  itself  felt.  This  genius  was  preeminently  the  gift  of 
Phillips  Brooks. 

The  genius  of  the  preacher,  I  need  hardly  say,  consists  in  the 
power  of  so  uttering  spiritual  truth  that  it  shall  be  effective  in 
influencing  the  hearts  of  men.  This  implies  a  profound  insight 
into  religious  truth,  —  an  insight  that  shall  reveal  implications 
and  applications  of  which  the  ordinary  mind  is  not  conscious.  It 
implies  also  a  gift  for  the  presentation  of  what  is  thus  beheld  in 
an  attractive  and  effective  form.  It  is  thus  a  genius  of  expres- 
sion, which  is  something  very  different  from  a  genius  for  expres- 
sions. Shakespeare  had  a  genius  for  expressing  the  passions  of 
the  human  heart.  This  implied  an  insight  into  the  depths  of 
human  life,  a  power  of  creation  by  which  what  he  perceived  was 
embodied  in  living  forms,  and  a  power  of  presentation  by  which 
these  forms  that  lived  for  him  should  live  also  for  the  world.  ^ 

There  was  one  characteristic  of  Phillips  Brooks  regarding 
which  the  verdict  was  unanimous,  — his  power  of  excitation 
over  an  audience.  How  it  was  done  no  one  could  explain. 
Yet  it  was  clearly  enough  apparent  that,  in  preaching,  he 
was  making  some  mighty  effort  of  the  will  to  lift  his  hearers 
to  his  own  high  altitude,  even  while  he  resorted  to  no  sensa- 
tional efforts,  and  seemed  to  trust  entirely  to  the  power  of 
the  spoken  word  of  truth.  He  knew  that  he  had  the  power; 
he  knew  that  he  could  exert  it  with  success,  though  now  and 
then  he  admitted  failure.  But  while  he  could  arouse  the 
inner  mood  of  a  congregation  to  the  highest  pitch  of  excite- 
1  Cf.  The  Harvard  Graduates'  Magazine,  April,  1893,  p.  339. 


8 14  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1859-93 

ment,  yet  also  his  appeal  was  not  to  the  sensuous  emotion. 
It  was  no  luxury  to  hear  him  preach,  but  it  strained  the 
tension  of  the  hearer  beyond  any  other  experience  of  the  art 
of  oratory.  He  went  beneath  the  feelings  and  moved  the 
mysterious  centre  of  one's  being.  He  played  upon  the  will 
like  some  subtle,  accomplished  musician.  The  remark  of  an 
English  bishop,  Kt.  Kev.  James  Frazer,  of  Manchester,  was 
the  universal  comment,  "He  makes  one  feel  so  strong." 

He  rose  in  his  first  few  sentences  [says  Mr.  Bryce]  like  a 
strong-winged  bird,  into  a  serene  atmosphere  of  meditation,  still- 
ing and  thrilling  the  crowd  that  filled  the  chapel  like  a  strain  of 
solemn  music.  Few  have  possessed  in  equal  measure  the  power 
of  touching  what  is  best  in  men,  and  lifting  them  suddenly  by 
sympathetic  words  to  the  elevation  of  high-strung  feeling  and 
purpose  which  they  cannot  reach  of  themselves,  save  under  some 
wave  of  emotion  due  to  some  personal  crisis  in  life. 

It  was  in  the  afternoon  sermons  at  Trinity  Church  that 
Phillips  Brooks  was  at  his  greatest. 

These  were  the  times  [says  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine]  when  the 
glory  of  his  preaching  culminated.  In  words  blazing  with  fire, 
or  melted  in  exquisite  tenderness,  or  radiant  with  hope,  and 
changing  quickly  from  one  emotion  to  another,  often  with  his 
head  thrown  back  and  eyes  on  high  as  piercing  through  the  veil, 
his  great  figure  would  rise  and  dilate  to  its  utmost  majesty,  as 
he  threw  his  arms  wide  open  with  that  mighty  gesture  of  loving 
invitation,  and  then  his  face  would  melt  into  that  angel  smile  of 
tenderness,  never  seen  by  some  of  us  on  any  other  mortal  face. 

A  lady  once  heard  him  in  the  afternoon  at  Trinity,  and  when 
asked  about  the  sermon,  remarked  that  it  was  not  so  good  as  some 
she  had  heard  from  him,  but  that  she  carried  away  from  it  one 
impression,  —  his  deep,  overpowering  love  for  his  congregation. 
On  hearing  this,  he  was  affected  to  tears,  and  remarked  that  he 
would  rather  that  should  be  said  of  him  than  anything  else. 

"We  have  the  description  of  one  of  these  afternoon  services 
by  Phillips  Brooks  himself :  — 

I  always  remember  one  special  afternoon  years  ago,  when  the 
light  faded  from  the  room  where  I  was  preaching,  and  the  faces 
melted  together  into  a  unit,  as  of  one  impressive,  pleading  man, 
and  I  felt  them    listening   when  I  could   hardly  see   them.     I 


^T.  23-57]       CHARACTERISTICS  815 

remember  this  accidental  day  as  one  of  the  times  when  the  sense 
of  the  privilege  of  having  to  do  with  people  as  their  preacher  came 
out  almost  overpoweringly.^ 

It  may  have  been  this  same  day,  but  it  was  not  an  "acci- 
dental day,"  when  Mr.  Horace  E.  Scudder  was  present,  wit- 
nessing from  the  pew  what  Mr.  Brooks  experienced  in  the 
pulpit :  — 

The  solitary  pulpit  light  became  the  sole  illumination  of  the 
church.  Its  whole  flame  was  cast  upon  the  red  cushion  and  the 
side  of  Mr.  Brooks's  half  figure  and  face.  There  was  a  glow  of 
color  upon  the  speaker's  enkindled  visage.  All  the  church  was 
dark.  I  could  see  a  head  here  and  there  in  the  murkiness,  but 
that  intense  light  glowed  more  and  more  intensely.  The  dark- 
ness deepened  the  stillness,  and  the  voice  of  the  preacher,  grow- 
ing more  fervid  and  passionate,  came  full  and  strong  from  that 
central  glory  in  the  gloom.      It  was  the  apotheosis  of  the  pulpit.* 

Phillips  Brooks  would  occasionally  make  a  remark  in  con- 
versation which  told  more  about  himself  than  others  could 
tell.  Thus  he  said  to  his  friend,  Mr.  Deland,  who  treasured 
the  words  in  his  memory  as  full  of  meaning,  "I  say  many 
things  in  the  afternoon  which  I  should  never  think  of  saying 
in  the  morning." 

In  this  incomplete  sketch  of  the  characteristics  of  Phillips 
Brooks,  one  feature  of  the  man  is  left  to  be  described  in  his 
own  language,  with  this  brief  word  of  preface,  that  from  his 
youth  he  had  kept  himself  in  close  association  with  the  lives 
of  great  men.  The  following  extract  is  from  his  note-book, 
as  he  was  preparing  to  speak  in  Trinity  Church  on  Washing- 
ton's Birthday,  which  in  1891  fell  on  Sunday.  He  took 
for  his  text,  "  Whosoever  wiU  be  great  among  you,  let  him 
be  your  minister :  "  — 

It  is  the  day  of  a  great  man  to-day.  This  kind  of  festival 
nobler  than  the  festival  of  an  event.  The  latter  is  the  presence 
of  God's  power,  the  former  a  presence  of  God  himself.  Great 
men  are  the  treasures  and  inspirations  of  the  nation.  Let  us 
think  this  morning  of  Great  Men ! 

The  vague  yet  certain  process  of  their  discrimination.      Let  us 

^  Lectures  on  Preaching,  p.  83. 

2  C£.  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  December,  1877. 


8i6  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1859-93 

admire  the  human  instinct!  No  one  can  tell  why  this  or  that 
one  stands  out,  but  he  does.  The  others  fade  away.  Luther, 
Cromwell,  Washington :  the  estimates  vary,  but  the  conclusion 
is  clear.  The  sense  of  accident  and  circumstance  comes  in ;  the 
"mute,  inglorious  Milton"  theory;  the  subtle  proof  that  the 
other  man  is  greater.  Yet  still  the  element  of  timeliness  to  be 
regarded.  There  are  men  who  are  out  of  time ;  the  need  of  get- 
ting a  little  distance  off  to  see  the  prominence  of  some,  to  catch  up 
with  others.  But  the  few  great  men  stand.  Others  sometimes 
added,  but  almost  never  is  one  extinguished.  Position  cannot 
make  or  disguise. 

The  question  whether  they  are  different  in  kind  or  in  degree 
from  other  men.  Both.  Difference  of  degree  becomes  difference 
in  kind.  It  is  an  affair  of  proportion  of  the  elements  of  life. 
The  simplicity  of  greatness;  more  elemental,  more  free,  holding 
larger  conditions  in  harmony.  Comparison  of  a  great  city;  how 
different  its  life!      So  of  a  great  man. 

While  greatness  is  ordinarily  associated  with  prominence,  we 
recognize  its  quality  often  in  obscurity.  There  we  see  a  person 
who  has  these  two  conditions:  (1)  He  is  at  once  exceptional  and 
representative.  He  is  unlike  other  men,  and  at  the  same  time 
makes  a  revelation  of  them.  Thus  he  haunts  and  fascinates. 
The  moral  and  mental  united.  (2)  He  is  not  a  mere  expert, 
but  a  man ;  great,  not  in  some  special  skill,  but  as  a  being. 

But  enough  of  the  effort  to  define  greatness.  We  all  know  it. 
The  real  question  whence  it  comes.  Once  great  men  were  looked 
upon  like  meteors  dropped  out  of  the  sky ;  now  as  if  they  grew 
out  of  the  ground,  expressing  its  fertility.  The  significance  of 
the  change.  The  greatest  men  make  greatness  possible  to  all. 
In  a  mysterious  way  it  is  we  who  did  these  things.  Vicarious- 
ness.  Personality  is  universal.  Shall  there  come  a  time  of  high 
average  with  no  great  men?     Surely  not.      They  shall  always  be. 

Great  men  of  the  future.  The  world  shall  choose  them  better. 
They  shall  better  know  their  places.  Great  men  have  not  found 
their  place,  though  they  are  always  feeling  after  it.  It  is  ser- 
vice. The  conceit  and  jealousy  of  dignity  must  pass  away. 
Who  is  greatest  ?  He  that  sitteth  at  meat  or  he  that  serveth  ? 
Christ's  appeal. 

Cultivate  reverence  for  Greatness.  Teach  it  to  your  children. 
Cultivate  perception  of  it.  The  double  blessing  of  pattern  and 
power. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

1891 

LENT  AT  TRINITY  CHURCH.  NOON  LECTURES  AT  ST.  PAUL's. 
ELECTION  TO  THE  EPISCOPATE.  THE  CONTROVERSY  FOL- 
LOWING THE  ELECTION.  EXTRACTS  EROM  CORRESPOND- 
ENCE 

The  last  of  the  Lenten  ministrations  of  Phillips  Brooks  was 
the  most  impressive  of  all.  If  he  had  known  that  it  was  the 
last  Lent  he  was  to  keep  at  Trinity,  he  could  not  have  better 
expressed  the  mood  appropriate  to  such  a  moment.  The 
change  in  his  appearance,  indicated  in  one  of  his  photographs, 
where  humility  of  spirit  and  a  brooding  tenderness  and  solici- 
tude look  out  from  his  dark  and  somewhat  saddened  eyes, 
corresponds  with  a  certain  indescribable  quality,  which  per- 
vaded all  his  utterances.  A  brief  allusion  to  some  of  these 
Lenten  addresses  will  be  sufficient. 

The  subjects  of  the  lectures  to  the  Bible  class  on  Saturday 
evenings  were  the  larger  words  of  Scripture  and  of  life, 
Creation,  Preservation,  Inspiration,  Incarnation,  Redemp- 
tion, Sanctification,  Resurrection.  On  Friday  afternoons  he 
commented  on  the  Te  Deum,  bringing  out  the  sublime  mean- 
ing of  the  church's  greatest  hymn  till  the  grandeur,  and  at 
the  same  time  the  deeper  truth  of  the  poetic  interpretation  of 
life,  was  felt  by  all  who  listened.  On  Wednesday  evenings 
his  subjects  were  personal  utterances  of  Christ,  which  ex- 
pressed the  essential  meaning  of  life.  Thus  he  took  up  the 
words,  "What  I  do  thou  knowest  not  now,  but  thou  shalt 
know  hereafter;"  "I  am  the  way,  and  the  truth,  and  the 
life."  "Fear  not  them  which  kill  the  body,  but  are  not  able 
to  kill  the  soul." 

With  these  words  of  Christ  he  associated  the  utterances  of 


8i8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

great  men  in  Scripture:  the  words  of  David,  "All  thy  works 
praise  thee,  O  Lord,  and  thy  saints  give  thanks  unto  Thee." 
"  The  only  real  praise  is  the  extension  of  the  glory  of  a  thing. 
Obedience  is  praise." 

For  the  distinctive  words  of  St.  Paul  he  took  the  passage 
in  Romans  v.  10,  11 :  "For  if  when  we  were  enemies  we  were 
reconciled  unto  God  by  the  death  of  His  Son,  much  more 
being  reconciled  we  shall  be  saved  by  His  life.  And  not 
only  so,  but  we  also  joy  in  God  through  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  by  whom  we  have  received  the  Atonement. ^^ 

These  were  representative  words  of  John  the  Baptist,  "  He 
must  increase,  but  I  must  decrease." 

The  inevitable  sadness  of  such  words,  and  yet  an  element  of 
gladness  in  them.  There  must  be  both,  because  they  are  great 
life- words.  Sadness  and  gladness  in  all  life.  There  is  here  the 
relief  of  pressure,  which,  however  the  pressure  has  been  rejoiced 
in,  is  welcome.     Another  takes  the  burden. 

This  word  of  Moses  is  different  from  the  words  of  Jesus, 
of  Paul,  John,  or  David:  "And  he  said  unto  him.  If  thy  pre- 
sence go  not  with  me,  carry  us  not  up  hence." 

It  has  the  strange  Covenant  figure  in  it.  It  makes  terms  with 
God,  but  it  is  the  full  tone  of  the  Old  Testament  which  craves 
God's  presence.  It  is  manly  and  vigorous.  If  it  sins  it  will 
face  its  sin  in  the  full  light.      Life  shall  mean  its  fullest. 

The  Lenten  sermons,  like  the  addresses,  dealt  profoundly 
with  the  consciousness  of  sin.  On  Ash  Wednesday,  the  text 
was,  "God  be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner;  "  on  Good  Friday  the 
text  was  this:  "And  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ  His  Son 
cleanseth  us  from  all  sin." 

Blood  is  life.  But,  as  always  used,  it  is  given  life,  —  life 
made  manifest  in  being  given.  The  mystery  of  blood,  even  seen 
in  these  veins.  It  is  freely  shed  that  another  may  have  the  life 
I  have.  And  life  is  cleansing.  There  is  no  other  cleansing  than 
that  which  comes  by  life.      The  flowing  stream  grows  pure. 

Serious  and  solemn,  searching  to  the  last  degree,  were 
these  Lenten  addresses,  but  never  depressing,  and  every 
Friday  afternoon   came   the    elevating,   inspiring   tones    of 


JET.  ss']  ST.   PAUL'S   CHURCH  819 

the  comments  on  the  Te  Deum.  On  Fast  Day  (April  2) 
the  duty  was  urged  of  mingling  praise  and  hope  with  peni- 
tence.    "They  cannot  stand  alone,  they  make  one  man." 

The  sense  of  evil  in  life  does  not  deny  but  implies  the  noblest 
capacities  in  man.  It  is  because  he  is  great  and  strong  that 
he  is  wretched.  All  satire  must  keep  sight  of  man's  greatness. 
This,  then,  is  the  order:  a  glow  of  man's  greatness,  a  chafing 
at  man's  failure,  and  then  a  sweep  towards  man's  possibility. 

On  Easter  Day  this  was  the  text :  "  That  through  death  he 
might  destroy  him  that  had  the  power  of  death." 

He  was  born  that  he  might  die.  The  old  sad  story.  Can 
anything  be  sadder?  So  we  talk  to  each  other  in  our  darkest 
moods.  But  the  glory  of  Jesus  is  that  He  takes  our  old  despair- 
ing speeches  and  makes  them  glow.  The  dirge  becomes  a  paean. 
"I  am  born  that  I  may  die,"  becomes  a  cry  of  victory. 

In  the  course  of  this  Lenten  season  he  made  an  address 
every  Monday  at  twelve  o'clock  in  St.  Paul's  Church  on 
Tremont  Street.  A  placard  affixed  to  the  gate  of  the  church, 
announcing  that  the  services  were  "For  Men  Only,"  kept  the 
women  away,  and  the  men  took  possession.  Those  lectures 
were  a  new  revelation  of  the  power  of  Phillips  Brooks  to  the 
men  of  Boston,  and  its  suburbs.  They  are  still  talked  about 
when  people  are  recalling  his  memory.  He  was  at  his  great- 
est when  preaching  to  men,  young  men,  but  men  also  of  every 
age  and  calling.  He  could  by  his  imagination  take  the  out- 
look upon  life  of  the  average  man,  and  using  that  as  his  lev- 
erage he  addressed  them  with  a  tremendous  power,  such  as 
they  had  not  dreamed  of  as  in  the  possession  of  any  man.  In 
Boston,  as  in  New  York,  it  was  the  man  whose  spirit  was 
stirred  within  him  as  he  thought  of  the  danger  of  lost  oppor- 
tunities. He  had  once  written  —  it  was  in  his  "Lectures  on 
Preaching  "  —  that  "  the  thought  of  rescue  has  monopolized 
our  religion  and  often  crowded  out  the  thought  of  culture." 
But  he  would  not  have  written  that  sentence  now.  Every 
man  had  his  opportunity  to  develop  himself  to  the  utmost  as 
God  meant  him  to  be.  To  rouse  men  to  the  danger  of  losing 
that  opportunity  was  his  motive;  to  bring  them  to  the  recog- 
nition of  their  possibilities,  all  this  was  "rescue  work."     He 


820  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

did  not  preach  the  penalties  of  hell  as  the  alternative,  but  he 
made  men  feel  the  alternative  to  be  a  loss  unspeakably  sad 
and  fearful.  This  is  a  report  from  one  of  the  daily  news- 
papers which  will  apply  alike  to  each  one  of  those  memorable 
services : — 

It  was  a  large  and  thoroughly  interested  audience  that  con- 
fronted the  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks  in  St.  Paul's  Church  to-day  at 
noon.  All  the  seats  were  early  filled,  and  the  aisles  were  occu- 
pied with  eager  listeners  to  the  eloquent  words  that  fell  with 
marvellous  rapidity  from  the  lips  of  Boston's  great  pulpit  orator. 
The  men  who  thronged  the  church,  —  for  it  was  an  exclusively 
male  audience;  the  ungallant  placard  outside,  "For  Men  Only," 
effectually  keeping  away  the  gentler  sex,  —  the  men  were  evi- 
dently from  the  business  walks  of  life,  little  accustomed  to  giving 
the  best  hours  of  the  day  to  religious  services,  and  the  preacher's 
remarks  were  addressed  to  just  that  class.  Nor  were  they  appar- 
ently accustomed  to  such  a  torrent  of  words  driven  home  with 
the  power  and  fervor  of  a  man  thoroughly  in  earnest.  Many 
seemed  almost  bewildered  and  dazed  at  what  must  have  appeared 
to  be  directed  at  themselves  as  individuals,  while  others  watched 
the  speaker  with  eyes  of  expectancy,  wondering  what  would  come 
next.  All  were  swept  along,  forgetful  of  their  surroundings,  by 
the  grandeur  of  his  presence,  the  impressive  sweep  of  his  hand, 
and  the  tremendous  power  of  his  utterance.  At  times  he  would 
straighten  himself  up,  throw  back  his  head,  and  in  the  most  dra- 
matic manner  picture  the  terrible  consequences  of  sin,  appealing 
to  his  hearers,  if  they  had  no  concern  for  themselves,  to  think 
of  those  who  might  be  looking  to  them  as  examples.  Then  their 
gaze  would  be  fixed  upon  him  as  though  magnetized,  and  the 
intensity  of  their  faces  would  be  almost  startling. 

The  addresses  of  Phillips  Brooks  during  Lent  at  St.  Paul's 
had  aroused  so  much  attention  that  the  secular  newspapers 
in  Boston  made  the  effort  to  report  them  in  full.  The 
"Churchman,"  of  New  York,  also  sent  its  special  reporter, 
assuming  that  it  might  have  the  same  privilege  as  the  secular 
press.  There  were  various  reasons  why  Mr.  Brooks  should 
object  to  the  publication  of  these  reports.  He  had  learned 
by  sore  experience  that  what  he  said  was  one  thing,  what 
others  thought  he  meant  might  be  quite  a  different  thing. 
Each  one  understood  him  according  to  personal  presupposi- 


^T.  55]  UNION   SERVICE  821 

tions  with  which  he  might  or  might  not  be  in  sympathy. 
The  refinement  and  subtlety  of  his  mind,  working  in  con- 
junction with  his  large  spiritual  sympathies,  removed  him 
far  from  the  conventionalities  and  commonplaces  of  religious 
utterance,  and  yet  these  were  employed  almost  of  necessity 
in  making  a  report  for  others  of  what  he  had  said.  The 
case  was  a  difficult  one.  He  not  only  had  no  time  to  spend 
in  revising  his  addresses  for  publication,  but  such  a  task 
would  have  been  very  distasteful.  It  hampered  him  in  the 
freedom  of  the  pulpit  to  know  that  reporters  were  present 
who  were  not  sure  to  represent  his  thought.  For  these  reasons 
he  was  moved  to  make  another  vigorous  protest :  — 

March  21,  1891. 
Editor  of  thb  "Churchman,"  —  I  wish  it  to  be  distinctly 
known,  and  I  beg  you  to  state  in  your  paper,  that  the  publication 
of  the  addresses  which  I  have  delivered  in  Boston  has  been  made 
by  you  without  any  revision  of  your  reports  by  me,  and  against 
my  wish  distinctly  and  repeatedly  expressed. 

Phillips  Brooks. 

There  was  an  event  connected  with  this  season  of  Lent 
which  it  is  important  to  chronicle,  —  a  union  service,  held  on 
the  evening  of  Good  Friday,  at  the  Old  South  Church. 
Mr.  Brooks  had  contemplated  such  a  service  in  the  year 
1890,  but  for  some  reason  the  plan  was  postponed.  In  this 
year,  when  the  plan  was  again  proposed,  he  acquiesced,  sug- 
gesting that  the  names  of  those  to  be  invited  should  repre- 
sent the  churches  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  Copley  Square, 
—  Rev.  Samuel  Herrick  (Congregational),  Rev.  Brooke  Her- 
ford  (Unitarian),  Rev.  Leighton  Parks  (Episcopal),  Rev. 
P.  S.  Moxom  (Baptist),  together  with  the  pastor  of  the  Old 
South  Church,  Rev.  George  A.  Gordon.  Mr.  Moxom  was 
unable  to  be  present,  but,  with  this  exception,  the  above- 
mentioned  clergymen  united  with  Phillips  Brooks  in  a 
service  to  commemorate  the  death  of  the  Saviour  of  the 
world. 

The  following  interesting  letter  to  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine 
in  Europe  will  serve  to  continue  the  narration  for  the  earlier 
months  of  the  year :  — 


822  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  March  26, 1891. 
My  dear  Bob,  —  Don't  you  want  to  hear  a  word  from  me  at 
Easter  time?  To-morrow  is  Good  Friday,  and  this  week  is  slip- 
ping away  as  you  have  so  often  seen  it  go.  And  Sunday  will  be 
Easter  Day,  with  all  its  strange  uplifting  and  exhilaration.  It 
has  been  a  long,  hard  spring,  with  much  of  sickness  and  distress. 
In  the  middle  of  Lent  [March  9]  died  Bishop  Paddock,  after  a 
long  winter  of  bitter  suffering  and  patient  resignation.  It  has 
been  good  to  see  how  cordially  every  one  has  recognized  the  good- 
ness which  was  in  him,  and  how  the  praise  of  faithfulness  has 
come  at  once  to  everybody's  lips.  He  did  try  to  do  his  duty, 
and  he  wore  himself  out  in  doing  it,  and  he  will  be  remembered 
gratefully.  There  is  not  much  talk  yet  about  his  successor,  but 
the  Convention  meets  about  five  weeks  from  now,  and  then  he 
must  be  chosen.  I  have  no  idea  who  he  will  be,  perhaps  William 
Huntington,  perhaps  William  Lawrence.  Then  one  day  this 
week  I  buried  Mrs.  William  Lyman,  who  died  suddenly.  I  re- 
member the  old  days  in  Philadelphia,  when  we  lived  in  the  same 
boarding-house,  and  the  world  looked  very  large  ahead.  It  looks 
large  still,  but  the  going  on  of  one  after  another  whom  one  has 
been  accustomed  to  see  reminds  us  all  the  while  that  we  shall  not 
see  the  drama  of  the  world  played  out,  and  that  the  end  of  our 
share  in  it  all  cannot  be  very  far  away.  I  suppose  that  it  is 
some  impression  of  this  kind  that  has  worked  our  good  old  class 
up  to  the  desire  to  see  more  of  itself,  and  has  led  Tileston  and 
Willard  and  Jim  Reed  to  arrange  that  we  should  dine  together 
once  a  month  at  Parker's.  It  has  been  twice  that  we  have  done 
it  now;  on  the  first  occasion  there  were  twenty  of  us  there,  and 
on  the  second  occasion  fourteen.  Sanborn  did  most  of  the  talk- 
ing. Barlow  was  present  the  last  time,  and  did  his  share. 
There  is  some  wonder  about  how  long  the  thing  will  last.  I 
think  it  will  probably  settle  into  a  semi-annual  dinner,  or  some- 
thing of  that  sort.  But  at  any  rate  it  shows  how  young  we  are, 
and  how  fresh  still  are  the  bright  days  of  our  youth.  I  saw 
Edith  and  John  the  other  day,  —  dined  with  them  in  the  old 
room  where  I  used  to  dine  with  you.  The  children  had  disap- 
peared for  the  night,  but  I  had  a  delightful  evening  with  their 
parents,  and  heard  the  last  news  from  Rome  as  it  was  seen 
through  Ethel's  bright  eyes.  By  this  time  you  are  deep  in  Italy, 
and  must  be  much  delighted  in  it.  Do  all  you  can  to  improve 
the  temper  and  habits  of  the  fiery  folk,  and  if  they  will  not  pro- 
mise to  behave  themselves  keep  them  at  home,  and  do  not  let 
them  come  to  murder  and  be  murdered  at  New  Orleans.  ...  In 
other  things  Trinity  Church  is  much  the  same  as  always.     Only 


^T.  55]  THE   EPISCOPATE  823 

our  music  goes  to  pieces  at  Easter.  Mr.  Parker  has  resigned, 
and  the  choir  goes  out  with  him,  so  that  the  western  end  of  the 
church  is  all  to  be  supplied  anew.  And  Heaven  knows  what  may 
come  to  us!  If  ever  anybody  was  a  baby  in  matters  where  he 
ought  to  be  a  man,  'tis  I!   .   .   .  P.  B. 

On  the  Sunday  after  Bishop  Paddock  died,  Phillips 
Brooks  preached  a  memorial  sermon  at  Trinity  Church: 
"Ye  are  witnesses,  and  God  also,  how  holily  and  justly  and 
unblameably  we  behaved  ourselves  among  you  that  believe." 
With  these  words  for  his  text,  he  drew  the  portrait  of  the 
deceased  bishop,  narrating  the  simple  facts  of  his  life,  the 
excitement  at  his  election,  his  previous  good  repute,  espe- 
cially his  generous  attitude  shown  by  his  speech  at  General 
Convention  when  party  spirit  was  running  high.  "He  came 
here  a  stranger  in  these  parts.  Bass,  Parker,  Griswold, 
and  Eastburn  were  his  predecessors.  This  patient,  faithful 
person  differed  from  all.  He  was  not  so  much  a  leader  as 
the  creator  of  conditions  of  advance.  These  were  some  of 
his  characteristics: "  — 

His  simjilicity.  Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  old  mighty 
prelate.  His  domestic  life.  His  personal  unobtrusiveness.  His 
absolute  Americanism.      His  genuine  goodness. 

His  sih^oXnte  faithfulness ;  patience  in  details.  Minute  care 
was  his  delight.  But  it  was  unsparing.  It  haunted  all  his 
work. 

His  fairness.  He  was  just,  trying  to  give  everybody  his 
rights ;   not  stepping  beyond  his  powers. 

This  was  the  secret  and  power  of  his  tolerance.  It  was  not 
so  much  sympathy  as  respect  for  right. 

And  here  came  in  his  wisdom.  It  was  the  desire  to  do  right. 
His  personal  advice.  His  preaching.  You  know  his  sermons : 
no  restlessness  of  intellect,  no  seeking  for  conceits ;  a  clear,  fixed 
path,  with  clear,  fixed  use  of  it  to  the  glory  of  God. 

This  brings  us  to  his  simple  piety.  Directness  of  that  ;  con- 
stant refinement  of  life.  The  soberness  of  it.  What  it  has 
opened  to  now.  The  testimony  which  he  bore  to  a  great  city: 
to  his  clergy  a  faithful  friend ;  to  the  Church  a  solid  life  to  build 
on ;  to  the  world  a  pressure  against  evil. 

The  nomination  of  Phillips  Brooks  for  the  vacant  episco- 
pate was  immediate  and  spontaneous.     But  it  differed  from 


824  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

the  ordinary  nomination  in  that  it  came  first  from  the  peo- 
ple. The  friends  of  Mr.  Brooks,  those  who  stood  in  closest 
relation  to  him,  had  no  part  or  lot  in  the  original  sugges- 
tion, or  its  furtherance.  To  this  remark  there  is  one  excep- 
tion, —  this  letter  sent  to  him  as  soon  as  the  vacancy  was 
known :  — 

My  dear  Brooks,  —  A  very  serious  word  this  time,  and  no 
answer  required. 

Just  think  of  what  you  are  doing!  Just  think  of  your  amaz- 
ing, overpowering,  ever  growing,  ever  widening  influence !  Such 
a  gift,  so  Heaven  sent,  and  so  discouraging  to  those  of  us  who 
have  only  the  fractional  part  of  a  talent  to  spend  for  the  Master! 
You  must  leave  yourself  in  your  friends'  hands  now  about  this 
vacant  diocese,  and  not  seek  to  anticipate  Providence,  or  to  set 
it  aside,  as  if  it  did  not  know  what  was  best.  "It  shall  be  given 
to  those  of  whom  it  is  prepared  by  my  Father."  Leadership  is 
prepared :  to  sit  on  the  throne  is  not  ours  to  give  or  to  refuse. 
Heed  this  lesson  and  just  be  silent  for  a  little  space. 

Your  old  friend 


From  the  time  that  Bishop  Paddock  died  there  was  fre- 
quent reference  in  the  Boston  newspapers  to  Phillips  Brooks 
as  the  most  fitting  candidate  for  the  vacant  office.  Two  of 
the  leading  papers,  the  "Advertiser"  and  the  "Herald," 
advocated  his  election.  The  diocesan  convention  did  not 
meet  until  April  29,  and  in  the  intervening  weeks  there  were 
constant  communications  from  those  who  were  interested, 
the  tenor  of  which  varied :  some  maintaining  that  he  would 
not  accept  the  office,  others  that  it  would  not  be  right  to 
take  him  from  Trinity  Church,  where  his  influence  was  al- 
ready greater  than  it  would  be  in  the  episcopate ;  and  there 
were  those  who  thought  that  he  lacked  the  executive  capacity 
needed  for  the  administration  of  a  large  diocese.  But  now 
also  began  to  be  heard  insinuations  that  he  was  not  loyal  to 
the  Episcopal  Church,  that  he  did  not  believe  its  doctrines, 
that  he  rejected  the  miraculous  element  in  creeds  and  Scrip- 
ture, and  that  at  heart  he  was  a  Unitarian.  The  prevailing 
opinion  grew  rapidly  stronger  that  he  was  the  natural  candi- 
date, and  among  those  who  knew  him  the  insinuation  against 


^T.  55]  THE  EPISCOPATE  825 

his  honor  and  his  honesty  was  met  with  indignant  denial. 
But  during  these  weeks  there  was  no  such  process  as  "elec- 
tioneering" in  his  behalf.  His  friends  had  agreed  not  to 
mention  the  matter  to  him  until  the  spontaneous  movement 
in  his  favor  should  have  gained  momentum.  So  many  let- 
ters, however,  were  published  opposing  his  election  on  the 
assumption  that  he  would  not  accept  the  office,  that  his 
friends  felt  it  necessary  to  get  from  him  an  authoritative 
statement. 

On  April  2  [writes  one  who  stood  closest  to  him],  a  few  weeks 
before  the  meeting  of  the  diocesan  convention,  it  was  my  jirivi- 
lege  to  learn  his  views  in  a  conversation  which  he  himself  opened 
by  saying :  "  Why  have  none  of  you  spoken  to  me  about  the  Bish- 
opric? The  newspapers  are  full  of  it;  why  are  all  my  friends 
so  silent  ?  "  I  replied  that  it  was  because  in  our  ignorance  of  his 
wishes,  we  thought  it  wiser  to  allow  the  matter  to  come  before 
him  for  his  decision  when  he  should  be  elected,  as  we  hoped  he 
would  be  by  a  large  majority.  He  answered,  "Why  should  I 
decline?  Who  would  not  accept  such  a  great  opportunity  for 
usefulness,  such  an  enlargement  of  his  ministry  ?  "  At  my  re- 
quest he  then  authorized  all  who  desired  his  election  to  say  that 
he  would  accept  the  office  if  offered  to  him.  This,  I  think,  was 
the  first  time  that  he  had  an  oj^portunity  for  making  such  a  state- 
ment. On  April  5  the  Boston  "Transcript"  published  a  letter 
of  mine,  in  which  some  absurd  objections  to  his  election  were 
met,  and  which  closed  with  these  words:  "Those  of  Dr.  Brooks's 
friends  who  now  know  his  views  on  the  matter  feel  certain  that 
he  will  accept  the  office  of  Bishop  if  elected  to  it,  not  because 
he  seeks  its  honors,  but  because  his  loyalty  to  the  diocese  will  not 
permit  him  to  refuse  its  call  to  so  enlarged  an  opportunity  for 
serving  Christ  and  the  Church." 

The  Boston  "Transcript,"  which  had  hitherto  opposed  the 
movement  on  the  ground  that  it  would  be  "unwise  to  take 
him  out  of  his  present  commanding  position,  and  make  him 
simply  a  public  functionary,"  now  advocated  his  election  :  — 

The  position  which  he  holds  at  Trinity  Church  is  unique,  and 
the  feeling  which  we  have  expressed  respecting  his  giving  up  the 
rectorship  of  Trinity  is  deep  and  strong,  and  is  almost  universal 
in  this  community.  But  if  Dr.  Brooks  thinks  that  the  Episcopal 
office  will  not  restrain  him  in  his  work,  and  the  people  of  Trinity 


826  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

are  willing  to  give  him  up,  we  are  free  to  say  that  he  will  carry 
into  the  office  of  a  bishop  important  qualities  which  are  too  often 
lacking  in  our  American  bishops.  ...  If  Phillips  Brooks  is 
elevated  to  this  position,  we  shall  certainly  have  a  leader  in  the 
Episcopal  Church  who  is  not  more  in  union  with  his  own  people 
than  he  is  in  touch  with  other  Christian  families,  and  who  is  in 
sympathy  with  the  whole  range  of  our  public  life.  .  .  .  What 
is  needed  in  this  community,  if  the  Episcopal  Church  is  to  be- 
come thoroughly  assimilated  to  our  New  England  life,  is  that 
somebody  shall  lift  up  the  Episcopal  office,  so  that  if  there  is  any 
virtue  in  a  bishop,  our  citizens  may  be  able  to  discover  it.  .  .  . 
We  are  not,  of  course,  in  the  counsels  of  churchmen,  nor  practi- 
cally concerned  with  questions  of  high  or  broad  church,  and  we 
have  no  right  to  go  further  than  the  fi'iendly  discussion  of  the 
matter;  but  we  are  ready  to  agree  that  the  election  of  Dr. 
Brooks,  although  as  we  have  said  a  certain  loss  to  the  general 
community  and  a  certain  sacrifice  for  himself,  would  be  the  means 
of  putting  the  Episcopal  Church  in  a  more  favorable  and  influen- 
tial position  than  it  has  hitherto  occupied  in  New  England;  and 
that  as  a  matter  of  large-minded  policy  and  Christian  statesman- 
ship his  election  ought  to  be  favored  by  all  churchmen,  no  matter 
what  their  special  opinions  may  be. 

There  is  evident  in  the  foregoing  extract  that  sense  of 
public  proprietorship  in  Phillips  Brooks  which  had  appeared 
so  strongly  when  he  was  called  to  Harvard,  and  had  only 
increased  with  the  years  that  had  since  elapsed.  This  feel- 
ing was  apparent  in  editorial  remarks  in  the  "Advertiser" 
and  the  "  Herald,"  and  was  rapidly  extending  outside  of 
New  England.  There  were  some  in  the  Episcopal  Church 
who  resented  it  as  an  intrusion,  as  though  outside  influences 
were  brought  to  bear  upon  a  question  which  it  concerned 
only  the  Episcopal  Church  to  determine.  But  it  was  natu- 
ral, it  was  spontaneous  and  inevitable.  It  was  the  case  of 
a  man  whom  no  ecclesiastical  body  could  appropriate  as 
exclusively  its  own.  As  Phillips  Brooks  had  risen  above 
denominational  and  religious  barriers,  by  the  force  of  his 
religious  genius,  so,  too,  had  he  transcended  the  barriers 
which  separate  church  and  state,  until  they  seemed  to  flow 
together  in  one  organic  life,  as  in  the  days  of  the  ancient 
theocracy  in  New  England,  when  every  Christian  man  was  a 


^T.  ssl  CONGRATULATIONS  827 

freeman,  and  entitled  to  be  heard  on  questions  of  the  com- 
mon weal.  The  world  within  or  without  the  church  was 
recognizing  the  time  of  its  visitation.  It  was  wisdom  to  ac- 
cept the  situation.  So  it  was,  then,  that  the  secular  press 
seemed  to  have  become  religious,  the  gulf  between  the  secu- 
lar and  the  religious  was  bridged.  If  one  now  wished  to 
address  the  religious  world,  it  could  be  done  most  effectively 
by  the  secular  newspaper.  This  became  more  apparent  in 
the  weeks  that  followed. 

The  diocesan  convention  met  on  the  29th  of  April,  and  on 
the  following  day  Phillips  Brooks  was  elected  bishop  on  the 
first  ballot  by  a  large  majority  of  the  clergy  and  a  still  larger 
majority  of  the  laity.  It  was  a  personal  election,  where  party 
lines  ceased  to  be  closely  drawn.  There  were  those  who  voted 
for  him  who  were  not  in  sympathy  with  his  ecclesiastical  atti- 
tude, and  others  voted  against  him,  who  were  at  one  with  his 
purpose,  but  did  not  wish  that  he  should  be  taken  from  Trinity 
Church,  where  his  fame  had  been  won.  But  however  it  was, 
the  enthusiasm  over  the  election  was  unbounded.  If  the 
vote  had  been  taken  again,  it  would  have  been  well-nigh 
unanimous,  for  many  of  those  who  had  voted  adversely  were 
rejoiced  at  the  result.  It  was  a  strange  scene.  Dr.  Brooks 
was  not  present  at  the  convention,  remaining  at  home  in  the 
house  on  Clarendon  Street.  As  soon  as  the  result  of  the 
election  was  known,  there  was  a  rush  from  the  hall  where  the 
convention  was  sitting,  an  eager  rivalry  to  be  the  first  in  con- 
veying to  him  congratulations.  He  is  remembered  as  he  stood 
in  his  study  to  receive  those  who  came,  sharing  somewhat  in 
the  excitement,  it  must  have  been,  yet  not  showing  it,  tender- 
ness inexhaustible  written  in  his  face,  the  large  eyes  filled 
with  emotion,  and  not  without  a  plaintive  sadness,  with  a 
welcome  extended  to  all  alike,  knowing  no  discrimination,  a 
prophecy  of  the  bishop  he  was  to  be.  It  seemed  as  if  the 
convention  had  transferred  itself  to  the  rectory  of  Trinity 
Church,  there  were  so  many  who  wished  him  well. 

The  rejoicing  in  the  land  was  so  deep,  so  widespread,  so 
universal,  that  the  occasion  seemed  like  some  high  festival 
whose  octave  was  prolonged  in  order  that  the  full  harvest  of 


828  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

congratulations  might  be  gathered  in.  The  multitude  of  his 
friends  wrote  to  him,  and  their  name  was  legion,  expressing 
their  joy.  All  took  it  for  granted  that  the  event  meant  the 
expansion  of  his  influence  to  imperial  proportions.  It  was 
assumed  that  the  great  day  of  Christian  unity  was  to  be 
ushered  in  by  the  enlargement  of  his  power.  It  was  "  a  per- 
fect storm  of  congratulations,"  said  one  who  was  watching  the 
scene.  There  had  been  other  events  in  the  life  of  Phillips 
Brooks  which  had  called  out  the  popular  applause,  but  this 
excelled  them  all.  It  was  a  day  of  personal  rejoicing,  as 
though  each  individual  friend  or  admirer  had  been  honored 
in  the  honor  which  had  come  to  him.  There  was  a  strange 
disclosure  here  of  his  hold  upon  human  souls,  as  well  as  upon 
the  community  at  large. 

We  may  look  for  a  moment  at  a  few  of  the  more  repre- 
sentative expressions  of  the  moment.  They  are  a  handful 
selected  from  a  thousand  similar  ones.  "  I  have  just  heard 
the  glorious  news  of  your  election."  "  It  is  one  of  the  most 
encouraging  events  that  has  happened  in  the  church  for 
years."  "  I  cannot  but  feel,"  wrote  one  of  his  early  parish- 
ioners in  the  Church  of  the  Advent,  Philadelphia,  "  a  sort  of 
reflected  honor  on  our  own  little  Advent,  and  my  heart  is  full 
of  eager  joy."  They  recalled  also  at  the  Church  of  the 
Advent,  where  the  first  discovery  of  his  power  had  been 
made,  that  one  of  the  vestry  had  prophesied  that  he  would 
be  a  bishop.  From  a  friend  in  Philadelphia  came  these 
words :  — 

The  gratification  felt  here  over  your  election  is  unparalleled.  I 
never  saw  anything  like  it.  And  those  who  knew  you  best  have 
no  words  to  express  their  joy.  All  our  newspapers  have  had 
editorials  on  your  election. 

The  colored  people,  who  had  never  ceased  to  remember  his 
interest  in  their  behalf,  spoke  through  one  of  their  represent- 
atives :  "  The  negroes  of  the  South  rejoice  with  me  in  wish- 
ing you  joy."  A  citizen  of  Boston  who  knew  the  city  well 
writes:  "Beautiful  thoughts  are  thought  of  you  in  Boston, 
glorious  things  are  said  of  you,  and  the  noblest  expectations 
cherished."     "  Since  your  election  my  heart  has  been  singing 


^T.  ss}  CHRISTIAN   UNITY  829 

the  '  Nunc  Dimittis '  and  the  '  Benedictus.'  "  Those  who 
differed  from  him  theologically  told  him  of  the  benefit  they 
had  received,  how  "  his  words  had  been  good  and  true  and 
wise." 

Into  the  great  flood  of  congratulations  there  poured  the 
streams  from  tributaries  so  numerous  that  all  cannot  be  men- 
tioned. Some  of  the  letters  from  the  bishops  who  congratu- 
lated him,  and  it  was  relatively  a  large  number  of  them  who 
hastened  to  express  their  gratification,  recognize  the  unique 
element  in  the  situation :  "  No  bishop  of  the  American 
Church  was  ever  called  to  his  high  office  with  such  acclaim." 
Heads  of  universities  and  colleges,  the  most  important  and 
representative,  wrote  as  if  they  were  included  in  the  universal 
benediction.  Resolutions  were  sent  from  the  students  of  the- 
ological seminaries  of  every  name,  from  the  institutions  of 
learning  with  which  he  had  been  connected.  The  friends 
of  early  years  and  of  later  took  advantage  of  their  privilege. 
If  we  attempt  to  generalize  on  this  amazing  display  of  per- 
sonal devotion,  it  might  be  said  that  all  were  inspired  by  a 
feeling  that  the  moment  had  come  when  those  who  recog- 
nized his  work,  whether  they  knew  him  or  not,  had  the  right 
for  once  to  speak,  and  express  their  deepest  feeling  to 
Phillips  Brooks. 

There  was  abundant  recognition  from  his  own  household 
of  faith,  vastly  more  than  he  could  have  imagined  was  pos- 
sible. But  what  came  to  him  from  the  most  representa- 
tive men  in  other  religious  communions  was  significant 
and  impressive.  A  distinguished  Congregational  clergy- 
man wrote :  "  The  event  means  a  great  deal  for  all  our 
churches ; "  and  another  reminded  him  of  the  many  thou- 
sands whom  he  did  not  know,  who  were  praying  for  him, 
and  asking  for  him  "life  and  health  in  order  to  do  some 
great  work."  A  prominent  layman  of  the  Congregational 
Church  wrote :  — 

I  want  to  add  my  voice  to  the  general  Laus  Deo,  Deus  vohis- 
cuvi.  I  am  so  thankful  you  are  elected  bishop,  not  of  Massachu- 
setts, but  of  the  Church  Universal.  All  of  us  who  share  in  your 
scholarly   liberality,    of    all    denominations,    will    call   you    our 


830  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

bishop.     May  God  make  you  Bishop  of  all  souls,  and  may  all 
humble  and  good  men  love  and  honor  you  more  and  more ! 

A  representative  Methodist  clergyman  writes  to  him,  "  I 
am  now  ready  to  intone  '  Te  Deum  Laudamus.'  "  An  emi- 
nent lawyer,  Unitarian  in  his  religious  faith  writes :  "  It  is, 
indeed,  a  fine  thing  when  a  great  body  of  Christians  puts  at 
its  head  one  whom  all  Christians  will  gladly  follow."  A  Uni- 
versalist  divine  and  prominent  educator :  — 

I  do  not  so  much  rejoice  in  the  immense  forward  movement 
that  Episcopalianism  has  made  in  your  election,  though  I  trust  I 
am  broad  enough  not  to  be  indifferent  to  that,  as  I  do  in  the  gain 
that  has  come,  and  that  is  sure  to  come  more  and  more,  to  our 
common  Christianity?  In  this  feeling  I  know  that  I  voice  the 
general  sentiment  of  clergy  and  laity  alike  of  the  entire  Univer- 
salist  Church. 

To  the  letters  must  be  added  the  well-nigh  universal  tribute 
from  the  newspapers  throughout  the  country.  The  editorial 
tone  is  one  of  rejoicing  because  in  some  way  he  will  now 
be  a  "  universal  bishop."  We  get  here  a  strange  light  upon 
the  process  by  which  in  the  ancient  church  the  claims  of  a 
bishop,  whether  of  Constantinople  or  of  Rome,  to  universal 
supremacy  found  an  echo  in  the  popular  heart.  There  was 
some  vast  mysterious  yearning  in  the  soul  of  the  common  hu- 
manity for  leadership,  and  this  instinct  had  fastened  upon 
Phillips  Brooks  as  adequate  to  the  demand.  These  are  the 
words  of  the  Boston  "  Daily  Advertiser,"  but  they  were  repre- 
sentative words  of  the  American  press  :  — 

The  election  of  Bishop  Brooks  means,  first  of  all,  a  new  inspi- 
ration in  every  parish  in  the  State.  Next,  it  means  an  upward 
and  onward  movement  in  living  faith  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  land.  It  means  that  people  of  all  religions  and 
of  no  religion,  within  the  boundaries  of  this  diocese,  will  especially 
share  in  the  blessings  of  this  glad  event,  the  former  as  feeling 
an  influence  too  large  for  narrow  limits,  the  latter  as  persuasively 
drawn  by  golden  cords  of  eloquence  and  example  toward  better 
things  than  they  have  known.  The  election  of  Bishop  Brooks 
means  that  there  is  to  be  not  only  a  bishop  of  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church  in  Massachusetts,  but,  in  some  genuine  and 
complete  sense,  a  Bishop  of  Massachusetts. 


^T.  55]  CONGRATULATIONS  831 

The  late  James  Russell  Lowell  gave  brief  but  emphatic 
utterance  to  the  same  feeling :  — 

Elmwood,  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  May  1, 1891. 
Dear  Doctor  Brooks,  —  Though  I  do  not  belong  to  the  flock 
which  will  be  guided  with  your  crook,  I  cannot  help  writing  a 
line  to  say  how  proud  I  am  of  our  bishop. 

Faithfully  yours,  J.  R.  Lowell. 

The  vote  of  Trinity  Church  had  been  cast  by  Mr.  Martin 
Brimmer,  representing  the  delegation  in  the  convention,  who 
also  wrote  to  Dr.  Brooks  on  the  day  of  the  election :  — 

It  fell  to  me  this  morning  to  put  into  the  ballot  box  the  vote 
of  Trinity  Church  for  you  as  Bishop.  I  am  sure  that  in  doing 
this  I  represented  the  feeling  of  the  Parish,  —  the  feeling,  on  the 
one  hand,  of  deep  regret  that  your  election  must  sever,  not,  we 
hope,  all  connection  between  you  and  Trinity,  but  certainly  the 
close  and  continuous  connection  which  has  been  of  such  unspeak- 
able value  to  all  of  us ;  the  feeling,  on  the  other  hand,  that  this 
regret  must  give  way  before  the  assurance  that  you  are  now  to 
move  forward  into  a  service  which  those  qualified  to  judge  deem 
more  important  as  well  as  of  wider  range.  ...  I  think  your 
parishioners  fully  recognize  the  great  significance  and  value  of 
this  act  of  the  diocese  to  the  whole  Church  in  America. 

This  letter  may  be  taken  as  representing  the  feeling  of 
Trinity  Church  expressed  in  the  many  letters  from  its  parish- 
ioners. From  the  moment  of  the  election,  there  had  sprung 
up  a  hope  that  he  might  yet  in  some  way  be  retained  in  offi- 
cial relationship  to  his  old  parish,  possibly  make  the  church 
his  cathedral,  or  be  the  nominal  rector,  with  an  assistant 
minister,  as  in  the  case  of  Bishop  Eastburn.  But  he  was  not 
to  be  allowed  to  sever  his  relationship  with  the  parish,  in 
any  degree,  without  another  confession  to  him,  in  the  unveil- 
ing of  sacred  experiences,  of  all  that  he  had  been  to  his  people. 

There  were  other  important  interests  from  whose  point  of 
view  his  election  carried  a  mingled  feeling  of  regret.  Presi- 
dent Eliot  wrote  :  — 

We  owe  you  more  than  I  can  tell  for  your  constant  support  of  the 
new  methods  of  Chapel  administration.  .  .  .  Voluntary  prayers 
would  not  have  come  when  they  did  in  1886  if  you  had  not  ex- 
erted your   influence   in   the  Overseers  in  favor  of  the  change. 


832  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1891 

Without  you  the  plan  of  having  five  preachers  to  the  University 
vfould  not  have  looked  so  promising  in  anticipation,  and  would 
not  have  succeeded  so  well  in  actual  use.  .  .  .  Your  prayers  and 
addresses  in  the  Chapel  have  been  of  infinite  use,  not  only  in  the 
hearts  and  lives  of  the  listeners,  but  also  in  establishing  the  Uni- 
versity religious  services  on  a  broad  and  firm  foundation.    .    .    . 

I  shall  certainly  count  on  your  continued  interest  in  all  our 
work  and  particularly  in  the  Chapel  work.  I  hope  that  you  will 
be  this  year  reelected  to  the  Board  of  Overseers,  so  that  you  may 
again  have  a  voice  in  all  University  affairs. 

President  Warren,  of  Boston  University,  sent  congratula- 
tions, but  as  he  reviewed  the  services  of  Phillips  Brooks  to 
the  institution  over  which  he  presided,  he  knew  that  they 
could  not  in  the  future  be  rendered  so  fully.  He  could  only 
acquiesce,  and  say,  "  The  Lord's  will  be  done."  There  were 
many  other  institutions,  also,  whose  representatives  realized 
and  expressed  a  sense  of  loss  in  the  impending  change. 
There  were  a  few  who  still  thought  and  said  that  the  place  of 
Phillips  Brooks  was  in  his  metropolitan  church,  "  in  the  pul- 
pit as  the  presbyter's  throne,"  expressing  their  misgivings 
lest  he  "  sacrifice  the  larger  for  the  less  ; "  but  the  almost 
uniform  conviction  in  this  "  avalanche  of  letters  "  was  the 
greater  work  to  which  he  had  been  called,  and  the  duty  in- 
cumbent on  him  to  accept  it. 

This  account  of  how  the  election  of  Phillips  Brooks  to  the 
episcopate  was  received  represents  the  situation  imperfectly. 
The  whole  story  of  the  surprise  and  the  joy  cannot  be  told. 
The  amount  of  the  material  is  too  vast  to  do  more  than  give 
its  salient  features.  The  event  corresponds  to  the  process  of 
a  people's  canonization  of  some  heaven-sent  man.  But  when 
the  honors  of  canonization  were  in  question,  it  was  customary 
to  hear  the  other  side,  in  order  that  all  which  might  be  said 
against  a  man  should  be  considered.  That  moment  had  now 
come,  and  come  for  the  first  time,  in  a  public  way  in  the  life 
of  Phillips  Brooks. 

The  process  of  making  a  bishop  in  the  American  Episcopal 
Church  is  more  complicated  than  in  the  Church  of  England. 
After  the  election  has  taken  place  the  secretary  of  the  diocese 
sends  word  of  the  election  to  the  standing  committee  in  each 


^T.  ssl  THE  CONTROVERSY  833 

diocese  in  the  United  States,  and  also  to  the  presiding  bishop. 
As  soon  as  the  presiding  bishop  has  received  a  reply  from 
the  majority  of  the  standing  committees  in  the  affirmative,  he 
communicates  the  fact  to  the  bishops  and  calls  for  their  vote. 
When  he  has  received  a  majority  of  favorable  replies  from 
the  bishops,  the  bishop-elect  has  been  confirmed  and  the 
order  is  given  for  his  consecration.  The  process  is  generally 
a  formal  one,  occupying  a  month  or  six  weeks  before  the  an- 
nouncement of  the  result.  In  the  case  of  Phillips  Brooks  ten 
weeks  elapsed  before  the  confirmation  of  his  election  was 
made  known.  From  one  point  of  view  the  controversy  which 
now  took  place  over  his  election  was  not  important,  nor  were 
the  sources  influential  or  representative  from  which  it  pro- 
ceeded ;  but  their  importance  was  rather  a  reflected  one, 
gaining  significance  from  the  unique  greatness  of  the  man. 
So  sensitive  was  the  public  mind  in  everything  relating  to 
him  that  the  slightest  hint  of  opposition  was  magnified  till  it 
assumed  unnatural  proportions.  From  another  point  of  view 
it  appeared  to  some  as  if  the  Episcopal  Church  had  been 
called  to  go  through  a  crisis  in  its  history.  What  the  nature 
of  that  crisis  was  will  appear  as  the  features  of  the  opposition 
to  his  election  are  described. 

In  order  to  the  intelligent  action  of  the  standing  commit- 
tees and  bishops  of  the  various  dioceses,  the  canons  of  the 
Episcopal  Church  require  that  testimonials  shall  be  laid 
before  them,  certifying  to  the  fitness  and  character  of  the 
bishop-elect.  In  this  case  the  following  statement  was  signed 
by  more  than  one  hundred  of  the  clergy  of  the  diocese  of 
Massachusetts,  and  by  a  large  number  of  the  laity,  more  than 
two  hundred  names  in  all :  — 

We,  whose  names  are  underwritten,  fully  sensible  how  impor- 
tant it  is  that  the  sacred  office  of  a  Bishop  should  not  be  unwor- 
thily conferred,  and  firmly  persuaded  that  it  is  our  duty  to  bear 
testimony  on  this  solemn  occasion,  without  partiality  or  affection, 
do,  in  the  presence  of  Almighty  God,  testify  that  Phillips  Brooks 
is  not,  so  far  as  we  are  informed,  justly  liable  to  evil  report, 
either  for  error  in  religion,  or  for  viciousness  in  life;  and  that 
we  do  not  know  or  believe  there  is  any  impediment  on  account  of 

VOL.  n 


834  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

which  he  ought  not  to  be  consecrated  to  that  Holy  Office.  We  do, 
moreover,  jointly  and  severally  declare  that  we  do,  in  our  con- 
science, believe  him  to  be  of  such  sufficiency  in  good  learning, 
such  soundness  in  the  faith,  and  of  such  virtuous  and  pure  man- 
ners, and  godly  conversation,  that  he  is  apt  and  meet  to  exercise 
the  office  of  a  Bishop  to  the  honor  of  God  and  the  edifying  of  His 
Church,  and  to  be  a  wholesome  example  to  the  flock  of  Christ. 

The  natural  presumption  would  be  that  those  who  appended 
their  names  to  such  a  testimonial  were  conversant  with  the 
situation  and  knew  whereof  they  affirmed.  To  counterbal- 
ance or  overthrow  such  testimony  would  require  evidence  of 
a  positive  character,  well  substantiated,  that  the  bishop-elect 
was  not  fitted  for  the  office.  What  should  be  the  nature  of 
such  evidence  and  how  should  it  be  obtained  ?  There  was  an 
anomaly  revealed  at  this  point  in  the  organization  of  the 
Episcopal  Church.  Was  it  the  function  of  a  standing  com- 
mittee to  receive  and  register  such  a  testimonial  and  give  their 
approval  as  a  matter  of  form,  or  was  it  incumbent  on  them  to 
act  as  judges  in  the  matter,  reopen  the  question,  and  decide 
for  themselves  on  some  extra  information  they  could  obtain  ? 
The  first  alternative  seemed  to  make  their  action  a  perfunc- 
tory mechanical  one,  but  the  second  carried  the  implication 
that  the  clergy  and  laity  of  the  diocese  most  interested  were 
incapable,  for  whatever  reason,  to  form  a  right  and  trust- 
worthy judgment.  If  the  latter  interpretation  were  to  pre- 
vail, there  was  danger  of  grave  disturbance,  imperilling  the 
constitution  of  the  church.  The  older  and  larger  dioceses, 
where  traditions  were  well  established,  followed  the  latter 
alternative.  As  to  the  final  result,  those  who  knew  best  the 
Episcopal  Church  had  no  misgivings.  Their  faith  in  its  re- 
served wisdom,  its  justice,  its  comprehensiveness,  and  its  free- 
dom from  doctrinaire  tendencies  gave  them  absolute  confi- 
dence. Such  also  was  the  conviction  of  Dr.  Brooks,  —  there 
was  no  doubt  whatever  of  the  confirmation  of  his  election. 
To  the  efforts  made  to  defeat  it  we  now  turn. 

Hardly  then  had  the  election  been  made  when  a  statement 
appeared  in  the  newspapers  gaining  wide  circulation,  that 
there  was  likely  to  be  opposition  among  the  bishops.     Dr. 


^T.  ssl  THE   CONTROVERSY  835 

Brooks,  it  was  said,  had  expressed  his  disbelief  in  the  historic 
episcopate,  and  as  the  bishops  held  strong  convictions  on  that 
point  they  could  not  admit  to  their  number  one  who  differed 
from  them.  This  statement  in  the  newspapers  was  soon  fol- 
lowed by  a  leaflet  with  the  headline,  "  Ought  Dr.  Brooks  to 
be  Confirmed  ?  "  which  was  sent  to  bishops  and  standing  com- 
mittees, containing  quotations  from  his  sermons  to  the  effect 
that  he  denied  the  doctrine  of  apostolical  succession.  An- 
other leaflet  was  issued,  also  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  were 
to  vote  intelligently  on  the  question,  giving  the  opinion  of  a 
Roman  Catholic  priest,  formerly  a  Baptist  minister,  who,  being 
"  interviewed  "  on  the  subject,  had  spoken  of  Dr.  Brooks  as 
"  One  of  Nature's  Noblemen,"  but  when  asked  his  opinion  in 
regard  to  the  propriety  of  his  becoming  a  bishop,  shook  his 
head  and  seemed  quite  disheartened  about  the  Episcopal 
Church.     His  words  were  quoted  in  the  leaflet  as  follows  :  — 

I  regret  to  say  they  [the  present  movements  in  the  Episcopal 
Church]  indicate  that  the  Episcopal  Church  is  yielding  to  the 
rationalistic  and  agnostic  tendencies  of  the  age  to  a  deplorable 
extent.  ...  If  its  creeds  and  articles  of  faith  no  longer  bind 
its  clergy  and  people,  the  surging  tide  of  infidelity  will  soon  de- 
stroy its  distinctive  character  as  an  organized  and  conservative 
form  of  Christianity. 

A  circular  was  sent  to  bishops  and  standing  committees, 
addressed  "  To  Whom  it  May  Concern,"  containing  an  ex- 
tract from  a  letter  the  name  of  whose  writer  was  suppressed. 
In  this  letter  there  was  given  the  report  of  a  conversation 
with  Dr.  Brooks,  —  a  report  from  memory  with  no  vouchers 
beyond  the  presumed  respectability  of  the  anonymous  writer, 
—  and  the  impression  made  by  the  conversation  had  con- 
vinced the  writer  that  Dr.  Brooks  was  a  most  unfit  man  to 
be  a  bishop  as  he  deemed  the  miracle  to  be  unimportant  and 
in  the  life  of  Christ  unessential.  "  He  wiU  let  everybody 
stand  on  their  head  if  they  want  to,  and  avow  that  no  doc- 
trine is  essential,  not  even  the  essential  one  of  the  Trinity 
and  the  divine  Incarnation."  This  circular,  sent  forth  by 
a  presbyter  of  New  York,  who  signed  his  name,  but  with- 
held that  of  the  writer  of  the  letter,  produced  as  its  chief 


836  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

result  eagerness  to  know  the  name  of  the  person  who  had 
borne  such  astounding  testimony.  With  the  facilities  pos- 
sessed by  the  modern  newspaper  it  could  not  be  long  before 
the  information  was  obtained.  The  unknown  writer  was 
finally  discovered  in  seclusion  in  the  remote  West,  in  "  my 
solitary  and  supposed  to  be  inaccessible  mountain  home,  where 
I  am  seeking  retirement  in  mystic  study  and  divine  commun- 
ion." This  person,  when  discovered,  admitted  full  knowledge 
of  the  effects  of  the  communication  to  the  public  made  in 
the  circular,  and  was  inclined  to  regret  "  the  possible  epoch- 
making  consequences  "  of  "  a  personal  letter,"  though  in- 
clined to  acquiesce,  should  the  Divine  Will  choose  the  "  weak 
things  of  the  world  to  confound  the  mighty."  But  after  re- 
flection there  had  been  some  change  of  mind,  and  in  another 
letter  addressed  to  the  public,  the  same  person,  while  reaf- 
firming the  correctness  of  the  report  of  the  conversation  with 
Dr.  Brooks,  now  withdrew  the  charge  that  he  was  unfit  to  be 
made  a  bishop,  and  urged  upon  the  Episcopal  Church  his 
confirmation,  expressing  the  hope  that  the  Church  would  be 
"  large  enough  and  Christly  enough  to  welcome  him  to  her 
highest  office." 

A  rumor  also  gained  wide  circulation  among  the  bishops 
and  standing  committees  that  the  Nicene  Creed  was  not  re- 
cited at  Trinity  Church.  It  was  easy  to  follow  it  with  a 
denial  without  asking  the  aid  of  Dr.  Brooks.  These  were 
among  the  influences  brought  to  bear  upon  those  who  were 
seeking  the  additional  light  needed  in  weighing  the  question 
of  the  confirmation  of  the  bishop-elect.  They  became  familiar 
also  to  the  public  who  were  watching  the  issue. 

Another  phase  of  the  movement  to  defeat  the  election  was 
the  effort  to  induce  Dr.  Brooks  to  explain  or  to  apologize  for 
his  attitude.  Thus  one  of  the  bishops  sent  to  him  an  "  open  let- 
ter," saying  that  the  participation  "  in  the  so-called  ordination 
services  of  Mr.  Beecher's  successor  in  Brooklyn  required  in  the 
judgment  of  many  honest  minds  an  explanation  or  expression 
of  regret,  .  .  .  assurances  that  what  has  pained  so  many  of  his 
brethren  will  not  occur  again."  Another  bishop  wrote  to  him 
after  receiving  these  various  communications,  leaflets,  etc. :  — 


jET.ss']  THE  CONTROVERSY  837 

Before  you  were  admitted  to  Deacons'  Orders,  you  subscribed 
the  following  declaration :  "  I  do  believe  the  Holy  Scriptures  of 
the  Old  and  New  Testaments  to  be  the  Word  of  God,  and  to  con- 
tain all  things  necessary  to  salvation,  and  I  do  solemnly  engage 
to  conform  to  the  Doctrines  and  Worship  of  the  Protestant  Epis- 
copal Church  in  the  United  States."  Do  you  stand  to  that  sub- 
scription, and  are  you  willing  to  make  the  same  subscription 
now?" 

Is  it  true  that  on  the  last,  or  on  any  Good  Friday,  you  united 
with  a  Unitarian  minister  in  conducting  public  religious  services  ? 
.  .  .  On  the  absurd  subject  of  apostolic  succession,  I  entirely 
agree  with  you. 

Representatives  of  a  large  number  of  dioceses  wrote  to  Dr. 
Brooks,  expressing  their  contempt  at  the  course  adopted  to 
defeat  him.  But  from  a  few  dioceses  came  letters  indicating 
that  reports  and  circulars  had  not  been  without  their  influence. 
Thus  a  clergyman  writes  to  him  asking  for  answers  to  the 
following  questions,  in  order  to  an  intelligent  vote  :  — 

(1)  Do  you  believe  in  the  Divinity  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
that  He  is  God  of  God,  Light  of  Light,  very  God  of  very  God, 
Begotten  not  made,  Being  of  one  substance  with  the  Father,  By 
whom  all  things  were  made ;  who  for  us  men  and  for  our  salvation 
came  down  from  heaven,  and  was  incarnate  by  the  Holy  Ghost 
of  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  was  made  man? 

(2)  Do  you  believe  that  an  Unitarian  who  denies  all  this,  dying 
as  an  Unitarian,  could  be  consistently  with  the  above  belief  char- 
acterized as  God's  true  saint  and  one  of  the  best  and  noblest 
Christians  ? 

(3)  Please  state  what  is  necessary  to  make  a  true  Christian. 

(4)  Do  you  believe  that  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  alone 
represents,  in  its  integrity  and  purity  in  the  United  States  of 
America,  Christ's  Holy  Catholic  Church? 

(5)  Do  you  believe  that  the  Apostolic  Succession  is  an  essential 
and  exclusive  element  to  Christ's  ministry? 

(6)  Do  you  believe  that  episcopally  ordained  clergy  alone  have 
the  right  to  exercise  Christ's  ministry,  —  to  Baptize,  to  admin- 
ister the  Holy  Communion,  to  Pronounce  God's  declaration  of 
absolution  over  repentant  sinners,  and  to  preach  the  Gospel  ? 

(7)  Do  you  believe  that  the  Protestant  sects  in  the  United 
States  constitute  the  American  Church,  and  that  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church  is  no  more  a  Church  than  any  of  these  sects 
and  has  no  more  right  to  that  title  than  any  of  them  ? 


838  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

These  questions  were  evidently  intended  to  be  exhaustive 
and  to  leave  no  loophole  of  escape.  Beneath  all  other  ques- 
tions or  doubts  lay  the  issue  of  apostolic  succession.  Thus  a 
layman,  who  represents  also  a  standing  committee,  writes, 
"  My  questions  are  these  :  "  — 

Do  you  consider  that  Apostolic  Succession  is  indispensably  neces- 
sary to  the  existence  of  Christ's  Church? 

In  your  opinion,  have  the  faithful  followers  of  a  Protestant 
creed  which  ignores  the  Succession  an  equal  warrant  with  faithful 
Episcopalians  in  expecting,  in  the  future  life,  the  reward  promised 
to  the  righteous? 

There  appeared  in  the  New  York  "  Tribune,"  on  June  1, 
a  letter  from  the  Rev.  John  Henry  Hopkins,  which  gave  ex- 
pression to  the  growing  feeling  of  indignation.  The  letter 
was  specially  significant  as  coming  from  Dr.  Hopkins.  A 
few  extracts  from  it  follow :  — 

Our  Church  is  a  comprehensive  Church;  and  that  means  that 
there  is  room  in  her  communion  for  a  great  variety  of  opinions 
on  religious  matters.  We  have  three  well-known  parties,  High, 
Low,  and  Broad.  I  am  a  High  Churchman,  —  about  as  high  as 
they  make  them.  Had  I  been  a  member  of  the  Massachusetts 
convention,  I  should  never,  under  any  circumstances,  have  voted 
for  Dr.  Brooks.  But  when  he  had  been  elected  I  should  have 
signed  his  testimonials  with  pleasure,  rejoicing  in  the  elevation 
of  one  who  is  recognized  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean  as 
a  preacher  now  without  a  living  superior,  and  whose  high-toned, 
stainless  life  is  acknowledged  by  all.  As  long  as  any  one  of  our 
dioceses  wants  a  Broad  Church  bishop  or  a  Low  Church  bishop,  it 
has  a  right  to  him;  and  the  requiring  of  the  consents  of  the 
standing  committees  and  a  majority  of  the  bishops  was  never 
meant  to  give  power  to  a  majority  to  squeeze  out  a  minority  by 
refusing  to  let  them  have  the  kind  of  bishop  they  wanted.  .  .  . 
To  try  now  to  return  to  a  narrower  basis  in  order  to  worry  the 
most  distinguished  bishop-elect  whom  the  American  Church  has 
ever  known  is  all  nonsense. 

When  asked  for  "explanations,"  etc.,  I  am  delighted  that  Dr. 
Brooks  had  none  to  give.  No  bishop-elect  ought  ever  to  give 
any.  If  he  can  honestly  make  the  answers  put  in  his  mouth  at 
the  time  of  his  consecration,  it  is  enough.  The  Church  gives  to 
no  man  the  right  to  put  to  him  any  question  beyond  that.  Espe- 
cially is  it  uncalled  for  in  a  case  like  that  of  Dr.  Brooks,  volumes 


^T.  ss]  THE  CONTROVERSY  839 

of  whose  sermons  are  in  print.  Anonymous  letters  should  be 
treated,  in  such  a  matter  as  this,  with  perfect  contempt,  —  and 
all  are  anonymous  whose  writers  are  not  named  and  known.  .  .  . 
Especially  is  this  the  case  when  these  anonymous  writers  display 
such  abysmal  ignorance  of  the  very  points  in  theology  which  they 
try  to  handle. 

Many  other  similar  protests  were  published.  The  "  Church- 
man," the  largest  and  most  influential  paper  in  the  Episcopal 
Church,  devoted  its  editorial  columns  each  week  to  making 
the  issue  clear,  that  standing  committees  and  bishops,  admit- 
ting that  they  are  without  intimate  knowledge  of  the  man 
against  whom  they  are  such  swift  witnesses,  are  yet  practi- 
cally asking 

the  Church  to  take  their  lack  of  knowledge  as  ground  for  reject- 
ing one  of  the  most  eminent  presbyters  whom  the  Church  has  ever 
had,  in  preference  to  the  unquestionable  knowledge  and  the  sol- 
emnly asseverated  conviction  of  154  clergymen  and  109  repre- 
sentatives of  the  communicants  of  the  diocese  of  Massachusetts, 
among  whom  Dr.  Brooks  has  gone  in  and  out  these  many  years. 

That  the  various  misrepresentations  had  confused  the 
public  mind  to  some  extent  might  be  inferred  from  the  delay 
of  the  standing  committees  in  recording  their  votes.  But  the 
number  of  those  whose  votes  were  adverse  were  relatively 
few,  and  in  the  case  of  most  of  the  dioceses  voting  in  the 
negative  there  came  a  protest  to  Dr.  Brooks  from  some  of  the 
prominent  clergy  or  laity  in  them,  to  the  effect  that  the  vote 
was  not  representative  of  the  best  sentiment.  The  election 
had  taken  place  April  30,  and  by  June  4  it  was  known  that 
a  majority  of  votes  had  been  cast  in  favor  of  the  bishop-elect. 
The  question  then  went  before  the  bishops  for  their  approval, 
and  there  followed  a  period  of  painful  suspense,  for  the 
bishops  voted  in  secrecy,  and  no  one  knew,  unless  the  bishops 
chose  to  tell,  how  the  vote  had  been  given.  Not  until  a 
majority  of  their  votes  had  been  cast  would  the  result  be  an- 
nounced to  the  world.  The  presiding  bishop,  the  Rt.  Rev. 
Dr.  Williams,  of  Connecticut,  was  an  admirer  and  firm  friend 
of  the  bishop-elect,  doing  what  he  could  to  further  his  con- 
firmation.    He  was  known  as  the  most  learned  man  in  the 


840  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

House  of  Bishops,  familiar  with  Anglican  traditions,  desirous 
to  promote  the  interests  of  the  Episcopal  Church.  He  was 
wise  and  conservative  as  a  churchman,  —  a  High  Churchman, 
he  was  called,  —  not  wholly  in  sympathy  with  the  attitude  of 
Dr.  Brooks ;  but  he  knew  how  wide  were  the  bounds  of  the 
church,  and  how  strange  and  unjustifiable  the  agencies  em- 
ployed to  defeat  the  election.  He  did  what  he  could.  He 
sustained  Dr.  Brooks  in  his  policy  of  silence,  maintaining 
that  it  was  not  becoming  he  should  give  any  reply  to  the 
solicitations  made  to  him  to  speak.  Bishop  Williams  was 
also  hopeful,  and  had  no  doubt  of  the  result,  anticipating  that 
by  the  middle  of  June  he  should  be  able  to  announce  that  the 
election  had  been  approved  by  the  bishops. 

Hitherto,  it  had  been  mainly  for  the  reason  that  Dr. 
Brooks  did  not  hold  the  doctrine  of  apostolical  succession  that 
he  was  condemned  as  unfit  for  the  episcopate.  But  it  now 
became  known  that  a  change  had  taken  place  in  the  attitude 
of  those  who  were  resisting  the  confirmation.  Charges 
were  made  and  reiterated  that  he  denied  the  articles  of  the 
Christian  faith,  or  was  at  least  indifferent  to  them.  A  cir- 
cular letter,  it  was  known,  had  been  sent  to  the  bishops,  say- 
ing in  substance  that  a  crisis  had  been  reached  in  the  history 
of  the  church,  that  the  question  included  not  only  the  apos- 
tolical succession,  but  the  essential  divinity  of  Christ.  It  was 
a  question,  therefore,  of  maintaining  the  faith  pure  and  unde- 
filed,  and  no  one  could  forecast  the  "  horrible  consequences  " 
if  a  major  number  of  the  bishops  were  to  confirm  the  elec- 
tion. Some  of  the  bishops,  friends  of  Dr.  Brooks,  were  now 
alarmed  and  even  besought  him  to  break  his  silence  and 
assure  the  church  that  he  believed  in  the  Incarnation. 
Among  the  bishops  there  was  one  who  did  not  know  Phillips 
Brooks  and  was  unfamiliar  with  his  writings,  but  at  once 
secured  his  sermons,  and  having  read  them  voted  for  his  con- 
firmation. Why  was  not  this  the  case  with  all?  Phillips 
Brooks  was  somewhat  voluminous  as  an  author,  having  pub- 
lished five  volumes  of  sermons  and  three  volumes  of  lectures. 
It  would  have  been  a  simple  task  to  turn  to  his  books  and 
read  there  his  replies  to  the  interrogations  propounded  to 


^T.  ssl  THE  CONTROVERSY  841 

him.  Before  attempting  the  answer  to  this  question  it  may- 
be as  well  to  bring  together  the  accusations  against  him,  those 
urged  at  this  time  as  well  as  at  a  later  moment. 

(1)  It  was  said  that  he  was  in  some  sort  a  Congregation- 
alist,  not  in  sympathy  with  the  polity  of  the  Episcopal 
Church.  But  this  could  not  be  true.  He  believed  that  bish- 
ops were  necessary  to  the  well-being  of  a  church,  and  the 
Congregationalist  believes  that  they  are  not  necessary,  and  so 
discards  them. 

(2)  It  was  alleged  that  he  was  an  Arian  in  his  theology. 
But  Phillips  Brooks  —  the  evidence  has  been  given  abun- 
dantly —  believed  in  the  Incarnation  of  God  in  Christ,  which 
Arius  rejected.  Phillips  Brooks  believed  that  Christ  as  the 
Eternal  Son  was  coequal  with  the  Father  and  of  the  same 
essence,  and  this  was  what  Arius  denied.  Phillips  Brooks 
also  accepted  the  full  humanity  of  Christ,  a  truth  which 
Arius  did  not  hold.  Phillips  Brooks  was  Athanasian  in  his 
theology.  Indeed  since  the  days  of  Athanasius,  there  had 
been  no  one  who  held  the  doctrine  of  the  person  of  Christ 
in  the  spirit  of  Athanasius  more  firmly  than  he. 

(3)  He  was  accused  of  being  a  Pelagian.  But  the  root 
error  of  Pelagianism  lay  in  holding,  so  all  historians  of 
Christian  doctrine  agree  in  affirming,  that  God  had  endowed 
man  sufficiently  in  his  constitution  that  he  could  work  out  his 
salvation  by  himself,  and  did  not  need  the  special  Divine 
presence  and  aid.  Phillips  Brooks  was  an  Augustinian  in 
the  emphasis  which  he  laid  upon  the  necessity  of  the  Divine 
assistance  or  grace  in  order  to  every  good  deed  or  thought. 
One  may  find  it  anywhere  in  his  sermons.  Such  a  sentence 
as  this  gives  the  very  essence  of  the  theology  of  Phillips 
Brooks :  "  Every  activity  of  ours  answers  to  some  previous 
activity  of  God."  Dr.  Brooks  also  believed  both  in  the 
letter  and  the  spirit  of  Article  IX.,  of  the  Thirty-Nine  Arti- 
cles, which  condemns  the  Pelagian  teaching  in  regard  to 
Original  Sin.  He  did  not  believe  in  "  Total  Depravity,"  but 
this  the  article  does  not  assert.  What  it  does  assert  he 
believed  and  preached  with  power,  that  "  man  is  very  far  gone 
(jqiiam  longissime)  from  original  righteousness."     He  had 


842  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

always  before  him  the  antagonism  in  the  human  soul,  even  as 
Augustine  felt  it,  which  constitutes  the  issue  of  every  life. 

In  one  respect  he  agreed  with  Pelagius  ;  he  held  to  the  free- 
dom of  the  human  will.  But  if  he  is  to  be  accounted  a  Pela- 
gian and  a  heretic  on  that  ground,  the  large  majority  of 
bishops  and  presbyters  in  the  Anglican  Church  since  the 
seventeenth  century  come  under  the  same  condemnation. 

But  it  was  said  he  was  a  Pelagian  because  he  taught  that 
"  all  men  are  the  children  of  God."  Many  things  have  been 
attributed  to  Pelagius  which  he  never  said,  but  this  was  the 
first  time  that  he  has  been  accused  of  holding  this  doctrine. 
It  would  be  nearer  the  truth  to  affirm  that  Pelagius  held  that 
no  man  was  the  child  of  God.  Beneath  all  the  errors  of  Pela- 
gius lay  the  dreary  conviction  of  the  orphanage  of  humanity. 
The  fatherhood  of  God  and  the  sonship  of  humanity  found  no 
place  in  his  teaching.^ 

Throughout  this  trying  period,  from  the  time  of  his  election 
to  his  consecration,  and  afterwards,  Phillips  Brooks  remained 
consistently  silent,  explaining  nothing,  giving  no  answers  to 
define  his  position,  making  no  apologies,  no  pledges. 

I  have  been  for  thirty-two  years  a  minister  of  the  Church  [so 
he  wrote,  June  3,  1891,  in  reply  to  one  of  his  questioners],  and 
I  have  used  her  services  joyfully  and  without  complaint.  I  have 
preached  in  many  places,  and  with  the  utmost  freedom.  I  have 
written  and  published  many  volumes,  which  I  have  no  right  to 
ask  anybody  to  read,  but  which  will  give  to  any  one  who  chooses 
to  read  them  clear  understanding  of  my  way  of  thinking.  My 
acts  have  never  been  concealed. 

1  "  The  essence  of  Pelagianism,  the  key  to  its  whole  mode  of  thought,  lies 
in  this  proposition  of  Julian,  homo  libera  arhitrio  emancipatus  a  deo ;  man 
created  free  is  with  his  whole  sphere  independent  of  God.  He  has  no  longer 
to  do  with  God,  but  with  himself  alone.  God  only  reenters  at  the  end  (at  the 
judgment)."  Cf.  Harnack,  History  of  Dogma  (Eng.  Tr.),  vol.  v.  p.  200.  While 
the  contrast  to  this  attitude,  and  indeed  the  strong  opposition  to  it,  is  apparent 
everywhere  in  the  writings  of  Phillips  Brooks,  the  following  references  may 
be  of  service  to  any  one  wishing  to  pursue  the  subject :  Sermons,  vol.  ii.  pp. 
285, 286 ;  vol.  iii.  pp.  112-133  ;  vol.  iv.  pp.  60-75,  173-191 ;  vol.  v.  pp.  40-56 ; 
vol.  vi.  pp.  90-106 ;  vol.  viii.  p.  79.  See,  also,  Commentary  on  Philippians,  by 
Bishop  Lightfoot,  p.  181  :  "  According  to  the  Christian  idea,  every  member  of 
the  human  family  was  potentially  a  member  of  the  Church,  and  as  such  a  priest 
of  God." 


^T.  55]  THE   CONTROVERSY  843 

Under  these  circumstances,  I  cannot  think  it  well  to  make  any 
utterance  of  faith  or  pledge  of  purpose  at  the  present  time. 
Certainly  I  made  none  to  my  brethren  here,  when  they  chose  me 
to  be  their  bishop,  and  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  you  will  think 
I  am  right  in  making  none  now,  when  the  election  is  passing  to 
its  final  stages. 

This  letter  was  written  before  the  announcement  had  been 
made  of  the  vote  of  the  standing  committees,  when  the  pop- 
ular anxiety  about  the  result  was  manifesting  itself  in  many 
ways.  As  the  nature  of  the  opposition  to  his  election  is  now 
before  us,  we  may  at  this  point  consider  the  question  at  issue 
in  some  of  its  more  important  bearings. 

Those  who  were  resisting  the  admission  of  Phillips  Brooks 
to  the  episcopate  found  difficulty  in  understanding  his  posi- 
tion. When  he  first  came  to  Boston,  then,  as  it  always  had 
been,  a  theological  centre,  the  same  difficulty  had  been  en- 
countered. People,  as  we  have  seen,  were  asking  about  his 
opinions  on  theological  questions,  seeking  to  classify  him  in 
conventional  ways.  The  difficulty  lay  here,  —  those  who 
were  questioning  his  attitude  were  preoccupied  with  theolo- 
gical tenets,  the  theology  of  the  intellect,  and  he  was  thinking 
of  life,  as  holding  not  only  the  intellect  in  solution,  but  the 
heart  and  conscience.  While  others  were  thinkinj;  about 
formulas  and  how  best  by  dialectic  the  formula  could  be  de- 
fended, he  was  translating  the  formula  into  terms  of  life, 
prizing  the  formula  indeed,  not  as  an  end  in  itself,  but  a 
means  to  a  greater  end.  He  was  protesting,  too,  by  this  very 
feature  of  his  work,  against  what  seemed  to  him  a  pseudo- 
intellectualism  which,  by  identifying  Christianity  with  dogma, 
was  allowing  to  escape  its  inmost  essence.  He  was  aware 
that  those  whose  standard  was  the  verbal  formula  as  the 
flag  by  which  a  man  was  to  be  known  had  difficulty  in  defin- 
ing his  attitude.  He  did  what  he  could  to  reassure  them, 
going  out  of  his  way  on  every  representative  occasion  when 
he  was  called  to  speak,  in  order  to  affirm  and  reaffirm,  to 
reiterate  even  to  weariness,  that  the  advance  of  the  church, 
or  the  progress  in  theology,  did  not  mean  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  venerated  formulas  of  Christendom,  but  rather 


844  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

their  retention  in  some  deeper,  more  intelligent  way,  by 
setting  forth  their  relation  to  the  spiritual  or  religious  life. 
He  had  succeeded  in  Boston,  and  wherever  he  was  well  known, 
in  making  his  position  clear. 

But  there  was  another  difficulty  experienced  by  those 
who  now  for  the  first  time  were  endeavoring  to  understand 
his  position.  The  obstacle  they  encountered  when  looking  at 
him  from  the  conventional  dogmatic  point  of  view  may  be 
illustrated  by  supposing  that  he  had  broken  his  silence  in  re- 
sponse to  the  strenuous  requests.  Had  he  affirmed  his  belief 
in  the  doctrines  he  was  suspected  of  denying,  or  had  he 
pointed  to  the  many  places  in  his  writings  which  contained 
these  affirmations,  we  can  easily  understand  how  this  would 
not  have  satisfied  his  questioners.  When  he  had  given  his 
answer,  there  would  have  been  another  question  ready  for 
him :  How  is  it  that  believing  these  things,  as  you  say  you 
do,  you  could  have  taken  part  in  the  ordination  of  a  Congre- 
gational minister ;  or,  as  to  matters  of  doctrine,  how  could 
you  have  allowed  Unitarians  to  come  to  the  Lord's  Supper, 
or  how  could  you  have  taken  part  in  any  religious  service 
where  they  were  present,  or  have  spoken  as  you  did,  in  the 
pulpit  of  Trinity  Church,  about  an  eminent  Unitarian  min- 
ister ?  Do  you  not  see  that  your  acts  contradict  your  words, 
taking  all  meaning  out  of  your  language,  so  that  you  stand 
convicted  by  deeds  which  speak  louder  than  words  ? 

Phillips  Brooks  had  already  anticipated  this  difficulty  in 
his  very  significant  book  on  Tolerance.  His  opponents  as- 
sumed that  tolerance  was  based  on  doctrinal  indifference  or 
laxity.  He  had  written  his  book  to  show  that  true  tolerance 
should  rest  upon  a  deeper  conviction  of  the  truth.  There  is 
no  evidence  that  his  antagonists  turned  to  this  book  in  order 
to  understand  his  position.  They  accepted  the  principle 
which  he  rejected  as  unworthy,  and  from  that  point  of  view 
launched  their  opposition. 

It  must  be  admitted,  then,  that  there  was  a  crisis  here,  and 
a  grave  one,  in  the  history  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  in  which 
also  all  the  churches  had  a  vital  interest.  The  theology  of 
Phillips  Brooks  and  his  life-work  came  to  a  focus  at  this 


^T.  ss]  THE   CONTROVERSY  845 

point.  Every  one  knew  and  felt,  whether  they  could  trace  it 
or  not,  that  Phillips  Brooks  stood  for  some  momentous  issue 
in  the  history  of  Christianity  and  of  religion,  that  he  could 
not  have  accomplished  his  great  work  had  there  not  been 
beneath  it  some  profound  and  far-reaching  adjustment  of 
essential  principles.  In  the  foregoing  chapters  the  effort  has 
been  made  to  show  what  that  adjustment  was.  Once  more, 
and  finally,  let  the  resume  be  given.  Beneath  the  life  of  the 
church,  whether  in  its  present  or  its  historical  manifestations, 
beneath  its  doctrine,  its  ethics,  its  worship,  is  the  personality 
of  Christ  as  living  force  and  inspiration.  All  truth  must 
come  to  the  world  through  personality.  "  Learning  and 
thought  and  idea  must  be  mediated  by  character,  of  which 
the  essence  is  will,  and,  thus  transmuted  into  power,  be 
brought  to  bear  on  life."  In  one  of  his  latest  addresses 
(1890)  he  had  said  :  — 

And  what  is  another  question  that  is  before  us  perpetually  ?  It 
is  the  question  of  the  separation  of  dogma  and  life.  Men  are 
driven  foolishly  to  say  on  the  one  side  that  dogma  is  everything, 
and  on  the  other,  that  life  is  everything.  As  if  there  could  be  any 
life  that  did  not  spring  out  of  truth!  As  if  there  could  be  any 
truth  that  was  really  felt  that  did  not  manifest  itself  in  life !  It 
is  not  by  doctrine  becoming  less  earnest  in  filling  itself  with  all 
the  purity  of  God.  It  is  only  by  both  dogma  and  life,  doctrine 
and  life,  becoming  vitalized  through  and  through,  that  they  shall 
reach  after  and  find  one  another.  Only  when  things  are  alive  do 
they  reach  out  for  the  fulness  of  their  life  and  claim  that  which 
belongs  to  them. 

Had  he  taken  one  side  or  other  of  the  controversy  he  would 
have  been  more  easily  understood.  Difficult  also  was  it  for 
many  to  understand  his  position,  illustrated  in  preaching  and 
in  practice,  that  the  claims  of  charity  or  love  were  higher 
than  those  of  faith  or  hope ;  or  again  his  definition  of  a 
Christian  man,  —  "  one  who  follows  Christ  in  grateful  love 
and  obedience ;  "  or  still  again,  his  conception  of  tolerance,  — 
that  fellowship  with  those  of  opposing  religious  opinions  does 
not  imply  indifference  to  the  formulas  of  Christian  doctrine, 
but  rather  a  deeper  conviction  of  their  value. 

There  was  danger,  then,  of  his  being  engulfed  in  the  tragic 


846  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

experience  of  life  which  awaits  those  who  rise  above  conven- 
tional standards.  It  was  as  in  the  time  of  Christ,  when 
Samaritans  and  publicans  were  to  orthodox  Judaism  what  the 
Protestant  sects  are  to  modern  "  Catholic "  ecclesiasticism. 
When  Christ  associated  with  Samaritans,  He  was  reminded 
that  the  orthodox  respectable  Jews  had  no  dealings  with  them. 
"When  He  sat  down  to  eat  with  publicans  and  sinners,  the 
principle  was  applied  to  Him,  that  "  a  man  is  known  by  the 
company  he  keeps."  One  of  the  most  impressive  of  Phillips 
Brooks's  sermons  was  on  the  words  of  Christ  to  the  woman 
of  Samaria :  "  The  hour  cometh,  when  ye  shall  neither  in  this 
mountain,  nor  yet  at  Jerusalem,  worship  the  Father,  when  the 
true  worshippers  shall  worship  the  Father  in  spirit  and  in 
truth."  To  such  a  moment  Phillips  Brooks  looked  forward 
as  the  completion  and  the  glory  of  the  Christian  church. 
Such  was  the  final  issue  to  which  his  life  had  brought  him. 
Holding  this  attitude,  would  his  election  as  the  Bishop  of 
Massachusetts  be  confirmed? 

It  had  been  expected  that  by  the  middle  of  June  the  an- 
nouncement would  be  made  of  the  vote  of  the  bishops  Two 
weeks  passed,  and  still  the  votes  were  so  slow  in  coming  in 
that  by  the  1st  of  July  a  sufficient  number  had  not  been  re- 
corded. Hitherto  those  who  knew,  or  thought  they  knew,  the 
Episcopal  Church  had  felt  no  serious  misgivings.  But  now 
the  anxiety  among  the  friends  of  Phillips  Brooks  became,  as 
they  expressed  it,  "terrible,"  while  they  forecast  what  his 
defeat  would  mean,  not  only  to  the  Episcopal  Church,  but 
to  all  the  churches.  Again  and  again  he  was  appealed 
to,  urged  to  say  a  few  simple  words  which  would  quiet  the 
agitation. 

I  had  often  begged  him  [says  Bishop  Clark,  in  a  memorial 
sermon]  to  say  a  word  or  two,  or  to  allow  me  to  do  it  for  him, 
which  I  knew  would  greatly  relieve  the  minds  of  some  honest 
people,  who  did  not  understand  his  position,  and  his  uniform 
reply  in  substance  was,  "I  will  never  say  a  word,  or  allow  you  to 
say  a  word,  in  vindication  or  explanation  of  my  position.  1  stand 
upon  my  record,  and  by  that  record  I  will  stand  or  fall  I  have 
said  what  I  think  and  believe  in  my  public  utterances  and  in  my 


^T.  ssl  THE   CONTROVERSY  847 

printed  discourses,  and  have  nothing  to  retract  or  qualify. "  And 
so  through  the  whole  of  the  trying  campaign  of  his  election  to  the 
episcopate  his  mouth  was  closed. 

From  July  1  to  July  10  the  suspense  continued.  On 
the  last-named  day,  the  presiding  bishop  telegraphed  to  the 
"  Churchman  "  that  the  election  had  been  confirmed  by  a  ma- 
jority of  the  bishops,  and  to  the  same  effect  to  the  bishop- 
elect.  Then  the  congratulations  poured  in  once  more  upon 
him,  and  there  went  up  a  shout  of  jubilation  all  over  the 
country.  The  confirmation  of  the  election  had  been  delayed 
too  long.  From  some  points  of  view  it  may  have  been  wise 
to  delay  it,  considering  the  misconceptions  and  uncertainties 
in  the  minds  of  his  opponents  ;  it  showed  that  the  bishops 
were  taking  no  hasty  action,  but  deliberating  solemnly  on  the 
issues  involved.  However  it  may  have  been,  the  sense  of 
relief  from  suspense,  the  consciousness  of  escape  from  some 
great  calamity  to  the  cause  of  true  religion,  the  conviction  of 
a  great  deliverance,  and  a  victory  for  all  that  was  highest  and 
most  essential  to  the  spiritual  life  and  to  the  common  human- 
ity, —  these  moods  found  expression  in  the  tide  of  joy  that 
swept  from  one  end  of  the  land  to  the  other :  "  Sing  unto  the 
Lord,  for  He  hath  triumphed  gloriously."  But  upon  this 
aspect  of  the  subject  we  need  not  dwell  or  attempt  to  depict 
the  satisfaction,  the  deep  inward  congratulation,  of  those  who 
again  in  large  numbers  wrote  to  the  bishop-elect  to  express 
their  joy.  One  event  may  be  mentioned  which  is  representa- 
tive of  the  situation.  Among  the  bishops  who  had  favored 
the  confirmation  of  the  election  was  the  Bishop  of  Albany, 
who,  while  not  in  agreement  with  Phillips  Brooks  in  matters 
of  opinion,  yet  believed  that  the  Episcopal  Church  was  large 
enough  to  hold  him.  The  scene  in  the  little  church  at  North- 
east Harbor,  Maine,  on  July  12,  is  thus  described  in  a  letter 
to  the  bishop-elect  by  a  clergyman  who  was  present :  — 

Mt  dear  Brooks,  —  I  had  a  great  comfort  and  happiness  to- 
day. In  church,  Bishop  Doane,  with  a  few  graceful  words,  an- 
nounced that  the  news  of  your  confirmation  had  just  reached  him, 
and  he  asked  us  to  join  in  that  prayer  in  the  service  for  the  Con- 
secration of  Bishops,   "Most  merciful  Father,  we  beseech  Thee  to 


848  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

send  down  upon  Thy  servant  Phillips  Brooks  Thy  heavenly  bless- 
ing,"  etc.  I  never  joined  in  a  prayer  with  more  fervor,  nor 
thanked  God  more  devoutly  that  a  great  suspense  was  over.  .  .  . 
I  was  glad  enough  that  our  Church  is  broad  enough  to  hold  you 

and .      I  agree  with  neither,  but  what  ditJerence  does  that 

make  ?     Accept  my  hearty  congratulations,  and  believe  me. 

Very  sincerely  yours,  . 

Of  the  two  following  passages,  the  first  is  an  extract  from 
a  private  letter  written  by  one  prominent  in  the  religious 
world,  and  the  other  from  an  editorial  in  a  Boston  news- 
paper :  — 

The  persistent  maintenance  of  your  spiritual  equanimity  and 
Christian  temper  have  won  for  you  the  hearts  of  thousands  of 
God's  people  everywhere,  during  your  recent  persecution. 

The  Episcopal  Church  in  this  diocese  emerges  from  its  hour  of 
doubt  upon  heights  which  command  a  wide  unbroken  horizon  of 
human  Christian  fellowship. 

One  other  circumstance  remains  to  be  mentioned  illustrat- 
ing the  attitude  of  Phillips  Brooks  in  the  long  controversy. 
Even  among  those  who  voted  for  his  confirmation  there  were 
some  who  were  troubled  with  doubts  as  to  the  validity  of  his 
baptism.  Now  that  he  was  free  to  speak  without  compromis- 
ing his  dignity,  he  was  asked  for  the  sake  of  peace  and  of 
quieting  scruples  to  submit  to  what  is  known  as  "  hypotheti- 
cal baptism ;  "  since  his  baptism  by  a  Unitarian  minister  had 
raised  the  doubt  whether  "  water  were  used,  and  in  the  Triune 
name."  Others,  he  was  assured,  who  had  been  placed  in  simi- 
lar circumstances  had  done  so.  In  view  of  the  fact  that 
bishops  had  voted  for  him  who  did  not  approve  his  opinions, 
was  it  not  his  duty  to  make  at  least  this  concession?  With 
this  request  he  refused  to  comply,  assuring  those  who  made  it 
that  the  baptism  had  been  by  water,  and  in  the  name  of  the 
Father,  and  of  the  Son,  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  Of  this  he 
was  as  sure  as  that  the  name  given  him  in  baptism  had  been 
Phillips  Brooks. 

From  this  account  of  the  election  of  Phillips  Brooks  and 
his  confirmation  by  a  majority  of  two  thirds,  it  was  said,  of 


/^^A 


^T.  ss]  CORRESPONDENCE  849 

the  standing  committees  and  bishops,  we  turn  to  his  letters, 
and  to  the  minor  events  in  his  life  during  the  months  that 
had  elapsed  since  the  election.  The  letters  tell  the  story  in 
his  simple  way,  beginning  from  the  time  when  he  was  first 
mentioned  as  a  candidate  for  the  office  of  bishop. 

April  6,  1891. 
About  this  bishopric,  Arthur,  give  me  your  advice.  It  looks 
a  little  as  if  I  might  be  chosen.  Shall  I  accept  it  i£  I  am? 
Won't  you  tell  me  what  you  think?  I  am  rather  inclined  to 
take  it  if  it  comes  to  me.  I  do  believe  one  might  do  good  work 
there.  And  it  is  not  right  for  men  to  be  perpetually  declining. 
I  wish  I  could  talk  with  you  about  it,  and  know  just  how  it  ceems 
to  you.  Won't  you  write  me  a  line  and  tell  me,  for  I  should 
value  your  judgment  more  than  anybody's?  There  is  perhaps  not 
much  chance  of  my  election,  but  there  is  a  chance. 

April  26,  1891. 
Dear  Arthur,  —  Thank  you  for  your  last  letter.  I  entirely 
agree  with  your  judgment,  and  shall  not  go  to  the  Convention 
this  week,  which  will  not  be  a  difficult  piece  of  self-restraint. 
But  I  think  it  seems  very  much  now  as  if  Satterlee  was  to  be  our 
Bishop.  Those  who  are  familiar  with  the  state  of  things  consider 
my  election  quite  unlikely.  .  .  .  We  surely  might  have  done 
much  worse.  I  think  the  fine,  and  at  one  time  hopeful,  boom 
for  another  candidate  will  not  have  been  entirely  in  vain,  if  it 
has  secured  a  well-meaning  and  modern  man  like  Satterlee  rather 
than  a  medisevalist  with  base  designs.  For  myself,  I  had  come 
to  feel  that  I  should  like  the  place.  Its  attractions  had  grown 
upon  me  the  more  I  had  thought  of  it.  I  had  dwelt  with  j^lea- 
sure  on  the  idea  of  knowing  the  State  and  seeing  our  Church  do 
a  good  work  for  her.  But  I  shall  not  grieve  at  going  back  to 
Trinity  and  the  familiar,  happy  work  there.      With  all  love, 

Always  your  brother,  P. 

To  a  daughter  of  his  friend  Leighton  Parks  he  writes :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  May  3,  1891. 

My  dear  Alice,  — It  makes  me  very  glad  indeed  to  know 
that  you  are  glad  that  I  am  to  be  your  bishop.  I  will  be  as  good 
a  bishop  as  I  can  to  you,  and  Ellen,  and  Georgette,  and  all  the 
other  people. 

If  you  ever  think  I  am  not  a  very  good  bishop,  you  must  blame 
your  father,  because  he  helped  make  me  bishop.  But  you  must 
always  know  that  I  am  doing  the  best  I  can. 

VOL.   II 


850  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

I  wish  you  were  going  to  be  at  Nantucket  this  summer,  so  that 
I  could  come  and  see  you.  But  it  will  be  pleasant  to  think  what 
a  good  time  you  will  be  having  in  Europe,  and  it  will  be  delight- 
ful to  have  you  back  again. 

I  send  my  best  love  to  Ellen  and  Georgette,  and  am  always 
Affectionately  your  friend, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

To  the  Rt.  Rev.  Henry  C.  Potter :  — 

May  4, 1891. 

My  dear  Henry,  —  I  thank  you  with  all  my  heart  for  your 
kind  benediction!  It  makes  the  new,  strange  prospect  seem  not 
so  wholly  strange,  and  tempts  me  to  believe  that  what  has  hap- 
pened is  for  good. 

I  did  not  think  I  ever  should  be  a  bishop,  but  who  can  tell  ?  It 
seemed  as  if  I  had  nothing  to  do  but  follow  where  the  leading 
went  before.  I  know  you  will  not  fail  to  ask  with  me  God's 
blessing,  and  let  me  count  upon  your  friendship,  —  as  in  all  the 
past  happy  years,  so  even  to  the  end. 

You  know  that  I  am  gratefully  and  affectionately 

Yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

One  of  the  inconveniences  attending  his  entrance  on  the 
episcopate  was  felt  by  his  parishioners  and  friends  to  be  the 
abandonment  it  would  involve  of  his  residence,  the  rectory  of 
Trinity  Church,  for  the  bishop's  house  on  Chestnut  Street. 
On  May  13  he  was  informed  of  the  unanimous  resolution  at 
a  meeting  of  the  wardens  and  vestry  of  Trinity  Church,  held 
the  previous  day,  — ''  that  the  wardens  and  vestry  earnestly 
request  Dr.  Brooks  to  make  no  arrangements  for  a  change  of 
residence  at  present."  Further  action  on  the  subject  was 
postponed  until  the  necessary  arrangements  for  the  transfer 
of  the  property  could  be  made. 

To  the  Rev.  Professor  F.  G.  Peabody,  of  Harvard,  he  wrote 
with  reference  to  the  change  in  his  relations  to  the  Univer- 
sity:— 

233  Clarendon  Stbeet,  Boston,  May  5, 1891. 
Dear  Dr.  Peabody,  —  I  thank  you  with  all  my  heart  for 
your  kind  letter.  Now  that  the  matter  is  decided,  and  I  am  to 
be  a  bishop,  I  can  only  hope  that  I  may  so  exercise  my  office  that 
you  and  others,  who  do  not  think  much  of  it,  may  see  in  it  some- 
thing more  than  they  have  suspected  to  he  there. 


^T.  ss']  CORRESPONDENCE  851 

At  any  rate,  I  shall  rejoice  to  know  that  in  whatever  work, 
great  or  little,  I  may  be  engaged  I  have  your  friendship  and 
sympathy.  They  have  been  very  much  to  me  and  always  will 
be.    .    .    . 

As  to  the  preachership  at  Cambridge,  I  am  sorry  to  say  that 
there  is  nothing  for  me  to  do  except  to  give  it  up  entirely.  The 
new  work,  which  I  cannot  at  present  measure,  ought  to  have  all 
my  time.  At  least  I  must  not  be  bound  by  any  other  stated 
engagements,  or  even  vague  promises.  I  need  not  tell  you  with 
what  great  reluctance  I  give  up  a  work  which  has  been  to  me  of 
such  great  and  precious  interest.  I  have  rejoiced  to  do  all  that 
I  could,  and  it  has  been  a  perpetual  satisfaction  to  be  allowed  to 
work  with  you.  I  shall  be  with  it  always  in  heart,  and  whenever 
I  can  serve  it  without  neglect  of  other  duties  which  I  have  under- 
taken I  shall  rejoice  to  do  so.  I  cannot  help  believing  that  you 
will  find  the  men  who  will  take  up  the  work  which  we  have  done, 
and  do  it  better. 

Forgive  this  hasty  note,  and  count  me,  always  with  sincere 
respect  and  faithful  good  wishes. 

Your  true  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

Among  the  congratulations  to  which  he  responded  were 
those  of  his  friends  in  Philadelphia.  To  Mrs.  James  C. 
Biddle  he  writes  :  — 

May  7,  1891. 

Dear  Mrs.  Biddle,  —  Your  telegram  gave  me  great  satisfac- 
tion. The  long  years  in  which  we  have  been  friends,  and  the 
kind  sympathy  with  which  you  have  followed  all  my  work,  makes 
this  new  greeting  very  precious.  I  hope  that  what  has  come  may 
be  for  good.      With  best  love  to  you  and  yours,  I  am, 

Yours  faithfully,  Phillips  Brooks. 

To  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine  who  was  in  Europe,  he  wrote 
at  greater  length  :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  May  14,  1891. 
Dear  Bob  Paine,  —  Yes,  my  dear  friend,  it  has  come,  and  I 
suppose  it  will  move  on  to  its  completion,  although  there  seems 
to  be  a  little  insignificant  opposition  to  it.  But  that  will  not 
come  to  anything,  and  I  shall  be  a  bishop.  Oh,  how  often  I  have 
wished  that  you  were  here,  that  we  might  talk  it  all  over  to- 
gether, and  I  might  have  your  counsel,  as  I  have  had  it  so  abun- 
dantly all  these  happy  years.  But  indeed.  Bob,  there  was 
nothing  else  to  do  but  to  accept  the  election  when  it  came,  and 
there  was  never  any  moment  when  one  had  the  right  or  the  chance 


852  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

to  say,  "I  cannot."  The  thing  became  clothed  with  so  much 
significance  that  one  owed  it  to  Truth  and  to  the  Church  to  stand, 
and  so,  the  first  thing  I  knew,  I  was  bishop  so  far  as  the  diocesan 
convention  could  make  me  one. 

Indeed  I  do  not  know  wholly  what  to  think  about  it,  though 
the  spirit  and  way  in  which  the  whole  thing  has  been  done  seems 
to  promise  a  beautiful  and  splendid  chance  for  good.  But  at 
present  I  think  that  all  my  mind  is  running  backward.  What  a 
twenty-two  years  this  has  been !  How  little  I  dreamed,  when  I 
came  here  in  '69,  of  all  the  happiness  that  was  before  me!  How 
good  and  generous  everybody  has  been!  And  now,  this  great, 
splendid  Church  and  Parish  as  the  monument  and  token  of  it  all! 
I  sit  and  think  it  all  over,  and  am  very  grateful,  —  I  hope  as 
grateful  as  I  ought  to  be,  —  certainly  as  humble  as  ever  any 
mortal  was. 

And  you  know  something,  you  cannot  know  all,  of  how  this 
great  happiness  and  delight  in  all  these  years  has  had  the  most 
sacred  and  close  connection  with  you  and  yours.  What  you  and 
your  wife  and  your  children  have  been  to  me  it  would  be  prepos- 
terous for  me  to  try  to  tell.  But  the  great  years  never  could 
have  been  without  you.  How  it  all  comes  pouring  on  my  recol- 
lection. What  a  million  of  little  and  big  events.  And  how 
thankful  to  you  I  am  you  will  never  know.  God  bless  you  for 
it  all! 

And  now  about  the  future.  There  surely  is  one.  We  are 
young  fellows  yet,  and  much  as  there  is  behind  us,  there  is  more 
before,  more  in  quality  at  least  if  not  in  quantity.  The  diocese 
is  just  a  larger  parish,  with  some  things  added  which  are  full  of 
interest.  I  feel  as  if  the  Episcopal  Church  and  the  State  of 
Massachusetts  needed  to  understand  one  another,  and  to  be  more 
to  each  other  than  they  have  been  heretofore.  If  I  can  make 
them  know  one  another  at  all,  I  shall  be  very  glad.  Then  I  look 
forward  to  much  intercourse  with  young  ministers,  and  to  the 
effort  to  give  them  inspiration  and  hope  and  breadth  of  view.  I 
expect  to  preach  here  and  there  and  everywhere  up  and  down  the 
State,  and  the  people  will  get  tired  of  hearing  me  before  I  shall 
get  tired  of  addressing  them.  The  colleges  and  schools  of  Mas- 
sachusetts are  immensely  interesting  to  me,  and  I  shall  know 
them  all.  And  all  the  good  work  of  every  kind  which  one  can 
touch  with  something  of  religious  fire  will  have  one's  eager  sym- 
pathy and  service. 

Besides  all  this,  I  should  be  very  sorry  to  think  that  personal 
pastorship  would  have  to  be  entirely  abandoned.  Many  people 
come  to  me  now  for  the  poor  spiritual  help  which  I  can  give,  who 


MT.  ss]  CORRESPONDENCE  853 

are  in  no  way  connected  with  Trinity  Church.  I  know  how  vast 
a  part  of  the  population  of  our  State  is  not  connected  with  any 
church  at  all.  I  hope  that  there  may  be  a  good  many  of  these 
who  in  one  way  or  another  will  find  me  out  and  give  me  the 
privilege  of  hearing  them  and  helping  them. 

When  I  run  over  the  opportunities  of  the  episcopate  thus,  I 
feel  sure  that  it  is  no  wooden  and  mechanical  office  to  which  I 
have  been  summoned.  It  is  all  splendidly  alive  if  one  can  make 
it  so.  And  there  is  no  place  so  good  to  be  bishop  in  as  Massa- 
chusetts. Our  Church  here  is  sensible  and  broad.  The  people 
about  her  are  willing  and  glad  to  see  her  take  her  part  in  every 
good  work,  and  (what  is  a  great  satisfaction  to  me)  those  who 
have  chosen  me  know  the  worst  of  the  man  whom  they  have 
chosen.  They  have  summered  and  wintered  me  for  twenty-two 
years,  and  know  pretty  much  what  they  will  have  to  expect  of 
their  new  bishop. 

But  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  I  am  sure  it  means  the  entire  resig- 
nation of  the  rectorship  of  Trinity  Church,  and  the  election  of  a 
new  man  who  shall  be  absolutely  master  of  that  place.  Nothing 
else  than  that  would  be  just  to  the  diocese,  or  the  parish,  or  the 
new  minister,  or  me.  I  shall  have  chance  enough  to  preach  in 
Boston  when  I  have  the  time  to  do  so.  And  at  first  the  larger 
part  of  my  time  will  be  spent  away  from  the  city.  The  best 
man  must  be  found ;  would  that  we  knew  him !  But  he  will  be 
found,  and  we  will  give  him  ungrudging  welcome  to  the  pulpit, 
and  he  shall  have  for  his  own  the  best  parish  in  the  world.  And 
he  and  his  family  will  live  here  in  this  house.  I  am  trying  to 
fancy  them  in  these  rooms,  and  do  not  wish  them  anything  but 
good.  And  I  shall  come  up  into  Chestnut  Street,  —  26  is  the 
number,  — and  be  as  snug  and  comfortable  as  possible  there.  I 
have  read  carefully  all  the  good  and  thoughtful  plans  in  your  de- 
lightful letter,  but,  believe  me,  it  is  not  good  to  think  of  any- 
thing except  the  entire  separation  of  the  church  and  the  episco- 
pate. You  will  give  strength,  I  know,  to  both  the  parish  and 
the  diocese,  and  I  shall  be  close  to  all  my  old  friends  still.  All 
this  about  myself!  You  will  forgive  it,  I  am  sure.  You  do  not 
know  how  I  wish  you  were  here !  But  the  Consecration  shall  be 
put  off,  if  possible,  till  you  get  back. 

To  the  Rev.  W.  R.  Huntington :  — 

Boston,  May  23, 1891. 
My  dear  Huntington,  —  I  wish  you  were  to  be  our  bishop ! 
These  people  who  cannot  sign  the  papers  of  the  new  man  who 
will  overlook  everything  and  oversee  nothing  have  a  lot  of  sym- 


8^4  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

pathy  from  me.  I  can  understand  all  their  misgivings,  and  could 
give  them  a  host  more  which  they  never  guessed.  But  when  it 
comes,  as  I  suppose  it  will,  you  will  let  me  be  sure  of  your  friend- 
ship through  all  my  blunders,  and  of  your  confidence  that  at 
least  I  am  trying  hard. 

I  must  insist  now  on  keeping  to  the  end  that  which  you  have 
generously  allowed  me  all  these  years. 

Always  your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

The  excitement  over  the  election  was  drawing  towards  its 
culmination  when  he  wrote  this  letter  to  Rev.  John  C. 
Brooks :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  May  27,  1891. 

Dear  Johnny,  — I  thank  you  most  heartily  for  your  good 
letter.  It  is  indeed  a  ridiculous  pother  that  is  going  on,  but  it 
has  this  advantage,  that  it  is  bringing  the  whole  matter  out  into 
broad  daylight,  and  the  decision  when  it  comes  will  have  its  full 
value,  and  when  a  distinct  Broad  Churchman,  thoroughly  recog- 
nized and  proclaimed  as  such,  is  made  a  bishop. 

The  opposition  has  been  thoroughly  upon  the  grounds  of  admit- 
ted facts.  Nobody  has  charged  me  with  theft  or  murder.  I  do 
not  believe  the  doctrine  of  apostolical  succession,  and  I  am  sure 
that  Lyman  Abbott  has  the  right  to  preach  the  gospel.  I  shall 
be  confirmed  with  the  clear  knowledge  of  those  positions  in  every- 
body's mind,  and  so  it  will  be  fully  made  known  that  they  are  no 
objections  to  a  man's  episcopate. 

And  I  shall  be  confirmed.  There  is  no  doubt  of  the  result, 
and  then  I  think  the  good  bishops  will  find  what  a  delightful 
member  of  the  Upper  House  I  am. 

What  an  excitement  there  is  all  through  the  theological  world. 
It  is  all  good,  and  in  the  end  we  are  to  have  a  larger  Christian 
life.  Certainly  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  things  going  back 
to  what  they  were  twenty  years  ago. 

Affectionately  your  brother,  P. 

A  relative  of  Bishop  Clark  had  sent  to  Dr.  Brooks  a  some- 
what severe  portrait  of  himself,  whose  reception  he  acknow- 
ledged with  these  lines  :  — 

No  wonder,  if  't  is  thus  he  looks, 
The  Church  has  doubts  of  Phillips  Brooks. 
Well,  if  he  knows  himself,  he  '11  try 
To  give  these  dreadful  looks  the  lie. 
He  dares  not  promise,  but  will  seek 
E'en  as  a  bishop  to  be  meek, 


^T.  55]  CORRESPONDENCE  855 

To  walk  the  way  he  shall  be  shown, 
To  trust  a  strength  that 's  not  his  own, 
To  fill  the  years  with  honest  work, 
To  serve  his  day  and  not  to  shirk, 
And  quite  forget  what  folks  have  said, 
To  keep  his  heart  and  keep  his  head, 
Until  men,  laying  him  to  rest. 
Shall  say,  at  least  he  did  his  best. 

To  the  Eev.  C.  A.  L.  Richards  he  wrote,  while  the  voting 
of  the  bishops  was  in  process  :  — 

Boston,  June  20,  1891. 

There  is  no  doubt,  I  take  it,  about  my  being  bishop,  but  the 
matter  moves  on  very  slowly.  I  think  the  opposition  have  done 
everything  in  their  power  to  clothe  the  election  with  significance, 
and  when  the  final  collapse  of  things  does  not  happen  upon  Con- 
secration Day,  I  do  not  see  how  they  will  explain  the  failure.  But 
now  let 's  put  it  all  out  of  our  minds  and  be  the  most  careless  of 
summer  birds  for  the  next  two  months. 

It  was  quite  impossible  for  Mr.  Brooks  to  have  acknow- 
ledged the  immense  number  of  congratulatory  letters  he 
received;  but  he  did  not  fail  to  respond  to  his  personal 
friends  who  stood  closest  to  him.  Thus  he  writes  to  Dr. 
Weir  Mitchell  that  the  episcopate  would  not  have  been  com- 
plete without  his  blessing.  "  If  I  become  a  bishop  I  shall  be 
very  much  the  same  kind  of  fellow,  I  fancy,  that  I  have  been 
all  along." 

The  following  letter  is  addressed  to  Rev.  Leighton  Parks, 

in  Europe :  — 

North  Andovek,  July  4,  1891. 
Dear  Pakks,  — Your  telegram  was  very  welcome,  though  it 
must  still  be  taken  as  prophetic,  for  not  yet  have  the  bishops 
made  up  their  minds  and  sent  their  answers  about  my  consecra- 
tion. I  have  not  forgotten  my  promise  to  let  you  know  when  the 
result  was  reached,  but  as  yet  I  know  nothing  except  what  I 
heard  in  a  letter  from  Bishop  Clark,  who  had  been  to  see  Bishop 
Williams,  and  Bishop  Williams  said  he  thought  it  would  be  a 
fortnight  still  before  they  were  in.  But  there  seemed  to  be  no 
doubt  about  the  great  result,  and  he  went  so  far  as  to  mention 
for  the  Consecration  Day  the  16th  of  September,  which,  it  seems, 
is  an  Ember  Day.  I  shall  try  to  have  it  put  off  till  a  day  in 
October,  but  perhaps  I  shall  not  succeed;  in  which  case  you  will 


856  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

find  me  a  bishop  when  you  come  home.  My  dear  Parks,  you 
will  be  kind  to  me,  won't  you?  as  you  always  have  been.  And 
you  won't  go  through  any  silly  joke  about  its  making  a  difference 
in  our  way  to  one  another,  and  compelling  you  to  behave  differ- 
ently to  me,  will  you  ?  Because,  if  you  say  you  will,  I  will  re- 
fuse to  be  bishop  even  at  this  late  day. 

The  world  crawls  on  as  well  as  it  can  here  without  you.  We 
have  had  Commencement  at  the  Theological  School  and  at  the 
College.  Willie  Newton  and  Charles  Learoyd  have  both  gone 
to  Europe.  They  have  chosen  Bishop  Talbot  to  be  Bishop  of 
Georgia.  Harvard  beat  Yale  in  the  boat  race.  My  days  go  by 
here  in  the  old  house  in  delightful  peace.  The  great  strong  winter 
lies  far  behind  us.  I  think  of  you  and  the  children,  and  wish  you 
all  best  blessings.  Give  them  my  love,  and  my  best  greetings  to 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Naylor;  and  for  yourself,  dear  Parks,  you  know 
how  utterly  I  am. 

Your  friend,  P.  B. 

Of  the  three  following  letters  to  Bishop  Clark  the  first  was 
written  while  the  question  was  still  undecided;  the  others 
immediately  after  the  announcement  that  his  election  had 
been  confirmed. 

Boston,  July  6,  1891. 

Dear  Bishop  Clakk,  —  The  bishops  do  not  seem  to  be  in  any 
very  anxious  haste  to  have  me  one  of  them.  But  I  can  freely 
wait,  and  when  they  have  entirely  made  up  their  minds,  no  doubt 
they  will  kindly  speak,  and  all  the  world  will  listen. 

I  thank  you  for  your  letter,  and  am  glad  that  you  have  seen 
Bishop  Williams,  and  he  feels  pleasantly  about  it  all.  After  the 
matter  is  all  settled,  I  shall  be  glad,  if  he  wishes  it,  to  go  and  see 
him  and  to  make  any  arrangement  which  he  desires  with  regard 
to  the  consecration. 

I  hope  he  will  not  insist  upon  having  the  service  before  the 
first  days  of  October.  My  reason  for  wishing  this  is  mainly  that 
certain  persons  whom  I  very  much  wish,  and  who  themselves  very 
much  desire,  to  be  at  the  ceremony  are  abroad,  and  will  not  be 
at  home  before  the  1st  of  October. 

I  am  glad  of  this  quiet  summer,  and  especially  of  the  quiet 
days  at  North  Andover,  before  the  change  comes.  I  have  been 
thinking  a  great  deal  about  it  all  and  hoping  and  praying  that  I 
may  be  able  to  do  my  duty.  The  work  looks  very  interesting, 
and  I  think  the  simplest  view  of  it  makes  it  most  serious  and 
sacred.     I  do  not  know  why  one  should  not  carry  into  it  the  same 


^T.  ssl  CORRESPONDENCE  857 

simple  faith  by  which  he  has  always  tried  to  live,  that  He  whose 
the  work  is  will  give  the  strength ;  and  so  I  do  not  dare  to  fear. 
I  am  counting  on  your  visit  by  and  by,  and  meanwhile  I  am 
always,  faithfully  and  affectionately, 

Your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

Boston,  July  13,  1891. 

Dear  Bishop  Clark, — Yes,  it  is  settled,  and  with  God's 
help  I  will  be  the  best  bishop  that  I  can.  I  am  going  to  see 
Bishop  Williams  on  Thursday.  We  have  communicated  most 
cordially  already  by  letter.  At  his  request  I  have  expressed  my 
wish  that  the  consecration  should  be  in  Trinity  Church,  that  he 
should  preside,  that  you  and  Bishop  Whipple  should  present  me, 
that  Bishop  Potter  should  preach  the  sermon,  and  that  my  brothers 
should  be  the  attendant  presbyters.  I  will  write  you  again  as 
soon  as  I  have  seen  Bishop  Williams. 

And  let  me  thank  you,  my  dear  friend,  for  all  the  interest  you 
have  taken  in  it  all,  and  for  the  comfort  and  strength  which  you 
have  given  me  for  the  past  months.  I  do  not  know  what  I  should 
have  done  without  you ;  and  your  kindness  will  always  make  one 
of  the  happiest  associations  of  my  episcopate.  I  thank  you  with 
all  my  heart. 

It  is  on  Monday  that  we  shall  expect  you  at  North  Andover, 
and  I  shall  meet  you  at  whatever  train  you  will  name.  The  ear- 
lier you  come  the  better,  and  you  will  surely  give  me  all  that 
week  and  as  much  longer  as  you  can.  I  hope  that  you  are  well 
and  happy. 

Ever  yours  affectionately,  Phillips  Brooks. 

MlNNEQTJA,  July  21,  1891. 

Dear  Bishop  Clark,  —  I  want  to  tell  you  about  the  delight- 
ful visit  which  I  paid  to  the  Presiding  Bishop.  How  can  I  tell 
whether  he  was  as  much  pleased  with  it  as  I  was  ?  But  at  any 
rate  we  got  on  beautifully.  We  talked  together,  and  I  examined 
his  robes,  and  I  lunched  with  him,  and  he  was  kindness  and 
courtesy  itself,  as  if  nobody  had  ever  had  any  right  to  misgivings 
about  my  orthodoxy,  or  he  himself  had  ever  doubted  whether  I 
could  say  the  Nicene  Creed.  On  the  whole,  I  think  the  visit  to 
Bishop  Williams  was  a  success,  and  there  is  no  reason  why  we 
should  not  be  on  the  best  of  terms  hereafter  so  long  as  we  live. 

Then  I  went  to  New  York,  and  ordered  a  set  of  the  preposter- 
ous garments  that  bishops  wear.  Then  I  came  here,  where  my 
brother  Arthur  has  a  house,  where  I  have  spent  a  pleasant  two 
days,  and  where  your  most  kind  letter  reached  me,  with  the  re- 
ports of  all  the  good  things  which  the  bishops  said. 


858  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

All  this  about  my  miserable  self.  Be  sure  that  I  am  ever  and 
ever,  my  dear  Bishop  Clark, 

Yours  most  afEectionately,  Phillips  Brooks. 

The  Rev.  John  Henry  Hopkins  had  not  only  taken  what 
part  he  could  in  securing  the  confirmation  of  Dr.  Brooks's 
election,  but  after  the  result  was  reached  wrote  this  letter  to 
Phillips  Brooks,  which  has  in  it  a  touch  of  pathos :  — 

July  11,  1891. 

Rev.  and  dear  Brother,  — At  last  the  morning  papers  an- 
nounce that  the  majority  of  the  Bishops  consent  to  your  consecra- 
tion, though  they  have  been  so  slow  about  it  that  I  began  to  feel 
a  little  uneasy.  Not  about  you !  Your  position  is  one  which 
Bishops  can  neither  give  nor  take  away.  Nor  do  I  congratulate 
you,  for  the  burden  of  the  Episcopate  is  too  heavy  to  be  a  fit 
subject  for  congratulation.  But  I  rejoice  that  the  American 
Church    has    not    been    switched  from  its  propriety    by    such    a 

disgusting    mess   of    twaddle    as    the  business,    even  when 

backed  up  by  so  light  a  weight  as  the  name  of  Dr.  .      I 

loathe  this  whole  "private  and  confidential "  business  of  stabbing 
a  man  in  the  dark,  and  only  wonder  that  the  miserable  under- 
ground burrowing  has  affected  as  many  good  men  as  it  has.     Part 

of  the  opposition,  however,  is  due  (as  with )  to  a  conviction 

that  you  are  an  Avian  of  some  shade !  Of  course,  if  you  were 
that,  I  should  do  as  he  has  done;  but  I  have  never  seen  any 
proof  of  it,  and  don't  believe  a  word  of  it.  I  only  wish  I  were 
well  enough  to  attend  your  consecration ;  but  I  have  an  incurable 
disease,  which  renders  it  impossible,  and  have  probably  only  a 
few  weeks,  perhaps  months,  to  live.  I  shall  be  with  you  in  spirit 
on  that  day.  You  and  I  do  not  agree  about  some  things;  but 
we  can  differ  like  honest  men  who  respect  one  another;  and  I 
respect  and  honor  you  as  the  foremost  preacher  of  our  Anglican 
Communion,  and  shall  rejoice  to  see  you  a  member  of  our  House 
of  Bishops.  I  regard  your  elevation  as  the  most  important  step 
yet  taken  in  bringing  New  England  into  the  Church. 

Your  obedient  servant  in  the  Church, 

J.  H.  Hopkins. 

He  writes  to  Rev.  C.  D.  Cooper,  the  Hon.  Robert  C.  Win- 
throp,  and  others,  telling  them  of  the  arrangements  made  for 
the  Consecration,  and  urging  their  presence :  — 

MiNNEQUA,  Pennsylvania,  July  20,  1891. 

Dear  old  Cooper,  —  The  bishops  have  more  or  less  reluc- 
tantly consented,  and  I  am  to  be  consecrated  in  Trinity,  Boston, 


^T.  55]  CORRESPONDENCE  859 

on  the  14th  of  October.  And  you  will  come,  won't  you?  I 
know  you  do  not  like  such  things,  but  this  is  mi7ie.  And  we 
have  loved  each  other  all  these  years,  and  it  will  make  the  epis- 
copate sweeter  and  easier  always  to  remember  that  your  kindly 
face  looked  on  at  the  ceremony,  and  that  your  beloved  voice 
joined  in  the  prayers !  I  want  you  more  than  all  the  rest !  I 
shall  keep  you  a  room  under  my  own  roof,  and  it  is  not  likely  I 
shall  get  you  there  again,  for  I  must  move  into  the  old  house 
where  bishops  live,  on  Chestnut  Street,  some  time  this  autumn. 

So  write  me  word  that  you  will  come.  Let  this  be  our  token 
that  no  episcopate  can  break  the  friendship  of  so  many  years, 
and  show  the  world  that  we  belong  together  even  if  they  have 
made  their  efforts  to  tear  us  from  one  another.  I  claim  your 
presence  as  my  right. 

I  do  not  know  that  I  feel  right  about  it  all;  only  it  seems  to 
me  to  be  a  new  and  broader  opportunity  to  serve  the  Master 
whom  we  have  been  loving  and  serving  all  this  long  ministry, 
and  with  the  opportunity  I  believe  that  He  will  give  me  strength; 
that  's  all,  and  I  am  very  happy.  .  .  .  God  bless  you,  dear 
Cooper,  and  make  us  faithful,  and  give  us  the  great  joy  at  last. 
Your  affectionate  old  friend,  P.  B. 

MiNNEQUA,  July  20,  1891. 
Dear  Mr.  Winthrop,  —  I  shall  not  cease  to  hope  that  you 
will  find  yourself  strong  enough  upon  that  day  to  be  present  at 
the  service.  It  will  be  the  crowning  token  of  the  kindness  and 
Christian  friendship  which  you  have  given  me  for  all  these  years. 
Present  or  absent,  I  know  that  I  shall  have  your  blessing.  But 
I  want  it  present.  I  was  anxious  that  you,  first  of  all,  should 
know  of  these  appointments,  for  I  am  sure  that  you  and  Mrs. 
Winthrop  are  interested  in  them. 

I  hope  that  you  grow  stronger  and  more  comfortable  from  day 
to  day.      I  send  my  love  to  Mrs.   Winthrop,  and  am  always, 
Faithfully  and  affectionately  yours, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  August  15,  1891. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  I  will  join  the  Sons  of  the  Revolution  as 
they  are  being  organized  in  Massachusetts.  We  do  not  seem  to 
be  very  rich  in  military  ancestry,  but  our  Phillips  folks  were  cer- 
tainly true  patriots,  and  did  their  part  in  the  council  chamber,  if 
not  in  the  field,  to  set  the  new  nation  on  its  feet.  So  let 's  go  in 
for  the  assertion  that  our  dear  land  at  least  used  to  be  American. 

I  am  just  back  from  Mount  Desert,  where  I  had  a  pleasant 
week.     McVickar  and  I  were  staying  at   the  Morrills.     I  left 


86o  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

him  there  and  came  up  to  Mr.  Lowell's  funeral,  at  which  Willie 
Lawrence  and  I  oflBciated  yesterday.  It  makes  the  world  seem 
poorer  to  have  him  gone,  for  his  genius  was  beautifully  rich  and 
generous.  On  the  whole,  I  do  not  know  where  we  have  had  a 
better  flower  of  our  American  life. 

And  this  morning's  paper  says  that  John  Henry  Hopkins  has 
gone.  He  was  a  part  of  the  picturesque  period  of  Church  life, 
which  seems  to  have  faded  before  the  electric  light  of  Church- 
work-Christianity.  I  suppose  that  almost  every  opinion  of  his 
was  a  mistake,  but  there  was  a  generous  impulsiveness  in  him 
which  made  it  good  to  have  him  about,  and  I  am  truly  sorry 
he  has  left  us. 

NOBTH  Andovbr,  Sunday  afternoon, 
August  16,  1891. 

Dear  Parks,  —  Let  me  write  you  once  more  before  the  sum- 
mer is  over,  and  you  and  the  children  set  sail  for  home,  and  the 
new  life  which  I  cannot  help  dreading  begins.  You  will  do  all 
you  can  to  make  it  like  the  old  life,  won't  you?  You  will  not, 
either  in  jest  or  in  earnest,  behave  as  if  there  had  come  a  break 
and  a  separation  between  us,  because  of  what  is  to  take  place  on 
the  14th  of  October!  I  hate  to  think  of  the  pageant  of  that 
day.  And  what  is  to  come  after  it  I  do  not  know.  Sometimes 
I  feel  as  if  any  good  which  my  bishopric  can  do  the  Church  were 
comprised  in  the  mere  fact  of  my  election  and  confirmation,  and 
now  I  had  better  resign  or  die.  Certainly  my  kind  opponents 
have  done  their  best  to  make  the  selection  of  me  significant. 
But  I  will  try  what  I  can  do  to  show  not  that  there  was  not  what 
they  called  a  great  danger,  but  that  what  they  chose  to  call  a 
danger  was  really  a  chance  and  opportunity  of  good.  You  don't 
know  how  the  work  attracts  me  in  my  better  moments  or  how 
earnestly  I  pray  for  strength  to  do  a  hundredth  part  of  what  my 
imagination  pictures.  Only  don't  desert  me.  I  had  a  sweet 
and  kindly  letter  of  congratulation  and  godspeed  from  your 
mother,  which  made  me  very  grateful. 

I  went  to  Marion  and  had  two  days  with  John.  He  was  well 
and  happy.  And  Percy  was  benignantly  delightful,  beaming 
from  under  his  broad  brim  like  a  capacious  Quaker,  and  scriptur- 
ally  "judging  all  things."  .  .  .  He  is  coming  to  spend  his  Sun- 
days in  September  at  my  old  house  (where  the  club  used  to  meet) 
in  Boston.  Would  that  you  could  give  me  a  Sunday  or  two  there, 
after  the  old  autumnal  fashion,  before  you  settle  down  in  Brim- 
mer Street.      Will  you? 

You  wrote  me  from  the  Engadine,  and  I  was  very  grateful. 
I  wonder  where  you  are  now.     Wherever  you  are,  I  greet  you, 


^T.  ss']  CORRESPONDENCE  86 1 

and  send  my  love  to  the  children,  and  ask  you  to  remember  me 
most  kindly  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Naylor,  and  adjure  you  again  not 
to  let  the  bishopric  make  any  difference,  and  am  forever, 
Yours  affectionately, 

Phillips  Brooks. 

North  Aia)OVER,  August  17,  1891. 

My  dear  Bob  Paine,  —  There  are  six  weeks  before  the  awful 
day  comes  which  sends  me  off  bishoping  to  the  far  confines  of 
the  State.  I  dread  the  pageant  of  that  day,  but  it  will  soon 
be  over,  and  then,  were  it  not  for  what  I  leave  behind,  I  should 
look  forward  with  keen  pleasure  to  the  work  which  there  will  be 
to  do  for  the  Church  and  the  people.  The  papers  keep  up  a  run- 
ning talk  about  making  Trinity  a  cathedral.  That  does  not  in- 
terest me  much.  It  is  both  impossible  and  undesirable.  What 
interests  me  most  just  now,  and  what  I  should  like  to  make  the 
first  struggle  of  my  episcopate,  is  the  purchase  of  the  Church  of 
the  Messiah  for  our  City  Mission,  together  with  property  on 
Washington  Street,  which  should  enable  us  to  make  it  a  true  and 
strong  power  of  missionary  life.  The  Church  is  now  disused  and 
for  sale.  It  is  the  best  opportunity  that  has  offered  since  the 
great  fire  for  the  reestablishment  of  St.  Stephen's  Church  and 
House.  It  covers  the  field  which  we  have  worked  from  Trinity 
House.  It  would  fulfil  the  plan  of  a  great  powerful  establish- 
ment for  that  region  which  you  have  always  had.  It  would  cost 
a  good  deal  of  money  to  carry  it  on.  Everything,  you  see,  is 
in  its  favor.  And  the  man  would  certainly  appear.  Oh,  it  is 
the  men  that  we  want.      If  we  had  them ! 

And  Lowell  is  dead!  It  makes  the  world  emptier  and  sadder. 
No  man  of  letters  has  begun  to  do  so  much  good  work  as  he  has 
done,  and  his  whole  bearing  in  the  world  has  been  a  blessing. 
He  was  so  brave  and  true  and  kind  and  simple.  Even  the  Eng- 
lishmen admired  him. 

You  are  among  those  Englishmen,  I  fancy,  now.  Steal  the 
best  of  their  spirit  and  ideas  for  us.  That  is  what  we  have  al- 
ways done,  to  take  their  best  and  make  it  better. 

Phillips  Brooks. 

His  next  letter  is  one  which  it  cost  him  some  agony  to 
write,  —  he  did  not  know  what  agony  until  after  it  had  done 
its  work,  and  severed  his  relationship  as  the  rector  of  Trinity 
Church.  The  letter  is  addressed  to  the  senior  warden,  Mr. 
Charles  Henry  Parker :  — 


862  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  August  18,  1891. 

My  dear  Mr.  Parker,  —  I  hereby  offer  to  you  and  the  Par- 
ish of  Trinity  Church  my  resignation  of  the  Rectorship,  to  take 
effect  on  the  14th  of  next  October,  when  I  shall  be  consecrated 
as  Bishop  of  the  Diocese  of  Massachusetts. 

I  must  not  try  to  say  with  what  thankfulness  I  look  back  upon 
twenty-two  years  of  the  happiest  ministry  which  it  has  ever  been 
given  to  any  minister  to  enjoy,  or  with  what  profound  sorrow  I 
turn  away  from  it  to  my  new  work.  God  has  been  very  good  to 
us.  I  pray  that  His  richest  blessing  may  always  be  with  the 
Church  and  the  people  which,  while  life  shall  last,  will  be  very 
close  to  my  heart. 

It  is  a  great  joy  to  me  that,  if  I  may  no  longer  be  your  Pastor, 
I  may  still  be  near  you  as  your  Bishop,  and  that  I  may  always 
be  allowed  to  count  myself,  with  gratitude  and  love, 

Faithfully  your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

He  was  now  forecasting  the  new  life,  making  the  final  ar- 
rangements for  the  day  of  consecration,  and  for  the  Episcopal 
visitations  which  should  follow.  To  Mr.  A.  J.  C.  Sowdon  he 
wrote :  — 

September  7,  1891. 

My  dear  Sowdon,  —  May  I  say  how  very  glad  I  shall  be  if 
you  can  consent  to  take  charge  of  things  at  Trinity  Church  on 
the  Consecration  Day,  the  14th  of  October? 

It  is  not  only  that  I  know  how  well  it  will  be  done  if  you  will 
do  it,  but  still  more  that  it  will  be  a  great  satisfaction  that  one 
whom  I  have  all  my  life  been  glad  to  count  my  friend  should  care 
for  the  arrangements  of  what  is  to  me  such  an  important  and 
interesting  service.  I  hope  that  you  can  do  all  this  kindness, 
and  I  shall  always  thank  you  if  you  will. 

Ever  yours  faithfully  and  truly,  Phillips  Brooks. 

To  the  Kev.  A.  C.  A.  Hall,  on  the  eve  of  his  return  to 
England,  he  wrote :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  October  13,  1891. 

Dear  Father  Hall,  —  I  must  say  no  more.  Only  may  God 
guide  you ;  and  whatever  be  my  own  thought  about  it  all,  and  my 
own  sorrow  at  the  loss  of  the  sight  of  you,  I  shall  be  satisfied, 
for  I  know  how  you  are  seeking,  and  will  do,  the  will  of  God. 

And  it  is  the  common  effort  to  do  that  that  brings  and  keeps 
men  close  together.  I  thank  you  for  all  the  past,  and  for  the 
friendship  which  will  not  be  broken. 


JET.  ss]  CORRESPONDENCE  863 

And  it  will  be  great  delight  and  strength  to  me  that  you  will 
come  to-morrow,  and  that  you  are  praying  for  me. 

Your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

He  planned  to  begin  his  episcopal  visitations  among  the 
beautiful  Berkshire  hills,  glorious  in  their  autumn  foliage. 
"  It  will  be  a  great  pleasure,"  he  writes  to  the  Rev.  "Wm. 
Wilberforce  Newton,  rector  of  St.  Stephen's,  PittsfieJd,  "  to 
have  one  of  my  earliest  visits  to  your  church.  It  will  break 
the  shock  a  little  and  let  me  feel  as  if  I  had  not  wholly  said 
good-by  to  the  old  life.  You  don't  know  how  I  hold  on  to 
it."     He  writes  to  Mr.  Newton  and  to  Mr.  Cooper :  — 

North  Andover,  September  16,  1891. 

You  don't  mind  my  coming  to  you  on  an  off  day,  say  a  Satur- 
day, and  giving  the  big  days  to  men  whom  I  know  less  well,  do 
you?  I  must  take  liberties  with  some  one;  may  I  not  take  them 
with  my  friends  who  know  that  I  love  them  and  care  for  their 
work  ?  It  may  be  a  big  price  to  pay  for  the  fruitless  joy  of  my 
friendship,  but  such  must  be  the  penalty.  At  least,  this  first 
year  I  will  try  first  to  stand  by  my  appointments  and  let  men 
see  that  I  want  to  know  the  men  and  the  places  which  I  now 
know  least,  and  that  I  am  not  tempted  by  the  prospect  of  fair 
Sundays  in  my  good  friend's  rectory.  Read  this  between  the 
lines  when  the  list  comes  out  and  forgive  me  for  Saturday  after- 
noon. 

I  shall  run  in  on  you  more  than  once  during  my  Berkshire 
wanderings  this  autumn.  There  is  no  exhilaration  about  the  new 
work  yet,  but  it  will  come.  At  present,  there  is  mostly  a  deep 
sense  of  what  the  past  twenty-two  years  have  been  and  of  what 
I  would  make  them  if  I  could  have  them  again,  but  I  must  not 
trouble  you  with  that. 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  September  26, 1891. 

My  dear  Cooper,  —  Thank  you  sincerely  for  your  letter.  It 
is  good  to  know  that  you  are  at  home  again  in  your  old  nest  which 
I  know  so  well,  and  where  I  am  so  sure  that  you  are  comfortable. 
I  hope  it  is  not  so  hot  there  this  morning  as  it  is  here.  They 
say  there  is  a  cold  wave  coming.      Would  that  it  were  here! 

And  now  the  consecration  draws  near.  I  shall  be  so  glad  to 
see  you  on  the  evening  of  the  10th.  Of  course  you  must  stay 
here.  I  shall  not  hear  of  anything  else.  Arthur  and  his  wife 
will  be  here,  and  Bishop  Clark  and  John;  that  is  all  besides  you. 


864  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

It  will  be  a  great  delight  to  have  you  here  for  the  last  Sunday, 
and  during  those  last  days. 

You  must  bring  a  surplice.  I  cannot  be  sure  of  what  the 
church  will  be  able  to  supply. 

The  robes  have  just  come  in  and  stand  beside  me  on  the  floor 
as  I  write.  Poor  things !  they  little  know  how  they  have  got  to 
travel  up  and  down  the  land,  and  in  what  hundreds  of  pulpits 
they  have  got  to  stand.  It  is  a  pity  that  one  has  to  wear  them, 
and  that  the  whole  subject  of  the  episcopate  should  be  so  in- 
volved with  clothes,  but  one  must  make  the  best  of  that,  and  in- 
deed, Cooper,  the  more  I  think  of  it  the  more  it  seems  to  me 
as  if  there  were  really  no  necessity  in  the  nature  of  things  that 
a  bishop  should  be  a  fool. 

Good-by,  and  give  me  your  kind  thoughts,  and  be  sure  that 
I  am,  Yours  affectionately,  P.  B. 

So  absorbing  was  the  question  of  the  episcopate  that  other 
events  seem  relatively  unimportant.  But  an  allusion  at  least 
must  be  made  to  a  few  circumstances  which  are  interesting, 
and  may  have  served  to  distract  his  mind  from  the  turmoil 
raging  around  him  in  that  trying  period.  It  was  with  plea- 
sure that  he  met  in  this  country  the  famous  African  explorer 
Mr.  H.  M.  Stanley,  and  his  wife  whom  he  had  already  known 
in  England.  Mrs.  Stanley  writes  him  after  listening  to  a 
sermon  in  Trinity  Church  with  her  husband :  — 

Mr.  Stanley  says  it  is  one  of  the  most  rousing  sermons  he  ever 
heard.  He  said  it  made  him  feel  excited,  and  that  as  a  young 
man,  such  a  sermon  would  have  certainly  stirred  him  to  action. 

Many  important  and  attractive  invitations  came  to  him, 
but  he  does  not  seem  to  have  considered  any  of  them  as  pos- 
sibilities ;  he  was  shutting  himself  up  more  and  more  to  his 
own  distinctive  work  at  Trinity  Church.  Thus  he  was  invited 
by  Hon.  Joseph  H.  Choate  to  make  the  address  in  New  York 
before  the  society  which  had  been  formed  under  the  inspira- 
tion of  General  Sherman,  to  commemorate  annually  the  birth- 
day of  General  Grant  on  the  27th  of  April.  He  declined  to 
take  any  part  in  the  Parliament  of  Religions  to  be  held  in 
Chicago  at  the  approaching  World's  Fair  in  1893.  He  was 
asked  by  his  friend  Dr.  Montagu  Butler,  of  Trinity  College,  of 
the  English  Cambridge,  to  allow  his  name  to  be  placed  in  the 


^T.  55]  HONORS   DECLINED  865 

list  of  "  Select  Preachers,"  and  to  fill  the  university  pulpit  on 
Whitsunday  in  1892.  And  again  he  was  urged  by  the  Regius 
Professor  of  Divinity,  Dr.  H.  B.  Swete,  as  chairman  of  the 
Special  Board  of  Divinity,  to  accept  a  nomination  to  the  office 
of  Lecturer  on  Pastoral  Theology  for  the  year  1891-92.  It 
was  suggested  to  him  that  the  subject  of  the  course  should  be 
"Preaching."  He  could  not  bring  himself  to  accept  an  invita- 
tion from  Mr.  John  Quincy  Adams,  president  of  the  Harvard 
Alumni  Association,  to  make  a  speech  at  the  Commencement 
dinner.  He  accepted  an  honor  which  cost  him  no  effort,  but 
gave  him  pleasure,  honorary  membership  of  the  A  A  ^  Club 
in  New  York.  He  also  gave  in  his  name  after  serious  de- 
liberation as  a  member  of  the  Society  of  Friends  of  Russian 
Freedom.  Mr.  Stepniak  has  told  of  an  interview  with  him  at 
the  house  of  Mrs.  Deland. 

We  had  a  long  conversation  upon  general  Russian  topics,  which 
was  led  almost  entirely  by  him.  He  showed  an  interest  in  every- 
thing ;  in  the  Russian  religious  movement  and  in  its  possible  bear- 
ings ;  in  the  agrarian  laws  prevailing  among  our  peasantry ;  in 
the  peculiar  position  of  the  bureaucracy  and  the  Tzar;  in  the 
character  of  Russian  literature,  and  the  periodical  press ;  in  the 
woman  question.  He  professed  to  be  quite  ig-norant  about  Rus- 
sia, but  to  me  it  seemed  as  if  he  already  knew  everything  and 
asked  me  only  by  way  of  confirmation.  His  quick  mind  ran  in 
advance  of  my  explanations.  He  guessed  from  the  first  sentences 
what  would  follow,  and  surprised  me  by  the  remarks  and  sugges- 
tions of  a  fellow  student  of  the  subject  and  not  of  an  attentive 
listener. 

He  suffered  through  his  sympathy  with  his  dear  friend, 
Rev.  James  P.  Franks,  in  the  heavy  bereavement  which  came 
to  him ;  many  were  the  letters  of  tender  condolence  which  he 
wrote.  He  went  out  to  Cambridge  on  the  25th  of  April  to 
officiate  in  Appleton  Chapel  on  the  occasion  of  the  death  of 
Adelbert  Shaw,  of  Fishkill,  a  member  of  the  University  crew. 
Of  the  prayer  which  he  made.  Professor  F.  G.  Peabody  re- 
marked :  "  It  was  the  greatest  illustration  of  the  power  of 
free  prayer  that  I  ever  heard  or  read  of." 

On  June  16  he  was  present  at  the  alumni  dinner  of  the 
Episcopal  Theological  School,  —  an  occasion  of  unusual  inter- 

VOL.   II 


866  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1891 

est  and  enthusiasm,  for  the  event  which  was  to  separate  him 
to  some  extent  from  other  institutions  of  learning  was  to 
bring  him  closer  to  its  students.  In  the  course  of  the  address 
he  made,  one  remark  is  remembered :  "  What  this  school 
seeks  to  do  is  not  to  turn  out  men  of  one  school  of  thought 
or  of  a  single  stamp,  but  men  great  in  every  way,  thinkers, 
scholars,  preachers,  saints." 

Among  other  incidents  was  an  address  at  the  opening  exer- 
cises of  the  School  of  Expression,  where  the  "  words  of  this 
great  master  of  speech  made  an  unusually  deep  and  incom- 
municable impression  upon  his  hearers."  One  who  heard 
reports  these  remarks  :  — 

I  have  no  theory  or  doctrine  regarding  expression,  and  yet  I 
must  speak  of  it  with  the  profoundest  respect.  First  in  impor- 
tance comes  life,  the  very  fact  of  life  itself,  activity  and  the  deed 
done.  Then  follows  the  mind's  appropriation  of  the  deed  done, 
and  after  it  has  passed  into  thought  it  comes  forth  again  in  the 
utterances.  Expression  comes,  fulfils  the  life  of  man  and  feels  all 
life  perpetually  insjjiring  it.  No  one  has  a  right  to  study  ex- 
pression until  he  is  conscious  that  behind  expression  lies  thought, 
and  behind  thought  deed  and  action.  Nobody  can  ti"uly  stand 
as  an  utterer  before  the  world  unless  he  is  profoundly  living  and 
honestly  thinking. 

Wherever  Phillips  Brooks  went  now,  he  went  accompanied 
by  a  great  concourse  of  the  people.  He  preached  at  the 
Church  of  the  Incarnation  in  New  York  on  the  Sunday  after 
Ascension  Day.  "  That  is  equivalent  to  saying,"  writes  the 
correspondent  of  a  New  York  paper,  "  that  the  Church  of  the 
Incarnation  was  the  conspicuous  attraction  of  the  day."  On 
October  4,  the  first  Sunday  after  the  opening  of  the  college 
year,  he  was  at  Harvard,  and  the  chapel  was  "  jammed  with 
more  than  fifteen  hundred  people."  His  sermon  was  from 
his  favorite  text,  "  I  am  come  that  they  might  have  life,  and 
that  they  might  have  it  more  abundantly."  Though  he  had 
often  preached  on  the  text,  this  sermon  was  new,  and,  what 
was  now  most  rare,  a  written  sermon.  It  was  also  the  last 
sermon  that  he  would  write,  and  this  was  to  be  his  last  ap- 
pearance in  Appleton  Chapel  as  one  of  the  officers  of  the 


^T.  ss]  FAREWELL   SERMONS  867 

University.  The  Necessity  of  Vitality  and  the  Glory  of 
Obedience  was  his  subject.  The  sermon  was  simple,  but 
beneath  it  what  an  ocean  lay  of  human  experience,  what 
depths  of  philosophy,  of  learning,  and  of  wisdom !  He  closed 
with  these  words  :  — 

If  there  is  any  man  of  whom  this  place  makes  a  skeptic  or  a 
profligate,  what  can  we  sadly  say  but  this:  he  was  not  worthy  of 
the  place  to  which  he  came ;  he  was  not  up  to  Harvard  College. 
But  the  man  with  true  soul  cannot  be  ruined  here.  Coming  here, 
humbly,  bravely,  he  shall  meet  his  Christ.  Here  he  shall  come 
into  the  fuller  presence  of  the  Christ  whom  he  has  known  and 
loved  in  the  dear  Christian  home  from  which  he  came,  and  know 
and  love  Him  more  than  ever. 

"I  am  come  to  you,  here  where  men  have  dreaded  and  said 
that  I  could  not  come.  I  am  come  to  you  that  you  may  have 
life,  and  have  it  more  abundantly."  So  speaks  the  Christ  to  the 
students.  Of  such  life,  and  of  brave,  earnest  men  entering  into 
its  richness,  may  this  new  year  of  the  old  College  life  be  full ! 

The  transition  to  the  episcopate  called  for  changes  and  for 
sacrifices.  To  sever  his  close  connection  with  Harvard  was  in 
the  nature  of  a  loss,  and  so  he  felt  it  to  be.  There  was  another 
change,  not  so  important,  and  yet  significant ;  he  resigned 
his  position  as  president  of  the  Clericus  Club,  which  he  had 
held  since  its  formation,  feeling  that  while  he  was  at  liberty 
to  retain  his  membership,  it  was  no  longer  becoming  that  he 
should  be  so  closely  identified  with  any  one  organization  of 
the  clergy.  At  a  meeting  of  the  club  on  October  5,  when  his 
resignation  was  to  take  effect,  a  silver  loving  cup  was  pre- 
sented to  him  upon  which  were  engraved  the  names  of  all  its 
active  members. 

On  Sunday,  October  11,  he  stood  in  his  place  at  Trinity 
Church,  —  the  last  Sunday  when  he  should  officiate  as  its 
rector  after  a  ministry  of  twenty-two  years.  There  had  been 
great  days  at  Trinity ;  this  day  also  was  now  to  be  included 
among  them.  The  intense  feeling,  the  common  bond  of  a 
sorrow  that  could  not  be  measured,  the  sense  of  finality,  com- 
bined to  give  every  word  of  the  preacher  unusual  significance 
and  force.  He  must  have  felt  more  than  any  one  the  oppres- 
sive mood  of  the  waiting  congregation.     No  element  of  noto- 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

riety  entered  into  the  occasion.  Those  who  were  present  had 
not  come  out  of  curiosity,  but  from  pure  affection  and  devo- 
tion to  the  man  in  whose  life  a  momentous  transition  had 
been  discerned. 

The  crowd  gathered  long  before  the  hour  of  service  about  the 
closed  doors  of  Trinity,  and  when  they  were  opened  to  the  public, 
so  great  was  the  multitude  every  seat  in  the  galleries  was  taken, 
and  the  aisles  and  corridors  were  crowded  by  an  eager  and  strug- 
gling mass  of  humanity.  Even  the  reporters  of  the  daily  press 
regarded  themselves  as  fortunate  to  get  places  on  the  stairways. 
Double  the  number  of  persons  could  have  been  accommodated 
had  there  been  room  for  them. 

The  sermon  was  marked  by  the  simplicity  of  the  man,  and, 
without  any  formal  farewell,  had  the  essence  of  parting  words. 
The  text  was,  "  Let  your  light  so  shine  before  men,  that  they 
may  see  your  good  works  and  glorify  your  Father  which  is  in 
heaven."  From  every  text  he  now  deduced  one  common  mes- 
sage ;  these  words,  he  said,  "  were  words  of  hope,  of  splen- 
dor, and  of  life.  Life  is  love ;  Christ  is  the  great  source  of 
light  and  life.  God  is  forever  seeking  His  children ;  no 
depth  is  too  deep  for  Him  to  go  after  you." 

For  these  twenty-two  years  I  have  preached  this  to  you,  and  I 
have  had  no  word  to  say  to  you  but  that  you  are  God's,  and  that 
there  is  no  depth  of  perdition  into  which  you  can  sink,  from 
which  God  will  not  go  after  you  to  lift  you  up.  Give  yourself 
up  to  Him. 

This  was  the  comment  on  the  sermon  by  a  writer  in  the 
Boston  "  Transcript :  "  — 

The  personality  of  the  preacher  and  the  emotions  which  such 
an  occasion  might  have  justified  were  alike  suppressed,  except 
that  here  and  there  they  showed  themselves  in  the  incidental  ex- 
pression and  in  the  enforcement  of  his  appeal.  It  was  an  occa- 
sion in  which  what  was  not  said  was  even  more  impressive  than 
what  was  said.  It  was  manifest  that  the  preacher  was  holding 
back  his  inner  thought,  or  rather  transforming  it  into  that  imper- 
sonal form  in  which  he  could  make  it  most  effective  for  the  end 
which  he  had  in  view.  Dr.  Brooks  rose  to  the  highest  eloquence 
in  thus  sinking  himself  in  the  greatness  of  the  cause  which  he 
was  pleading.      There  were  not  many  unmoved  hearts  or  dry  eyes 


^T.  ssl         FAREWELL   SERMONS   ~  869 

in  that  vast  congregation.  You  could  see  strong  men  trying  to 
control  their  emotion,  and  many  a  woman  hid  her  face  that  she 
might  conceal  her  tears.  .  .  .  The  climax  of  the  sermon  was 
reached  in  the  extempore  prayer  which  followed  at  its  end,  in 
which  the  great  preacher  gathered  up  the  past  and  present  and 
future  work  of  his  people,  and  left  it  in  the  hands  of  God.  The 
congregation  was  subdued  to  one  thought  and  one  feeling  when 
the  benediction  had  been  pronounced  and  the  organ  sounded  the 
note  of  departure.  It  was  a  parting  with  the  pastoral  relation- 
ship to  a  great  teacher  whose  life  had  entered  deeply  and  spirit' 
ually  into  the  hearts  and  thoughts  of  his  people. 

Ag'ain  in  the  afternoon  the  same  immense  conffresfation 
came  for  the  evening  prayers,  and  another  sermon  of  equal 
power  was  preached  from  the  words,  "The  spirit  and  the 
bride  say,  Come.  And  let  him  that  heareth  say.  Come.  And 
he  that  is  athirst,  let  him  come.  He  that  will,  let  him  take 
the  water  of  life  freely." 

These  words  are  full  of  exhilaration  and  hope,  full  of  invita- 
tion and  expectation.  While  they  are  filled  with  the  great  bur- 
den and  sense  of  life,  they  are  also  anticipating  the  life  that  is  to 
come.  With  every  good  healthy  mind  this  is  a  necessity,  that 
everything  which  has  been  bears  in  its  bosom  that  which  is  to  be, 
and  fills  him  with  expectation  and  hope. 

Once  more,  in  the  evening,  he  preached  at  St.  Andrew's 
Church,  attended  there  by  the  same  great  throng  of  hearers. 
"  He  that  overcometh  shall  inherit  all  things  "  were  the  words 
of  his  text.  His  life  as  a  parish  minister  was  closing  with 
the  utterance  which  had  been  his  mother's  prayer  for  him  in 
almost  every  letter  she  wrote,  as  he  was  beginning  his  career 
in  the  little  Church  of  the  Advent  in  Philadelphia. 

He  had  been  speaking  to  himself  all  the  day  long  while 
preaching  to  others.  His  words  were  brave  and  u^^lifting, 
but  his  heart  was  heavy.  "  In  giving  up  Trinity  Church,  I 
know  what  it  must  be  to  die,"  was  the  language  of  his  de- 
spondency. Through  this  waiting  period  of  months,  he  could 
not  escape  from  self-review.  All  his  life  was  passing  be- 
fore him.  He  inwardly  groaned  that  he  might  live  it  over 
again,  and  how  different  it  would  be !  What  would  he  not 
make  of  it,  could  he  have  the  opportunity !     In  the  light  of 


870  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

what  it  might  have  been,  he  was  almost  tempted  to  condemn 
his  life  as  a  failure.  In  the  searching  self-examination 
things  looked  differently  as  one  after  another  they  were  ex- 
posed in  the  strong  search-light  of  the  reality.  All  that  had 
been  unreal,  the  conformity  in  any  degree  to  the  passing  in- 
tellectual fashions  of  the  hour,  rose  up  before  him  for  con- 
demnation. He  saw  that  he  had  not  been  wholly  in  sympa- 
thy with  the  age  and  the  time,  with  its  "  burning  questions," 
whose  solution  contributed  nothing  to  life.  In  this  mood,  he 
refused  to  identify  himself  with  any  attitude  or  purpose  not 
vitally  related  to  Christian  living.  All  the  scaffolding  was 
now  falling  away  from  the  high  tower  of  life,  as  it  stood  re- 
vealed in  splendors  undreamed  of  before.  But  we  may  not 
intrude  further  into  the  agony  of  a  great  soul  at  a  moment 
when  the  consciousness  of  living  had  come  to  the  climax  of 
self -revelation.  He  was  not  given,  we  have  seen  it  now  most 
clearly,  to  speaking  of  his  own  religious  experience.  The 
mask  of  impersonality,  with  which  he  clothed  himself  in  his 
youth  as  a  garment  and  a  panoply,  he  wore  still  to  the  end. 
But  there  is  one,  and  one  only,  of  his  letters,  so  far  as  is 
known,  where  he  drops  the  mask,  and  for  once  speaks  to  tell 
us  only  what  we  know  without  his  telling  it.  It  was  during 
the  days  of  his  trial,  when  his  deeds  and  his  words  were  mis- 
represented, and  his  truth  turned  into  a  lie ;  when  the  Spii'it 
was  bearing  witness,  "  He  is  a  chosen  vessel  unto  me,  and  I 
will  show  him  what  great  things  he  must  suffer  for  my  name's 
sake,"  —  it  was  during  those  days  that  he  received  a  letter 
from  a  young  clergyman,  asking  him  to  tell  the  secret  of  his 
life.  He  was  strangely  moved  by  the  request,  and  this  was 
the  letter  he  wrote  in  reply,  to  the  Rev.  Charles  Morris 
Addison,  then  rector  of  Christ  Church,  Fitchburg :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  June  30, 1891. 

My  dear  Addison,  —  I  am  sure  you  will  not  think  that  I 
dream  that  I  have  any  secret  to  tell.  I  have  only  the  testimony 
to  bear  which  any  friend  may  fully  bear  to  his  friend  when  he 
is  cordially  asked  for  it,  as  you  have  asked  me. 

Indeed  the  more  I  have  thought  it  over,  the  less  in  some  sense 
I  have  seemed  to  have  to  say.     And  yet  the  more  sure  it  has 


^T.  55]      RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE  871 

seemed  to  me  that  these  last  years  have  had  a  peace  and  fulness 
which  there  did  not  use  to  be.  I  say  it  in  deep  reverence  and 
humility.  I  do  not  think  it  is  the  mere  quietness  of  advancing 
age.  I  am  sure  it  is  not  indifference  to  anything  which  I  used 
to  care  for.  I  am  sure  that  it  is  a  deeper  knowledge  and  truer 
love  of  Christ. 

And  it  seems  to  me  impossible  that  this  should  have  come  in 
any  way  except  by  the  experience  of  life.  I  find  myself  pitying 
the  friends  of  my  youth,  who  died  when  we  were  twenty-five 
years  old,  because  whatever  may  be  the  richness  of  the  life  to 
which  they  have  gone,  and  in  which  they  have  been  living  ever 
since,  they  never  can  know  that  particular  manifestation  of  Christ 
which  He  makes  to  us  here  on  earth,  at  each  successive  period  of 
our  human  life.  All  experience  comes  to  be  but  more  and  more 
of  pressure  of  His  life  on  ours.  It  cannot  come  by  one  flash  of 
light,  or  one  great  convulsive  event.  It  comes  without  haste 
and  without  rest  in  this  perpetual  living  of  our  life  with  Him. 
And  all  the  history,  of  outer  or  inner  life,  of  the  changes  of  cir- 
cumstances, or  the  changes  of  thought,  gets  its  meaning  and 
value  from  this  constantly  growing  relation  to  Chi'ist. 

I  cannot  tell  you  how  personal  this  grows  to  me.  He  is  here. 
He  knows  me  and  I  know  Him.  It  is  no  figure  of  speech.  It 
is  the  reallest  thing  in  the  world.  And  every  day  makes  it 
realler.  And  one  wonders  with  delight  what  it  will  grow  to  as 
the  years  go  on. 

The  ministry  in  which  these  years  have  been  spent  seems  to  me 
the  fulfilment  of  life.  It  is  man  living  the  best  human  life  with 
the  greatest  opportunities  of  character  and  service.  And  there- 
fore on  the  ministry  most  closely  may  come  the  pressure  of 
Christ.      Therefore  let  us  thank  God  that  we  are  ministers. 

Less  and  less,  I  think,  grows  the  consciousness  of  seeking  God. 
Greater  and  greater  grows  the  certainty  that  He  is  seeking  us  and 
giving  Himself  to  us  to  the  complete  measure  of  our  present  capa- 
city. That  is  Love,  —  not  that  we  loved  Him,  but  that  He  loved 
us.  I  am  sure  that  we  ought  to  dwell  far  more  upon  God's  love 
for  us  than  on  our  love  for  Him.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  put- 
ting ourselves  in  the  way  of  God's  overflowing  love  and  letting  it 
break  upon  us  till  the  response  of  love  to  Him  comes,  not  by 
struggle,  not  even  by  deliberation,  but  by  necessity,  as  the  echo 
comes  when  the  sound  strikes  the  rock.  And  this  which  must 
have  been  true  wherever  the  soul  of  God  and  the  soul  of  man  have 
lived  is  perfectly  and  finally  manifest  in  the  Christhood  of  which 
it  is  the  heart  and  soul. 

There  is  something  very  rich  and  true  in  the  Bible  talk  about 


872  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891 

"waiting  for  the  Lord."     The  waiting  which  is  meant  (and  we 
know  in  our  own  lives  what  that  waiting  is)  is  having. 

Nothing  but  life  can  reveal  Him  who  is  the  'Life,  and  so  we 
cannot  be  impatient,  but  by  and  by  we  are  satisfied,  when  every- 
thing that  happens  to  us,  without  or  within,  comes  to  seem  to  us 
a  new  token  of  His  presence  and  sign  of  His  love. 

I  have  written  fully  and  will  not  even  read  over  what  I  have 
written,  lest  I  should  be  led  to  repent  that  I  have  written  so  much 
about  myself.  I  am  not  in  the  habit  of  doing  so.  But  your  letter 
moves  me,  and  you  will  understand. 

Some  day  we  will  talk  of  all  these  things.  I  hope  that  you 
will  give  me  the  chance  as  soon  as  you  can. 

Meanwhile,  you  know  how  truly  I  ask  God  to  bless  you,  and 
how  sincerely  I  am 

Your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

In  the  note-book  of  Phillips  Brooks  are  lines  written  at 
this  moment,  written  rapidly  and  without  correction,  and 
given  here  because  they  seem  to  stand  for  some  process  of  his 
inner  life :  — 

The  while  I  listened  came  a  word  — 
I  knew  not  whence,  I  could  not  see  — 

But  when  my  waiting  spirit  heard, 

I  cried,   "  Lord,  here  am  I,  send  me !  " 

For  in  that  word  was  all  contained  — 
The  Master's  wish,  the  servant's  joy, 

Worth  of  the  prize  to  be  attained, 
And  sweetness  of  the  time's  employ. 

I  turned  and  went  —  along  the  way 
That  word  was  food  and  au*  and  light; 

I  feasted  on  it  all  the  day, 

And  rested  on  it  all  the  night. 

I  wondered ;  but  when  soon  I  came 
To  where  the  word  complete  must  be, 

I  called  my  wonder  by  its  name ; 
For  lo !   the  word  I  sought  was  He. 


CHAPTER  XXV 
1891-1892 

CONSECRATION  AS  BISHOP.  THE  CHURCH  CONGRESS  AT 
WASHINGTON.  ADMINISTRATIVE  CAPACITY.  ILLNESS. 
LENTEN  ADDRESSES.  UNION  SERVICE  ON  GOOD  FRIDAY. 
THE  CONVENTION  ADDRESS.  CORRESPONDENCE.  SUMMER 
ABROAD.      ENGLISH    VOLUME    OF     SERMONS.       RETURN    TO 

BOSTON.     ST.  Andrew's  brotherhood,     the  general 

CONVENTION  IN  BALTIMORE.      DEATH  OP  TENNYSON.      COR- 
RESPONDENCE 

Phillips  Brooks  came  to  the  day  of  his  consecration 
as  bishop  borne  on  a  great  wave  of  human  devotion,  on  the 
flood  of  human  testimony  to  his  singular  gifts  of  the  spirit,  his 
marvellous  greatness  as  a  man.  No  words  were  too  strong  to 
be  used ;  indeed,  words  strong  enough  were  missing  when  the 
attempt  was  made  to  describe  what  he  had  become  to  the 
world.  To  do  justice  to  the  event  by  narrating  it  is  impossi- 
ble, for  one  must  also  include  in  the  event  this  strange  and 
unexampled  outburst  of  gratitude  and  admiration,  which  in 
the  spread  of  its  concentric  circles  took  in,  as  it  seemed,  the 
whole  country.  But  lest  these  words  may  seem  exaggerated, 
let  us  select  from  the  cloud  of  witnesses  one  statement  made 
at  the  moment,  when  the  flood  of  grateful  feeling  was  at  its 
height.  The  following  extract  is  from  the  Boston  "  Adver- 
tiser," whose  editor  possessed  unusual  opportunities  of  know- 
ing the  widespread,  common  sentiment :  — 

Regarding  the  solemnly  impressive  yet  joy-inspiring  services  in 
Trinity  Church  yesterday  morning  [October  14],  it  is  not  possible 
for  any  human  language  to  express  adequately  the  thoughts  and 
emotions  that  rise  in  uncounted  multitudes  of  deeply  stirred 
hearts.  The  elaborate  ceremonial  was  all  that  it  could  be,  mov- 
ing on  from  first  to  last  in  simple  grandeur.     The  place  of  conse- 


874  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1891-92 

cration  was  itself  an  essential  element,  contributing  no  small 
share  to  the  sacred  splendors  of  the  scene.  We  do  not  mean 
merely  that  the  edifice  within  whose  walls  Phillips  Brooks  re- 
ceived the  vestments  of  a  bishop  was  of  all  churches  in  this 
Commonwealth  most  fitting  by  reason  of  its  architectural  mag- 
nificence, though  that  is  true.  But  the  rudest  tabernacle  ever 
constructed  out  of  rough-hewn  timbers  would  have  been  hardly  less 
fit  if  it  had  been,  as  Trinity  Church  has  been,  the  meeting-place 
for  many  a  year  of  hungry  throngs  to  whom  our  peerless  preacher 
was  wont  to  break  the  bread  of  life.  Nothing  was  absent  that 
could  give  dignity,  and  grace,  and  memorableness ;  neither  pulpit 
oratory,  nor  appropriate  music,  nor  stately  pageantry,  nor  pre- 
sence of  distinguished  men,  nor  participation  of  eminent  prelates, 
nor  long  lines  of  white-robed  priests,  nor  an  audience  wrapped  in 
eager  attentiveness,  limited  in  numbers  only  by  the  inexorable 
limitations  of  space.  Yet  this  was  not  all.  There  were  few,  if 
any,  who  yesterday  had  the  never-to-be-forgotten  privilege  of 
witnessing  the  spectacle  beneath  the  majestic  tower  of  Trinity 
who  did  not  realize  that  the  vast  and  sympathetic  assemblage 
gathered  there  was  but  an  infinitesimal  fraction  of  the  mighty 
mass  of  people  outside,  who  were  there  in  spirit,  who  would  seize 
the  earliest  opportunity  to  read  of  what  had  there  taken  place, 
and  whose  souls  would  unite  in  response  to  the  voices  that  said 
"Amen  "  when  divine  blessings  were  invoked  on  the  newly  made 
bishop.    .    .    . 

The  universal  interest  that  has  for  months  been  felt  in  the  elec- 
tion, confirmation,  and  now  in  the  consecration  of  Phillips  Brooks 
to  be  bishop  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  Massachusetts, 
is  something  phenomenal.  We  need  not  wonder  that  it  causes 
wonder.  It  is  indeed  wonderful.  Nothing  like  it  was  ever 
known  in  America  before.  The  topic  rivals  in  the  public  mind 
all  other  current  themes.  An  exciting  political  campaign  is  not 
more  talked  about,  certainly  not  among  thoughtful  citizens.  For- 
eign news,  big  with  the  fate  of  governments,  and  touching  on 
problems  of  peace  and  war  among  nations,  stirs  not  intelligent 
readers  more  profoundly.  Whoever  would  understand  this  phe- 
nomenon must  look  for  reasons  beyond  all  sectarian  lines,  and  all 
ordinary  personal  factors.  It  is  because  the  Phillips  Brooks  that 
was,  the  Bishop  Brooks  that  is  and  is  to  be,  has  endeared  himself 
to  a  circle  wider  than  any  denomination,  than  all  denominations. 
We  honor  him  who  was  consecrated,  not  chiefly  for  his  eloquence, 
his  learning,  his  achievements  as  pastor  of  a  great  church,  or 
even  for  his  noble  services  as  a  foremost  citizen,  ready  to  speak 
potent  words  on  behalf  of  every  worthy  cause,  within  the  city 


JET.  ss-S^l     THE  CONSECRATION  875 

and  the  Commonwealth.  It  would  come  nearer  the  secret  to  say 
that  it  is  his  Christian  character,  tried  by  many  tests  and  never 
found  wanting,  that  commands  our  homage.  But  something  more 
must  be  said  before  the  story  is  told. 

Bishop  Brooks  occupies  a  place  in  the  hearts  of  men  that  can 
only  be  described  by  using  the  word  gratitude.  He  has  done  for 
tens  of  thousands  an  inestimable  service.  He  has  unravelled  for 
us  the  solemn  mysteries  of  man's  mission  "on  this  bank  and  shoal 
of  time."  He  has  made  the  fatherhood  of  God  seem  real.  He 
has  made  religion  seem  a  privilege  and  daily  communion  with  the 
divine  nature  a  possibility.  He  has  helped  us  to  believe  in  better 
things  than  we  had  known  before.  He  has  touched  hidden  and 
unsuspected  springs  of  high  ambition.  Life,  to  uncounted  multi- 
tudes, appears  more  worth  living  because  of  the  instruction,  the 
inspiration,  the  example  of  him  whom  henceforth  we  shall  delight 
tq  call  Bishop  Brooks.  Therefore  we  unfeignedly  thank  him  and 
rejoice  with  all  those  that  do  rejoice  in  the  consecration  to  the 
bishopric  of  this  already  consecrated  man. 

Many  were  the  efforts  to  explain  the  "  extraordinary,"  the 
"  unprecedented  "  interest  which  was  felt  in  what  might  be 
considered  in  itself  an  ordinary  ceremonial.  The  study  of 
the  public  mind  in  its  feeling  towards  Phillips  Brooks,  merely 
as  a  psychological  phenomenon,  would  in  itself  possess  high 
value  as  a  revelation  of  some  reserved  power  in  the  Christian 
ministry,  never  so  manifested  before.  For  this  study  there  is 
no  space  here.  It  must  be  sufficient  to  say  that  the  daily 
press  in  the  great  cities  of  the  country,  which  opened  their 
pages  fully  to  those  who  wished  to  speak,  showed  a  singular 
unanimity  of  utterance.  It  was  the  man  in  himself  to  whom 
the  honor  was  now  paid,  the  man  who  had  embodied  in  his 
life  what  he  taught. 

He  illustrates  [said  one  of  another  religious  communion]  the 
meaning  of  the  word  Christian.  Foremost  in  sympathy  with  the 
world's  best  thinking  and  feeling,  yet  with  the  rare  gift  of  allay- 
ing men's  prejudices,  the  burden  of  his  preaching  is  grandly  the 
same  as  that  of  apostles,  martyrs,  reformers,  throughout  the  ages. 
He  is  a  powerful  example  of  one  possessing  regal  intellect,  famil- 
iar with  critical  theories  and  the  research  of  scholars,  who  does 
not  forget  what  preaching  is.  His  one  great  theme  is  Christ, 
salvation  and  righteousness  in  and  through  a  person.  The  value 
of  his  example  is  in  this  one  respect  priceless. 


876  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

Here  is  an  extract  from  a  letter  to  him  written  by  a  work- 
ingman,  who  calls  himself  "  one  of  the  crowd  who  do  not  go 
to  church,  yet  am  consciously  better  because  you  are  here." 

I  wonder  if  you  have  any  sort  of  conception  how  many  there 
are  of  us  who  are  made  better  and  try  to  be  more  useful  as  a 
result  of  your  example.  To  me  you  reveal  God  as  no  other  man 
does.  What  I  mean  by  that  is,  I  can't  think  of  you  for  ten  con- 
secutive minutes  without  forgetting  all  about  you  and  thinking 
of  God  instead;  and  when  I  think  of  God  and  wonder  how  He 
will  seem  to  me,  it  always  comes  round  to  trying  to  conceive  of 
you  enlarged  infinitely  in  every  way. 

If  we  may  look  for  an  historical  precedent  Phillips  Brooks 
was  now  becoming  to  his  age  what  once  St.  Francis  of  Assisi 
had  been,  an  ideal  so  lofty  that  when  men  thought  of  him 
there  was  a  tendency  to  speak  of  him  as  a  second  Christ ;  for 
in  him  Christ  had  been  felt  to  live  again  and  exert  his  power 
in  the  modern  world.  To  criticise  the  expression  of  the  popu- 
lar feeling,  whether  or  not  it  went  beyond  bounds  in  its  devo- 
tion, is  not  of  so  much  importance  as  to  chronicle  the  fact. 
This  tendency  is  manifest  in  the  tributes  of  poetry,  to  which 
people  now  resorted  as  the  best  vehicle  of  exalted  emotion. 
It  was  a  mood  destined  from  this  time  to  grow  stronger  till  it 
reached  its  culmination. 

Some  such  mood  underlies  and  explains  the  demonstrations 
of  affection  which  now  went  forth  to  Phillips  Brooks.  People 
wondered  that  they  should  feel  as  they  did,  but  made  no 
effort  to  conceal  the  feeling.  In  Puritan  New  England,  in 
Boston  even,  all  vestige  of  prejudice  against  a  bishop  seemed 
to  have  faded  away.  The  old  feeling  indeed  was  recalled, 
how  Massachusetts  had  once  proposed  to  deal  with  a  bishop 
in  case  one  were  sent  to  them  from  England ;  how  Governor 
Andros  forcibly  took  possession  of  the  Old  South  Church  in 
order  to  give  episcopacy  a  footing  in  Boston  ;  but  these  things 
were  recalled  only  to  preface  the  comment  that  Phillips 
Brooks  was  now  to  be  a  bishop  to  them  all. 

Seldom  [writes  a  Congregational  minister]  has  anything  oc- 
curred in  religious  history  in  which  the  "Universal  Church"  has 
been  so  much  interested  as  in  the  consecration  of  Phillips  Brooks 


^T.  55-56]     THE  CONSECRATION  877 

to  the  episcopate.  All  of  us  might  accept  the  "historic  episco- 
pate "  as  he  would  define  and  will  embody  it.  No  denomination 
can  wholly  claim  such  a  man ;  he  is  a  bishop  for  us  all.  Few 
will  speak  of  him  as  Bishop  Bx'ooks;  many  will  delight  to  call 
him  Phillips  Brooks,  the  bishop. 

We  leave  these  testimonies,  taking  a  few  as  samples  of  a 
large  number,  with  the  remark  that  Phillips  Brooks  had 
demonstrated  the  desire  of  the  Christian  world  for  unity  and 
the  universal  instinct  which  calls  for  a  leader ;  how  men  are 
only  too  ready  to  follow  when  the  heaven-sent  leader  comes. 
Upon  the  consecration  service  we  cannot  dwell.  The  crowd 
took  possession  of  Copley  Square  long  before  the  service 
began  on  the  morning  of  Wednesday,  October  14.  The  day, 
which  opened  with  clouds  and  threats  of  inopportune  weather, 
developed  into  one  of  sunlight  and  beauty.  In  the  robing- 
room  of  Trinity  Church  were  gathered  the  bishops  who  were 
to  officiate  :  Bishop  Williams,  of  Connecticut,  the  presiding 
bishop,  who  was  to  act  as  consecrator;  Bishop  Doane,  of 
Albany ;  Bishop  Littlejohn,  of  Long  Island  ;  Bishop  Howe, 
of  Central  Pennsylvania ;  Bishop  Niles,  of  New  Hampshire  ; 
Bishop  Clark,  of  Rhode  Island,  and  Bishop  Whipple,  of  Min- 
nesota, who  had  been  chosen  by  the  bishop-elect  to  act  as  his 
presenters ;  Bishop  Potter,  of  New  York,  who  was  to  preach 
the  sermon ;  Rev.  Arthur  Brooks  and  Rev.  John  Cotton 
Brooks,  who  were  to  be  the  attendant  presbyters.  In  the 
chapel  of  Trinity  were  some  four  hundred  clergy,  of  whom  a 
third  were  visitors  from  other  dioceses.  Just  before  the  pro- 
cession started,  a  protest  against  the  consecration  was  read, 
signed  by  two  bishops,  and  then  the  signal  was  given  for  the 
organ,  and  the  procession  moved  to  the  west  entrance  of  the 
church,  and  the  hymns  sung  were  "  Holy,  Holy,  Holy,  Lord 
God  Almighty"  and  "  The  God  of  Abraham  praise."  It  was 
a  state  and  civic  event  as  well  as  an  ecclesiastical :  the  gov- 
ernor of  the  Commonwealth,  the  mayor  of  Boston,  and  the 
president  of  Harvard  College  had  been  invited  as  honored 
guests,  and  the  city  of  Boston  had  sent  flowers  for  the  deco- 
ration of  the  church  within  and  around  the  portals.  Seven- 
teen hundred  tickets  had  been  issued,  with  great  care  that  all 
diocesan  and  other  interests  should  be  represented. 


878  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

The  service  was  impressive,  as  only  the  Anglican  ritual  can 
make  it,  simple  and  direct,  with  no  alien  accessories,  a  ser- 
vice filling  and  satisfying  the  imagination.  Some  of  the 
details  may  be  mentioned,  the  sermon  by  Bishop  Potter, 
praised  by  all  as  eloquent  and  felicitous,  and  especially  the 
closing  words  to  the  bishop-elect,  which  only  the  preacher 
could  have  spoken,  —  the  allusion  to  the  Virginia  seminary, 
where  together  they  prepared  for  the  ministry.  There  was 
one  incident  noted  by  all,  for  it  seemed  to  move  the  bishop- 
elect,  —  a  reminder  of  the  fiery  trial  through  which  he  had 
passed :  when,  throwing  back  his  head  and  expanding  his 
figure  to  its  full  proportions,  he  made  the  promise  of  con- 
formity :  "  I,  Phillips  Brooks,  chosen  Bishop  of  the  Protes- 
tant Episcopal  Church  in  Massachusetts,  do  promise  con- 
formity and  obedience  to  the  Doctrine,  Discipline,  and 
Worship  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  the  United 
States  of  America.     So  help  me  God,  through  Jesus  Christ." 

Many  were  the  comments  on  that  scene,  for  it  moved  the 
hearts  of  all  who  witnessed  it. 

Who,  of  all  the  vast  congi'egation  present  at  his  consecration 
[wrote  Bishop  Williams],  as  they  heard  him,  looking  up  to  heaven, 
utter  with  a  solemnity  that  thrilled  all  hearts  those  awful  words, 
"So  help  me  God,  through  Jesus  Christ,"  which  end  the  hishop's 
promise  of  conformity,  —  who  that  heard  the  equal  solemnity  of 
the  answers  given  to  the  questions  which  are  put  to  every  bishop 
before  hands  are  laid  upon  him,  could  have  doubted  the  depth  of 
his  conviction  as  to  the  place  of  the  episcopate  in  the  economy  of 
Christ's  kingdom,  or  his  own  determination  to  administer  it  as 
this  Church  has  received  it  from  all  the  Christian  ages?  Who 
that  heard  his  voice,  as  he  joined  in  the  utterance  of  the  Nicene 
Symbol,  could  have  questioned  his  unshaken  conviction  that  our 
blessed  Lord  was  God  as  well  as  Man  ?     I  venture  to  answer,  No 


After  the  consecration.  Bishop  Williams  took  Bishop 
Brooks  by  the  hand  and  led  him  into  his  own  chancel.  It  all 
seemed  strange  and  bewildering  that  Phillips  Brooks  should 
sit  in  his  own  church  listening  to  the  sermon  of  another,  and 
then  be  conducted  by  another  to  the  sacred  place  where  for 
so  many  years  he  had  stood  to  administer  the  Lord's  Supper. 


MT.  55-56]        CORRESPONDENCE  879 

There  was  joy  in  the  occasion,  but  also  profound,  unspeakable 
sorrow,  for  the  sense  of  a  parting  scene  mingled  with  the  con- 
gratulations, and  in  the  minds  of  the  people  of  Trinity  Church 
was  uppermost.  What  it  all  might  mean  no  one  could  tell. 
Only  he  wanted  it,  and  was  willing  to  take  the  office,  and 
therefore  it  must  be  right  that  he  should  do  so.  There  must 
be  some  enlargement  for  him,  some  more  appropriate  setting 
of  his  greatness.  A  lady  who  was  present  from  Philadelphia 
wrote  him,  "  It  seemed  like  living  over  again  the  parting  from 
the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity."  To  Mr.  A.  J.  C.  Sowdon, 
the  new  bishop  wrote  this  note  on  the  following  day :  — 

October  15,  1891. 
Dear  Sowdon,  —  I  cannot  help  thanking  you  with  all  my 
heart  for  yesterday.  Everybody  is  saying  with  what  wonderful 
judgment  and  power  all  was  arranged  and  carried  out.  I  am  still 
more  rejoiced  that  it  was  done  by  you  and  done  with  such  spirit 
of  kindness  to  your  old  friend.  It  will  be  a  joy  to  remember  it 
and  to  be  grateful  for  it  always. 

Yours  ever,  Phillips  Brooks. 

The  wardens  and  vestry  of  Trinity  Church  had  made  a 
generous  arrangement  with  the  diocese  by  which  no  change 
of  residence  would  be  required,  and  the  beautiful  home  on 
Clarendon  Street  should  still  be  his.  Acknowledging  his 
gratitude,  he  writes  to  Mr.  C.  J.  Morrill  who  had  been  active 
in  securing  this  result,  with  whom,  indeed,  the  suggestion  of 
building  a  rectory  had  originated,  and  who  had  persevered 
in  the  plan  despite  the  rector's  reluctance  and  even  opposi- 
tion :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  October  15,  1891. 

Dear  Mr.  Morrill,  —  Nothing  which  Trinity  Church  could 
do  could  be  so  generous  and  considerate  as  to  surprise  me.  And 
yet  the  great  gift  which  your  letter  brings  fills  me  with  a  grati- 
tude which  I  cannot  express. 

All  which  these  long  and  happy  years  have  meant  to  me  is 
very  present  to  me  now.  The  service  yesterday  in  the  dear  and 
familiar  church  was  not  only  the  opening  of  the  future,  but  the 
gathering  up  of  all  the  past.  That  past  can  never  be  left  behind. 
It  goes  with  me  into  all  the  days  to  come.  All  the  kindness  and 
loyalty  and  helpfulness  of  my  people  has  passed  into  my  life  and 
will  be  part  of  it  till  I  die,  and  always. 


88o  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

Will  you  tell  the  wardens  and  vestry  how  I  thank  them  for 
this  token  of  their  care  for  me  ?  I  pray  that  I  may  be  such  a 
bishop  that  they  shall  not  seem  to  have  trusted  me  in  vain. 

Will  you  yourself  accept  anew  the  assurance  of  my  affectionate 
regard,  and  count  me  always, 

Faithfully  your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

To  the  Rt.  Rev.  Henry  C.  Potter  he  writes :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  October  16, 1891. 

My  deak  Henry,  —  I  cannot  let  these  days  pass  without 
thanking  you  for  Wednesday.  I  feel  how  good  and  kind  it  was 
of  you  to  come,  and  when  you  had  come,  that  you  should  say 
such  words  as  you  did  say  gives  me  great  satisfaction  and  delight, 
and  will  always  make  the  day  shine  in  my  memory. 

You  will  know  how  peculiarly  near  my  heart  come  those  last 
words  of  brotherly  greeting  and  affection.  Everybody  felt  their 
graciousness  and  beauty.  It  was  mine  to  feel  also  how  much  of 
long-treasured  association  and  of  a  kindness  which  has  never 
failed  was  gathered  in  them.  May  God  bless  you  for  them. 
There  could  not  be  a  brighter  gate  through  which  to  enter  the 
new  land.  I  shall  be  a  better  bishop  for  them.  The  thing  has 
drawn  itself  out  so  long  that  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  it  is  over. 
But  the  change  of  daily  occupation  reminds  me  constantly  that  I 
am  a  bishop,  and  is  rapidly  making  the  new  name  familiar. 

There  is  no  wild  exhilaration  about  it,  but  a  quiet  content  that 
it  is  all  right,  and  an  anticipation  of  the  work  as  full  of  interest 
and  satisfaction. 

I  shall  be  coming  down  on  you  for  good  advice  and  the  permis- 
sion to  drink  out  of  the  full  river  of  your  long  experience.  This 
before  long,  no  doubt ;  but  now  only  my  gratitude  for  all  that  you 
have  done  for  me  this  week,  and  my  assurance  that  you  have 
made  the  change  from  the  old  life  into  the  new  as  happy  as  it 
could  be  made. 

For  all  of  this,  and  for  the  years  that  have  been,  and  the  years 
that  are  to  be,  I  thank  you,  and  am  ever, 

Yours  affectionately,  Phillips  Brooks. 

In  his  note-book  is  to  be  found  this  reference  to  the  tran- 
sition and  its  accompanying  consciousness :  — 

The  quiet,  natural  change  of  consciousness  and  thought  in  view 
of  the  episcopate. 

Compare  with  the  change  from  lay  to  clerical  life.  Of  the 
same  sort,  though  of  less  distinctness  and  importance. 


^T.  55-56]  THE  BISHOP  881 

The  difference  from  the  English  Episcopate  (cf .  Life  of  Arch- 
bishop Tait). 

The  first  Sunday  was  spent  in  Salem  with  Rev.  James  P. 
Franks,  who  was  in  deep  bereavement.  The  sermon,  at 
Grace  Church,  was  one  already  alluded  to,  with  the  title, 
"  The  Egyptians  dead  upon  the  Seashore."  After  nearly  two 
weeks  had  elapsed  of  episcopal  visitations,  he  met  the  Epis- 
copalian Club  in  Boston,  October  27,  and  his  presence  was 
the  central  feature  of  the  evening. 

If  there  ever  comes  to  Phillips  Brooks  [said  a  writer  in  the 
Boston  Herald]  the  thought  that  in  lacking  the  love  of  wife 
and  the  caresses  of  children,  life's  cup  still  wants  a  little  of  being 
full  to  the  brim,  there  must  come  other  times  which  bring  their 
measure  of  compensation ;  times  when  the  admiration  and  honor 
and  love  which  flows  for  him  from  the  hearts  of  all  men  who 
know  him,  pours  itself  in  a  flood  about  his  feet  and  washes  away 
everything  but  high  aim  and  consecration  and  singleness  of  devo- 
tion to  his  work.      Last  night  was  such  a  time. 

In  the  address  which  he  made  to  this  large  and  representa- 
tive assembly  of  laymen,  the  bishop  was  deeply  moved :  — 

I  cannot  tell  you  how  full  my  heart  is,  and  how  earnestly  I 
wish  to  do  all  in  my  power  for  the  Church  in  this  dear  old  State 
of  Massachusetts.  She  gave  me  birth  and  education,  and  all 
that  has  gone  to  make  a  supremely  happy  life.  I  love  her  rugged 
landscape,  her  blue  skies,  her  rich  history;  and  out  of  her  soil 
came  the  men  who  made  her  what  she  is.  But  I  am  no  Massa- 
chusetts bigot.  I  am  ready  to  welcome  the  newcomers  among 
us.  The  Episcopal  Church  in  Massachusetts  must  work  in  the 
line  of  Massachusetts  people  and  the  Massachusetts  character.  It 
must  become  a  part  of  the  New  England  life  and  make  that  life 
nobler,  —  so  noble  that  we  shall  dare  to  say  that  there  is  nothing 
nobler  in  all  the  world,  if  only  it  may  be  touched  with  some  finer 
radiance  from  this  dear  old  Church  of  ours. 

These  were  a  few  of  the  sentences,  as  reported  in  the  Bos- 
ton "  Herald,"  of  a  speech  which  in  its  entirety  has  not  been 
preserved.  Of  this  speech,  one  of  the  laymen  present,  Mr. 
A.  J.  C.  Sowdon,  writes :  — 

The  sweep,  the  breadth  of  religious  statesmanship  evinced,  the 
manner  in  which  he  magnified  his  office  and  its  possibilities,  and 


882  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

took  in  the  whole  prohlem,  the  fervent  patriotism  in  which  he 
spoke  of  the  Commonwealth  he  so  loved,  and  the  passionate  lan- 
guage, the  graphic  picture  he  drew  of  what  one  Church  could  and 
ought  to  do  for  the  Commonwealth,  —  all  these  made  us  who 
were  present  feel  that  we  had  literally  heard  his  very  best  and 
greatest  effort.  The  pity  of  it  is  that  there  was  only  an  ordinary 
newspaper  report  of  the  speech. 

From  this  time  Phillips  Brooks  plunged  Into  the  multi- 
plicity of  duties  and  engagements  which  appertain  to  a 
bishop's  office.  He  was  addressed  by  a  clergyman  of  large 
experience,  Rev.  Edward  Everett  Hale  :  — 

I  am  older  than  you,  can  advise  you.  Begin  slowly.  Let 
things  present  themselves  in  order,  and  do  not  try  to  make  an 
order  for  them.  After  you  have  thus  accepted  for  a  little,  what 
is,  —  you  will  he  able  to  raise  everything  and  see  what  may  he. 

But  he  does  not  seem  to  have  heeded  the  advice :  other 
words  were  ringing  in  his  ears,  "  Work  while  the  day  lasts  ; 
the  night  cometh  when  no  man  can  work."  That  from  the 
first  there  was  a  tendency  to  overtax  his  strength,  now,  alas, 
no  longer  what  it  was,  or  what  at  his  age  it  should  have  been, 
might  be  inferred  from  the  following  letter,  after  he  had 
been  in  his  new  office  but  two  weeks  :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  November  2, 1891. 
Dear  Mrs.  Paine,  —  You  do  not  know  how  grateful  I  am  for 
your  kind  token  that   I   am  not  forgotten.      Life  is  so  terribly 
convulsed  and  changed  that  it  seems  incredible  that  the  old  friends 
are  there  and  are  caring  for  me  still. 

But  I  know  you  do  and  always  will.  By  and  by,  some  day, 
I  shall  see  you  again.  Till  then,  and  always,  you  will  all  know 
how  I  am. 

Affectionately  and  gratefully, 

Your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

On  November  3  he  went  to  the  annual  matriculation  of  the 
Episcopal  Theological  School.  As  he  spoke  to  the  students, 
his  own  experience  in  the  seminary  at  Alexandria  must  have 
inspired  him. 

Here,  in  the  seminary  life.  Christian  truth  and  faith  come  into 
relation.  There  is  no  struggle  between  thought  and  work.  Some 
abandon   work  for   thought;    others   abandon   thought   for  work. 


^T. 


SS-S^]  THE  BISHOP  883 


Never  look  upon  your  work  as  a  refuge  from  thought,  but  express 
your  thought  in  your  work.  Shrink  from  nothing  God  shall 
reveal  to  you.  Trust  yourself  to  Him  wherever  He  shall  lead 
you.  He  watches  over  mind  and  soul.  He  does  not  separate 
them  and  make  them  weak  concessions  of  one  to  the  other.  Your 
seminary  life  is  a  going  aside  for  three  years  with  Christ,  to 
drink  in  His  spirit  and  to  commune  with  Him.  As  you  open 
your  New  Testament  He  says  to  you,  "This  is  who  I  am." 
When  you  study  church  history,  He  says,  "This  is  but  a  history 
of  me."  In  psychology  He  says  to  you,  "I  saved  this  humanity 
by  wearing  it." 

One  of  the  first  incidents  in  his  new  life  was  the  call  to 
preside  as  bishop  at  the  Church  Congress  to  be  held  in  Wash- 
ington in  November,  where  he  should  make  the  Communion 
Address  at  its  formal  opening.  It  was  now  suggested  to  him 
that  he  should  avail  himself  of  the  opportunity  to  declare,  as 
he  might  most  germanely,  his  belief  in  the  "  miraculous  In- 
carnation and  real  resurrection  of  our  Lord."  If  he  would 
consent  it  would  do  much,  so  he  was  told,  to  "  convince  the 
gainsayers."  Those  high  in  station  and  whose  opinion  he 
valued,  urged  him  strongly  to  this  course.  Scriptural  prece- 
dent was  adduced,  —  the  apostle  bids  us  comfort  the  feeble- 
minded. It  was  another  incentive  brought  to  bear  upon  him 
that  he  owed  something  to  the  chivalric  friendship  of  his 
brethren  in  the  episcopate,  who  differed  so  widely  from  him, 
yet  had  made  sacrifices  to  insure  his  confirmation  ;  the  sacri- 
fices should  not  be  all  on  one  side.  Bishop  Clark,  who  was 
the  go-between  of  those  who  wished  to  approach  Phillips 
Brooks,  wrote  urging  that  he  should  follow  this  advice.  But 
he  firmly  and  even  vehemently  refused.  As  we  know  Phil- 
lips Brooks,  it  was  impossible  that  he  should  do  otherwise. 
To  take  the  occasion  of  a  Communion  Address  in  order  to 
speak,  as  it  were,  "  to  the  galleries,"  and  be  setting  right  his 
own  reputation,  was  abhorrent.  That  he  should  be  asked 
to  take  so  solemn  a  moment  for  such  a  statement  was  bad 
enough;  that  he  should  acquiesce  and  make  the  statement 
would  have  been  a  blunder.  It  would  have  neutralized  the 
value  of  his  silence  while  the  question  of  his  election  was 
pending.     It  would  also  have  been  a  failure  in  its  object,  and 


884  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

would  have  quieted  no  one.  What  was  really  wanted  from 
him  was  an  apology  for  his  association  in  religious  services 
with  Unitarians,  and  his  promise  to  offend  no  more.  That, 
as  we  shall  see,  he  consistently  refused  to  make.  So  Bishop 
Clark  found  his  protege  refractory.  Several  times  had  his 
good  offers  been  declined.  He  had  gently  suggested  to  Phil- 
lips Brooks  that  as  a  bishop  it  might  be  more  becoming  if  he 
adopted  the  conventional  dress  of  the  clergy.  To  this  appeal 
Phillips  Brooks  had  replied,  "  Now,  Mr.  Clark,  you  know 
very  well  it  was  Henry  Potter  who  put  you  up  to  giving  me 
that  advice."  The  following  letter  of  Bishop  Clark  shows  at 
least  he  was  not  offended  by  the  rejection  of  his  good  offices  :  — 

Providence,  November  4,  1891. 

Mt  dear  Brothek  Brooks,  —  I  am  a  little  bit  sorry  that 
you  found  my  letter;  not  that  it  contains  anything  that  I  would 
revoke,  for  I  still  think  it  would  be  right  and  proper  for  you  to 
say  at  the  Church  Congress  the  words  you  would  be  most  natu- 
rally inclined  to  say,  even  if  they  did  tend  to  allay  the  anxieties 
of  certain  good  people,  whose  minds  have  been  prejudiced  by  a 
persistent  series  of  misrepresentations.  As  I  intimated  in  my 
last  letter,  I  was  afraid  that  you  would  reply  just  as  you  have 
done,  because  I  knew  that  you  stand  upon  a  very  lofty  moral 
pedestal  and  have  a  special  aversion  to  all  shams  and  pretences. 
As  I  happen  to  occupy  a  lower  plane,  perhaps  I  might  be  willing 
to  do  what  you  would  decline  doing. 

The  vehemence  of  your  first  letter  I  admired  very  much;  it 
was  one  of  the  chief  attractions  of  the  epistle.  The  lion  always 
appears  at  his  best  when  he  is  in  a  righteous  rage.  One  lesson, 
however,  I  have  learned,  and  that  is  to  abstain  from  any  further 
interference,  and  let  other  people  roast  their  own  chestnuts. 

And  so,  henceforth,  beloved  Brother,  go  thine  own  way.  I 
will  disturb  thee  no  more.  Prudent  or  imprudent,  silent  or  out- 
spoken, deliberate  or  not,  thou  art  likely  to  come  out  all  right  in 
the  end.  I  assume  no  longer  the  post  of  guide,  philosopher,  and 
friend,  confining  myself  entirely  to  the  latter  function.  But  if, 
in  thy  comet-like  sweep  through  the  heavens,  thou  shouldest  ever 
find  thyself  in  a  tight  place  among  the  suns,  and  the  stars,  and 
the  planets,  and  the  little  ecclesiastical  moons,  I  shall  always  be 
at  thy  service. 

Just  as  affectionately  yours  as  ever,  and  a  little  more  so, 

Thomas  M.  Clark. 


^T.  SS-S^I  THE  BISHOP  885 

He  prepared  his  address  for  the  Church  Congress,  there- 
fore, without  any,  the  slightest,  allusion  that  could  be  con- 
strued as  explanatory  or  apologetic.  He  still  felt  about 
church  congresses  as  in  his  earlier  years.  In  writing  to  Rev. 
Arthur  Brooks  about  the  arrangement  for  trains,  he  adds :  — 

But  the  Congress  is  the  great  thing.  Let  us  cast  dull  care 
away  and  go  in  for  enjoyment.  For  the  Church  needs  us  radical 
old  fellows  to  keep  the  conservatism  of  its  young  men  from  rot- 
ting, and  we  must  take  good  care  of  our  health. 

The  city  of  Washington  was  moved  at  his  coming.  In 
the  large  edifice,  Epiphany  Church,  crowded  to  the  doors, 
there  was  no  standing  room.  Not  even  the  drizzling  rain 
deterred  the  people  from  waiting  an  hour  before  the  doors 
were  opened.  The  address  was  beautiful  in  its  simplicity 
and  adaptedness  :  "  Jesus  seeing  their  faith  said  unto  the  sick 
of  the  palsy,  Son,  be  of  good  cheer,  thy  sins  be  forgiven  thee." 

Phillips  Brooks  entered  upon  his  work  as  a  bishop  with 
enthusiasm  and  in  a  spirit  of  entire  self-consecration.  It  was 
the  culmination  of  that  phase  in  his  life,  beginning  after  his 
return  from  India,  when  lie  resolved  to  "  abase  "  himself  in 
order  to  "  abound."  He  believed  that  the  best  part  of  his 
work  as  a  Christian  minister  would  be  conserved  in  the  epis- 
copate. So  he  had  written  to  his  friends.  The  unanimity 
of  all  his  friends,  or  at  least  the  great  majority  of  them,  and 
the  voice  also  of  all  the  people,  confirmed  him  in  the  convic- 
tion that  he  was  right  in  accepting  the  office.  The  letters  of 
congratulation  continued  to  come  in  for  many  weeks  after  his 
consecration.  From  India  and  Japan  and  China,  from  France 
and  Switzerland,  his  friends  were  writing  in  a  tone  of  jubi- 
lation, in  the  expectancy  of  greater  things  that  he  would  do. 
This  was  also  the  uniform  conviction  of  the  host  of  his  friends 
in  England.  They  sympathized  in  the  change,  as  if  it  brought 
to  the  whole  Anglican  Church  a  higher  prospect  of  useful- 
ness. Thus  his  friend  Professor  James  Bryce,  who  saw  In  his 
growing  influence  some  special  significance  for  the  future  of 
American  life,  writes  him  how  all  his  "  English  friends  feel 
greater  confidence  in  the  future  of  the  American  Episcopal 


886  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1891-92 

Church   now  that   he   will   be   ofificially  connected  with  its 
guides."     But  Mr.  Bryce  adds  also  a  caution  :  — 

I  hope  the  duties  of  an  active  kind  may  not,  as  happens  with 
bishops  here,  trench  too  heavily  on  the  time  you  have  hitherto 
given  to  reading  and  thinking;  for  even  the  authority  the  office 
gives  to  guide  church  deliberations  might  be  ill  purchased  by  the 
loss  of  quiet  times. 

Bishop  Brooks  needed  the  encouragement  that  his  friends 
could  now  give  him  by  letter  or  otherwise.  He  was  a  man 
without  personal  conceit,  of  entire  humbleness  of  heart,  —  the 
heart  of  a  simple  child,  though  accompanied  with  the  con- 
sciousness of  power.  He  took  up  his  new  work,  therefore,  in 
joy  and  gladness.  Never  had  he  been  happier  in  his  life 
than  now.  The  serenity  of  his  spirit  was  manifest.  He  had 
learned  the  lesson  of  Christ,  how  when  he  was  reviled  to 
revile  not  again.  He  was  determined  that  all  should  be  his 
friends  among  clergy  and  laity,  and  to  allow  no  opening  for 
enmities.  His  happiness  showed  itseK  in  many  ways,  —  in  his 
note-books,  where  he  begins  again,  as  in  his  youth,  to  record 
his  thoughts,  as  if  life  were  opening  anew  before  him.  Then, 
too,  it  was  a  vast  relief,  and  he  alone  best  appreciated  it,  that 
he  was  free  at  last  from  the  burden  of  the  parish  minister, 
which  had  simply  become  greater  than  he  could  bear.  The 
task  of  preaching  might  now  be  reduced  within  limits  that 
would  no  longer  exhaust  his  physical  vitality.  It  seemed  at 
first,  despite  the  multiplicity  of  engagements,  that  he  had 
more  time  at  his  disposal  than  before  for  reading  and  quiet 
thinking.  He  carried  books  with  him  as  he  went  on  his  epis- 
copal visitations.  He  loved  to  travel,  it  must  be  admitted, 
to  go  into  new  towns  and  places,  to  become  acquainted  with 
people,  to  visit  a  hundred  homes  where  he  had  the  privilege 
of  being  admitted  as  guest.  It  all  seemed  very  delightful. 
He  could  not  believe  that  his  work  would  ever  become  per- 
functory. When  he  was  told  that  the  recitation  of  the  bish- 
op's formula  in  the  confirmation  office  tended  to  formality, 
he  would  not  believe  that  he  could  ever  be  unsympathetic  at 
the  sound  of  those  little  words,  "  I  do,"  coming  from  young 
hearts  at  a  great  moment  in  their  lives. 


jy/^l.  3.:- 


iET.  55-56]  THE  BISHOP  887 

He  now  showed  that  he  possessed  a  capacity  for  the  admin- 
istration of  affairs  which  some  had  doubted.  It  is  the  testi- 
mony of  Bishop  Lawrence,  than  whom  no  one  is  more  com- 
petent to  speak,  that  he  excelled  in  executive  ability.  He 
soon  mastered  the  details  of  the  office,  carrying  them  with 
ease  in  his  capacious  mind.  There  was  some  latent  power 
in  him  in  this  respect,  needing  only  the  quick  call  of  duty 
and  the  responsibility  of  his  position  for  its  development.  A 
business  man  in  Philadelphia,  one  of  his  parishioners,  had 
once  said  of  him  that  he  was  capable  of  taking  charge  of  the 
largest  business  corporations  in  the  country,  and  that  if  he 
gave  his  mind  to  such  work  he  could  not  be  excelled  in  effi- 
ciency. Nor  did  these  affairs  of  the  diocese,  numerous  and 
perplexing  as  they  were,  harass  him  or  vex  his  peace  of  mind. 
But  one  thing  would  be  true  of  him,  that  he  would  slight  or 
neglect  nothing,  or  relax  his  disposition  to  aid  by  any  means 
in  his  power  those  who  appealed  to  him.  There  came  at  once 
hundreds  of  appeals  from  clergymen  for  admission  to  the 
diocese  ;  he  was  called  upon  to  adjust  difficulties  in  parishes ; 
to  offer  advice  upon  every  conceivable  subject.  There  were 
many  drains  upon  his  sympathy.  The  church  must  have 
looked  very  differently  to  him  in  this  nearer  view  from  what 
it  had  done  when  he  gazed  at  it  from  the  pulpit  and  saw  only 
the  crowds  of  eager  listeners  to  his  words. 

He  showed  a  tendency,  also  says  Bishop  Lawrence,  to  be 
a  strict,  even  a  rigid  canonist.  There  was  no  laxity  in  him, 
no  inclination  to  leave  things  at  loose  ends.  This  disposition 
was  plainly  manifested  in  his  dealings  with  Candidates  for 
Orders.  He  wished  it  to  be  understood  that  they  were  to 
go,  when  ordered  deacons,  where  he  should  send  them.  There 
would  be  no  relaxation  of  this  rule.  "  I  pity  them,  but  they 
have  got  to  go."  He  believed  in  government  in  church  or 
state,  and  that  government  was  a  divine  ordering,  not  the  ar- 
rangement of  a  committee.  In  an  address  to  the  students  of 
the  Theological  School  in  Cambridge,  he  was  very  practical 
in  his  suggestions.  The  first  point  he  made  was  in  regard  to 
legibility  of  handwriting.  "  Small  causes  lead  to  great  fail- 
ures."    But  he  soon  sailed  out  on  the  ocean  of  principles : 


PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

"  Promptness  must  come  from  fulness.  Get  everything 
bigger." 

He  talked,  said  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine,  "  as  if  lie  had 
some  large  plans  in  contemplation  for  the  extension  of  the 
church's  work  and  usefulness,  and  was  not  going  into  it 
vaguely."  He  sent  to  the  State  House  for  "  any  books  or 
documents  which  would  give  information  as  to  the  population, 
and  the  character  of  the  population,  in  the  various  towns  and 
cities  of  our  Commonwealth."  He  was  studying  the  State  of 
Massachusetts  in  its  relation  to  the  Episcopal  Church,  the 
causes  which  had  hindered  its  growth,  the  motive  of  its 
strongest  appeal.  Of  his  three  immediate  predecessors  in  the 
episcopal  office,  not  one  had  been  a  Massachusetts  man  by 
birth  or  education.  That  was  his  advantage,  and  he  well  un- 
derstood it.  He  honored  and  he  loved  Massachusetts,  know- 
ing how  to  draw  a  response  from  its  inmost  soul,  or  to  place 
his  finger  on  its  pulse  and  read  the  beatings  of  its  heart.  By 
natural  descent  he  was  a  Puritan  of  the  Puritans,  and  all  this 
was  in  him  still,  yet  joined  with  other  forces  and  tendencies 
which  came  of  the  distinctive  training  from  his  childhood  in 
the  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  He  was  asking  himself  as  to 
the  place  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  what  message  it  brought, 
and  how  that  message  should  be  presented  to  a  common 
Christendom. 

He  was  scrupulous  at  first  to  follow  the  usages  of  his  pre- 
decessor. Wherever  he  went  he  found  that  Bishop  Paddock 
had  left  a  sacred  and  healing  influence  behind.  To  do  what 
he  was  wanted  to  do,  and  to  do  it  in  the  way  to  which  people 
had  become  accustomed,  was  his  rule.  When  he  visited  a 
town,  he  went  to  the  Episcopal  Church,  although  the  towns- 
people were  expecting  that  the  largest  edifice  would  attract 
him,  or  some  large  hall  where  all  might  hear  him.  But  he 
wended  his  way,  as  in  duty  bound,  to  the  small  "  Gothic 
cathedrals,"  as  the  Episcopal  churches  were  called,  tucked 
away  sometimes  in  a  side  street. 

He  was  now  forced  to  overcome  his  habit  of  silence,  or  of 
talking  only  when  he  chose  to  talk,  or  had  something  special 
to  say  when  others'  talk  aroused  him.     Now  he  was  expected 


^T.  SSS^]  THE   BISHOP  889 

to  entertain  his  hosts,  or  the  assembled  company  in  rural 
parsonages  ;  for  no  one  would  talk  when  the  bishop  was  pre- 
sent, and  at  first  Bishop  Brooks  overawed  those  who  met 
him.  He  had  one  resource,  by  which  he  could  escape  if 
necessary,  and  that  was  by  giving  himself  up  to  the  children. 
This  was  also  amusement  and  pure  recreation.  Beautiful 
accounts  were  written  of  his  entrance  into  a  household  and 
establishing  at  once  with  the  children  a  familiar  footing,  so 
that  he  and  all  in  the  family  were  completely  at  home.  "  Why 
do  you  not  talk  to  us  as  Bishop  Brooks  did  ?  "  was  a  question 
from  the  children  that  met  Bishop  Lawrence  as  he  made  his 
first  visitations  in  the  diocese. 

His  modesty  was  always  conspicuous  on  his  visitations  [writes 
Mr.  A.  J.  C.  Sowdon],      One  day  he  was  met  at  the  station  in 

Fall  River  by  Rev.  Mr.  S ,  who  turned  to  help  him  with  his 

valise.      But  he  refused,  saying  he  was  able  to  carry  it  himself. 

As  they  came  to  a  carriage  Mr.  S asked  him  to  step  in,  but 

he   stood   back  and  said,    "Get  in  yourself  first,    S ,    never 

mind  me."  He  had  a  way  of  refusing  carriages.  Once  when  he 
had  been  out  to  a  service  in  a  suburban  town,  and  was  leaving 

the  church,  Mr.  C said,  "Bishop,  there  is  a  carriage  for  you 

at  the  door."      "I  sent  it  away,"  he  answered.      "It  would  have 

gratified  our  peojjle  if  you  had  used  it,"  said  Mr.  C .      "I 

preferred  not  to  do  so.  I  can  go  into  town  just  as  well  in  the 
horse  cars." 

I  was  taking  him  in  to  dinner  [continues  Mr.  Sowdon]  the 
first  day  of  his  convention,  the  only  convention  he  attended  as 
bishop.  There  was  an  unusual  crowd  at  the  Hotel  Brunswick, 
and  it  was  almost  impossible  to  get  through  the  entry.  As  I 
asked  the  clergy  to  make  way  a  little,  he  rebuked  me ;  but  there 
seemed  no  other  way  of  getting  to  the  dining-room.  The  clergy 
did  open  ranks,  and  some  clapped  their  hands  as  we  passed  through 
the  lines.  This  dreadfully  annoyed  him,  and  he  insisted  earnestly 
to  me  that  it  must  never  occur  again.  He  was  greatly  provoked; 
but  after  dinner  he  came  to  me  and  expressed  deej)  regret  that 
he  had  been  so  quick  with  me.  I  told  him  it  was  no  fault  of 
mine;  but  he  said  very  sweetly  and  earnestly,  "Well,  you  must 
see  that  it  (the  clapping  and  open  ranks)  never  occurs  again." 

A  few  days  after  he  was  made  bishop,  when  the  conversation 

turned  upon  the  office,   he  said  to  Rev.  Mr,  L ,  "If  it  ever 

seems  to  you  that  my  head  gets  turned,  you  must  tell  me  of  it." 


gpo  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1891-92 

Once  he  discovered  that  the  person  in  charge  of  the  Church 
Rooms  had  employed  a  poor  clergyman  to  carry  a  note  for  him ; 
and  he  never  forgot  the  person  or  the  action,  and  was  terribly 
exercised  about  the  indignity  put  upon  his  brother  clergyman. 

Then  I  must  mention  his  absolute  indifference  as  to  whether 
or  not  his  friends  had  voted  for  him  as  Bishop.  Too  much  can- 
not be  said  of  his  entire  freedom  from  revenge  or  soreness.  He 
nobly  respected  their  judgment  and  the  pluck  it  took  to  vote 
against  him. 

In  January  Bishop  Brooks  was  seriously  ill  with  an  at- 
tack of  the  grippe.  From  the  despondency  which  accompa- 
nies the  disease  he  was  some  time  in  recovering,  and  indeed  he 
never  quite  recovered  from  the  efPects  of  that  lamentable  ill- 
ness. To  a  friend  who  called  upon  him,  he  remarked  that 
there  had  been  one  bishop  of  Massachusetts  who  never  per- 
formed an  episcopal  function,  and  he  was  afraid  there  would 
be  a  second  of  whom  the  same  would  be  said.  To  another 
friend  he  said  in  answer  to  some  request  that  the  only  thing 
he  could  not  give  him  was  cheerfulness. 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  January  21, 1892. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  How  strange  it  all  is,  this  being  sick !  I 
am  not  out  yet  except  for  necessary  duties,  when  I  go  in  car- 
riages, wrapped  up  like  a  mummy  and  actually  afraid  of  draughts, 
like  an  old  woman.  I  hope  it  is  most  over,  but  the  weather  is 
beastly,  and  the  doctor  is  so  cautious  and  the  legs  so  weak  that  I 
don't  feel  very  sure  of  anything.  Fortunately  the  doctor  smiles 
on  my  going  to  Philadelphia  next  week,  and  thinks  the  change 
will  do  me  good.  Unfortunately,  however,  he  insists  that  I 
must  go  through  and  back  in  a  closed  car,  shut  in  at  Boston  and 
leaving  the  car  only  at  Philadelphia.  Such  a  car  goes  now  via 
the  Shore  Line  and  the  steamer  around  New  York.  This  loses 
my  chance  of  a  night  with  you,  for  which  I  am  very  sorry,  though 
indeed,  unless  the  coming  week  makes  a  gi*eat  difference,  a  night 
of  my  society  could  be  of  small  delight  to  anybody.  Still  I  dare 
to  think  that  you  and  L would  be  glad  to  see  me. 

And  you  shall !  On  Friday,  the  19th  of  February,  I  am  com- 
ing on  to  the  dinner  of  the  New  York  Harvard  Club,  and  I  shall 
count  on  you  to  take  me  in  over  night.  I  never  saw  a  big  New 
York  dinner,  and  I  expect  to  be  delighted  and  dazzled  in  my 
provincial  eyes. 

And  you  must  send  me  the  seal  as  soon  as  it  is  done.      I  am 


^T.  55-56]  THE  BISHOP  891 

impatient  for  it,  —  not  that  I  have  suffered  at  all  by  the  delay, 
but  I  want  to  get  possession  of  the  gem  of  the  episcopate,  and  to 

show and that  I  have  the  finest  seal  of  the  lot. 

I  hope  that  the  winter  goes  on  well  with  you.  Don't  get  sick 
any  more,  and  let 's  be  grateful  for  all  the  fine  long  years  of 
health. 

But  the  thought  of  a  visit  to  Philadelphia  had  its  usual 
effect,  and  he  writes  to  Mr.  Cooper,  January  22,  1892  :  "  I 
may  trust  to  you  and  McVickar  for  something  to  wear 
on  Sunday,  surplice  or  gown.  I  shan't  bring  any  episcopal 
robes.     You  don't  know  what  a  good  time  I  mean  to  have." 

To  the  Rev.  W.  N.  McVickar :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  February  3, 1892. 

My  dear  William,  —  The  visit  was  very  pleasant,  but  it  was 
not  the  real  thing.  I  missed  you  all  the  time,  and  the  sense  of 
why  you  were  not  there,  and  the  sorrow  which  had  fallen  on  you, 
kejjt  us  all  the  time  from  the  absolute  cheeriness  which  belongs 
to  a  visit  to  the  dear  old  town.  Cooper  was  very  kind,  and  the 
dinner  went  off  very  well,  and  the  people  at  the  church  were  hospi- 
tality itself,  but  you  were  not  there,  and  all  the  time  I  was  think- 
ing of  you  sitting  by  your  father,  and  remembering  all  the  past 
which  you  had  lived  with  him.  What  an  awful  thing  it  is  when 
one's  father  dies  I  I  think  that  one  grows  less  and  less  afraid  of  his 
own  death,  and  more  and  more  afraid  of  the  death  of  his  friends. 
And  here  there  is  this  endless  complication  of  life  with  strangers, 
these  countless  tiresome  little  bits  of  business  with  strangers,  with 
people  that  never  have  been  and  never  can  be  one's  friends,  while 
the  folks  one  really  cares  for  you  see  only  once  a  year,  and  by 
and  by  they  die.  Let 's  change  it  all!  Let 's  get  the  half-dozen 
people  who  are  really  worth  while,  and  go  off  to  Cathay  or  some- 
where, and  really  see  them  while  life  lasts. 

But  what  a  joy  it  must  be  to  you,  dear  William,  to  have  seen 
so  much  of  your  father,  and  to  have  put  so  much  of  happiness  as 
you  must  have  out  into  his  life.  It  is  one  of  the  things  that  is 
most  comforting  to  think  of,  I  am  sure. 

And  how  little  it  makes  life  seem ;  and  how  great ;  and  God 
how  near,  and  our  own  ambitions  so  small;  and  every  chance  to 
be  good  and  to  do  good  so  great  and  so  precious! 

God  bless  you,  my  dear  fellow, 

Your  old  friend,  P.  B. 

On  February  11  a  meeting  was  held  in  Boston,  where  the 


892  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

laity,  who  had  been  invited  to  meet  the  city  clergy,  were 
present  in  large  numbers.  The  object  of  the  meeting  as 
stated  in  the  bishop's  circular  letter,  and  more  fully  in  his 
address,  was  to  rouse  the  laity  to  individual  and  also  con- 
certed effort  in  order  to  meet  people  in  sections  of  the  city 
devoid  of  religious  or  moral  influence  who  could  not  be 
reached  by  organized  parochial  work.  This  was  the  first 
step  taken  on  a  large  scale  by  the  bishop  to  carry  out  some 
more  comprehensive  plan  for  increasing  the  efficiency  of  the 
Episcopal  Church.  There  was  much  enthusiasm  evoked  by 
his  words  and  by  the  addresses  of  others  present.  A  resolu- 
tion was  adopted  in  accordance  with  which  a  committee  of 
three  was  appointed  to  act  in  concert  with  the  bishop  in  find- 
ing work  for  every  layman  to  do  who  was  willing  to  be  of 
service.  It  was  a  beginning  full  of  promise,  making  the 
laity  realize  that  PhiUips  Brooks  was  to  be  a  layman's  bishop. 
To  Eev.  Percy  Browne  he  writes  :  — 

March  11,  1892. 

Dear  Percy,  —  I  have  read  the  Parish  Retrospect  all  through, 
and  send  you  my  thanks  for  it.  It  is  very  interesting  and  could 
not  have  been  better  done,  but  how  little  printed  pages  can  tell 
of  what  such  a  twenty  years  as  this  has  been !  But  most  of  all, 
I  find  myself  selfishly  thinking  of  what  the  twenty  years  have 
been  to  rne.  I  cannot  think  how  different  they  would  have  been 
if  you  had  not  come  to  St.  James  when  they  were  fortunate 
enough  to  ask  you.  I  think  of  the  countless  happy  hours  I  have 
had  with  you,  the  kindness  you  have  shown  me,  the  pleasure  you 
have  given  me,  the  good  you  have  done  me,  and  my  heart  is  full 
of  grateful  joy.      May  God  bless  you  for  it  all,  dear  friend. 

And  now  let  us  have  twenty  more  such  years  before  we  go 
home  to  the  Eternal  Comradeship! 

Ash  Wednesday  fell  on  March  2,  and  as  Trinity  Church 
was  still  without  a  rector.  Bishop  Brooks  consented  to  take, 
in  addition  to  his  episcopal  labors,  the  Friday  evening  lec- 
tures. He  also  gave  during  Lent,  as  in  the  previous  year,  the 
Monday  noon  addresses  at  St.  Paul's.  It  need  only  be  said 
of  these  latter  addresses  that  they  were  a  phenomenon  in  Bos- 
ton, such  as  witnesses  and  reporters  vainly  endeavored  to  de- 
scribe, —  a  repetition  of  what  it  had  been  in  New  York,  or 


^T.  SSS^I  AT  TRINITY  CHURCH  893 

the  previous  year  in  Boston,  when  the  preacher  addressed 
himself  exekisively  to  men.  Nothing  like  it  in  the  impres- 
sive power  of  impassioned  appeal  had  ever  been  known  in 
Boston.  The  addresses  were  intended  for  business  men,  and 
they  were  there  ;  but  the  clergy  were  there  in  large  numbers 
and  of  every  denomination,  as  though  the  addresses  were 
condones  ad  cle7'um. 

But  the  Friday  evening  lectures  at  Trinity  were  of  another 
kind,  full  of  the  overflowing  tenderness  and  love  of  a  pastor 
still  in  relation  to  his  people,  unable  to  sever  the  tie  which 
bound  them  together.  The  burden  was  a  heavy  one  to  carry, 
but  love  and  devotion  seemed  to  make  it  light.  As  to  what 
was  said  in  these  lectures,  instead  of  turning  to  his  note-book, 
with  his  own  outline,  we  may  take  reports,  by  an  interested 
listener,  giving  personal  comment  and  impression.  This  is 
the  account  of  the  address  at  the  Communion  Service  on  the 
evening  of  Holy  Thursday,  April  14  :  — 

His  face  had  that  night  that  serene  but  not  removed  expres- 
sion; it  was  gentle  and  affectionate,  human,  and  yet  spiritual. 
He  seems  to  want  to  let  the  jieople  see  that  he  cares  for  them, 
and  his  sermon  was  all  full  of  that  personal  sense  of  our  belonging 
to  each  other,  of  his  remembering  each  one  and  what  we  had  been 
through  together. 

He  began  by  speaking  of  the  Lord's  Supper  as  an  anniversary, 
not  only  of  the  Last  Supper,  but  of  the  many  times  we  have  come 
together  to  celebrate  it  through  all  these  years.  The  one  thing 
we  felt  in  reading  about  it  was  the  love  of  Jesus  for  His  disciples ; 
"with  desire  have  I  desired."  Thus  he  named  one  disciple  after 
another,  and  characterized  each  by  a  most  masterly  little  touch, 
so  that  each  stood  out  a  figure  full  of  interest  whom  you  felt  you 
knew  and  loved.  It  was  wonderful.  Then  he  made  you  see  how 
they  were  all,  with  their  interesting  varied  personalities  and  ex- 
periences, gathered  in  that  room,  and  Jesus  knew  them  all,  every 
one,  and  loved  each  one  of  them.  And  as  He  looked  into  face 
after  face,  and  moved  about  among  them  from  foot  to  foot.  His 
love  filled  all  the  place.  He  made  it  all  most  sacred,  personal, 
the  fire  of  His  love  transforming  all  their  souls  into  perfect  one- 
ness with  Him.  Then,  while  it  was  all  so  near  and  present,  He 
looks  forward  and  says,  "I  will  not  drink  of  this  again  till  I 
drink  it  new  with  you  in  the  Kingdom."     The  perfect  assurance 


894  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

that  their  love  reached  forward,  heyond,  that  they  could  never 
be  separated,  that  their  lives  were  all  one,  in  Jerusalem  then  and 
afterwards  in  the  heavenly  city. 

This  sermon  was  one  of  those  with  a  single  thought  in  it,  like 
an  atmosphere  that  enveloped  and  filled  everything.  Each  word 
deepened  the  impression ;  it  was  love,  —  in  Jesus,  in  the  disci- 
ples, in  the  preacher,  in  the  people,  beating  in  every  word,  all 
through  the  place.  When  I  tell  you  this  you  will  know  better 
than  if  I  tried  to  tell  it  in  words. 

On  Good  Friday  he  took  for  his  text,  "  It  is  finished." 

Good  Friday,  he  began  by  saying,  was  the  most  important 
day  of  the  whole  year;  it  stood  as  the  greatest  of  all  days  in  its 
influence,  in  the  event  it  commemorated.  It  was  characteristic 
of  human  life  that  its  greatest  day  should  be  its  saddest,  full  of 
suffering  and  sorrow.  It  showed  how  life  in  its  essential  nature 
was  sad,  but  it  was  a  day  of  hope,  its  sorrow  full  of  promise, 
and  this,  too,  was  characteristic  of  human  life.  Then  he  spoke 
about  last  words,  how  interesting  even  when  they  are  a  stranger's, 
how  dear  when  they  are  a  friend's.  These  last  words  of  Jesus 
were  sad.  The  end  of  anything  is  sad.  No  man  leaves  any  ex- 
perience without  sadness,  and  the  end  of  life  is  sad,  even  if  it  is 
the  beginning  of  a  richer  existence.  Here  he  quoted  the  "long- 
ing, lingering  look  behind,"  and  the  "cheerful  day."  Then, 
when  the  end  of  an  experience  comes,  one  gains  a  comprehension 
of  all  that  has  gone  to  make  up  the  experience.  Details  and  com- 
plexity are  untangled,  and  the  real  meaning  is  seen.  So  it  was 
with  Jesus.  Galilee  and  the  Lake  and  the  Temple  all  came  back 
to  Him  and  stood  out  clear  in  those  last  moments.  All  these 
thoughts  were  in  Jesus'  mind  because  He  was  human.  His  life 
on  earth  had  been  an  experience  in  His  eternal  life,  one  which 
was  new  and  would  never  be  repeated ;  it  was  as  a  man  that  He 
ended  it  now  and  passed  from  it  into  His  unending,  divine  exist- 
ence ;  but  the  experience  would  be  with  Him  always,  making  more 
perfect  His  perfect  nature. 

Now  what  did  these  words  mean  ?  What  was  finished  ?  The 
answer,  the  rescue  of  humanity.  Just  as  a  father  seeks  for  his 
child  who  has  gone  astray,  and  goes  unresting  day  and  night 
through  vile  haunts  of  sin  and  misery,  and  then  finds  her  and 
places  her  again  in  the  pure  light  of  the  old  home  life,  and  it  is 
finished.  As  a  diver  plunges  into  the  strange  dark  waters  and 
wrestles  with  the  hideous  forms  that  grovel  at  the  bottom,  and 
finds  the  pearl  and  brings  it  to  the  land  in  triumph.  Anything 
more?     Yes,   it  was  more  than  an  act  of  redemption  that  was 


^T.  55-56]  GOOD   FRIDAY  895 

finished ;  it  was  a  creative  act.  There  are  two  creations,  as  we 
read  in  the  Bible.  The  Spirit  of  God  brooding  over  Chaos  brings 
light  and  life  and  order  and  music  out  of  it.  He  did  not  quote 
the  Hymn  on  the  Nativity;  there  was  no  need  of  it,  for  his  lan- 
guage was  just  as  poetical,  majestic,  rhythmical,  superb,  as  that 
stanza,  — 

Such  music,  as  't  is  said, 
Before  was  never  made, 

But  when  of  old  the  sons  of  momingf  sung. 
While  the  Creator  great 
His  constellations  set, 

And  the  well-halanced  world  on  hinges  hung. 

Yes,  it  was  more  beautiful,  it  was  like  a  great,  rich  strain  of 
music,  like  a  view  of  the  universe  with  all  the  parts  moving  in 
harmony  and  beauty.  That  was  the  first  creation.  Then  the 
spirit  of  God  brooded  over  human  life  so  close  and  near  and  deep, 
that  it  entered  into  human  life  and  was  incarnate,  and  wrought 
the  mysterious  change  in  the  soul  of  man,  —  the  change  that 
brings  order  and  beauty  out  of  chaos  and  sin.  And  the  power 
of  the  incarnation  was  sacrifice,  and  the  power  of  the  new  crea- 
tion is  sacrifice.  When  once  the  spirit  of  sacrifice  enters,  sin  is 
cast  out,  by  the  very  entrance  of  this  spirit,  and  old  puzzles  and 
doubts  and  evil  thoughts  flit  away  like  hateful  birds  of  night. 

Pale  and  earnest,  his  voice  quivering,  he  leaned  forward,  and 
said,  "This  was  for  you  and  me."  And  then  he  made  one  of 
those  tremendous  appeals  that  :  hake  your  heart  because  they  must 
leave  you  better,  or  infinitely  v  orse;   and  then  he  prayed. 

One  other  point,  the  creati  sre  power  is  also  the  ministering 
power.  In  the  natural  creation  more  and  more  it  is  discovered 
that  creation  is  not  one  act  but  a  continuous  process ;  so  in  the 
spiritual  creation,  Jesus  creates  and  then  abides  in  the  soul  and 
ministers  to  it  until  it  is  perfect  even  as  the  Father  is  perfect. 

In  the  afternoon  of  Good  Friday  he  commented  on  the 
words,  "  Always  bearing  about  in  the  body  the  dying  of  the 
Lord  Jesus,  that  the  life,"  etc. 

St.  Paul  did  not  see  Jesus  die ;  perhaps  his  knowledge  of  that 
death,  being  removed  from  the  actual  sight  of  that  anguish  which 
for  the  time  swallowed  up  the  deeper  meaning  of  a  death,  was  in 
some  ways  more  true  and  intelligent.  When  we  see  some  one  die 
we  do  not  at  the  time  catch  the  full  significance  of  the  event. 
Afterwards  we  remember  and  recognize  the  heroism,  the  patience, 
the  triumph,  that  were  in  it.      St.  Paul  says  he  bears  this  know- 


896  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

ledge,  the  dying  of  Jesus,  about  in  his  body.  It  is  interesting  to 
notice  how  he  speaks  of  his  body.  Poor,  weak,  small  as  it  was, 
if  tradition  tells  the  truth,  it  was  the  scene,  the  theatre  of  all 
the  great  acts  and  experiences  of  his  soul.  He  honors  it,  recog- 
nizes its  mystery,  its  relation  to  his  spirit,  and  so  when  he  thinks 
of  Jesus'  death  he  says  that  it  is  in  his  body  that  he  bears  that 
knowledge.  There  are  wonderful  pictures  in  the  Old  World 
everywhere,  representing  the  descent  from  the  cross,  where  the 
disciples  touch  the  cold  stiff  limbs,  though  they  know  that  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  is  no  longer  in  them;  tenderly  and  lovingly  bear- 
ing in  their  arms  the  dying  Lord.  Other  pictures  of  the  Virgin 
Mary,  many  of  the  girl  mother  with  her  baby,  —  those  have  the 
unquenchable  joy  of  youth  and  young  motherhood,  —  but  there 
are  some  of  the  Mother  of  our  Lord  in  the  fulness  of  mature 
life,  splendid  and  august  in  the  maturity  of  her  beauty  and  her 
sorrow.  She  holds  her  Son  dead  across  her  knees,  and  as  she 
looks  down  ujjon  the  cold,  rigid  limbs,  there  is  in  her  face  sor- 
row too  deep  for  tears.  You  can  see  there  the  destruction  of 
all  her  hopes;  all  the  sacrifices  she  has  made,  the  disappoint- 
ments, the  loneliness  of  His  life.  She  has  felt  them  all  as 
mothers  do  the  experiences  of  their  children,  and  now  He  is  dead, 
and  she  is  dying  too. 

He  talked,  in  closing,  about  how  people  die,  —  living  people. 
They  die  when  those  they  love  die.  You  die,  something  comes  to 
an  end.  It  is  all  over.  Just  as  Thursday  evening  Love  was  the 
theme,  so  this  afternoon  it  was  death.  It  was  all  about  you  and 
in  you,  death  and  sin,  —  disappointment,  failure,  misery,  injus- 
tice, —  all  crowded  around  that  cross,  and  the  victim  of  it  all 
suffering  there,  and  those  who  loved  him  dying  too. 

That,  he  said,  was  what  made  the  awful  solemnity  of  life  as 
we  go  on  in  it,  —  the  bearing  about  in  our  body  the  dying  of  the 
Lord  Jesus. 

It  is  strange,  but  I  can't  seem  to  remember  anything  but  this. 
He  did  say  something  about  the  life  being  made  manifest,  but 
the  impression  of  death,  the  picture  of  the  dying  Christ,  was  so 
vivid  that  I  could  not  think  of  anything  else.  We  seem  to  be 
left  in  the  dark  just  watching  that  figure,  and  it  seems  to  be  there 
through  the  ages,  suffering  for  all  the  sin  ever  since,  and  for 
all  the  sorrow  and  ignorance,  and  making  us  bear  it  about  in  our 
own  bodies  and  never  rest  or  cease  to  remember  till  we  have  done 
our  part,  have  somehow  carried  this  sacrifice  to  heal  and  bless 
some  part  of  this  weary  world. 

On  the  evening  of  Good  Friday  Bishop  Brooks  was  present 


^T.  SS'S^']     CONVENTION   ADDRESS  897 

and  took  part  at  a  union  service  in  the  Old  South  Church 
(Congregational),  when  an  eminent  Unitarian  minister  was 
also  present,  Dr.  A.  P.  Peabody,  of  Harvard  College,  for 
whom  Phillips  Brooks  felt  a  filial  reverence  and  affection. 
"  It  was  something  always  to  be  remembered,"  writes  the 
Rev.  George  A.  Gordon,  "  the  way  that  Brooks  listened  while 
Peabody  spoke  of  Christ,  and  the  intense  eagerness  of  that 
venerable  and  saintly  Unitarian  to  catch  every  word  that  fell 
from  the  lips  of  the  great  bishop."  The  event  called  forth  the 
familiar  protest  witbin  the  diocese  and  woke  up  again  the  op- 
position without,  which  had  been  silent  since  his  consecration. 

On  Wednesday,  May  18,  the  diocesan  convention  met, 
when  Bishop  Brooks  was  to  make  his  first  convention  address. 
So  great  was  the  desire  to  hear  him  that  the  occasion  resem- 
bled a  religious  service  with  its  throng  of  listeners.  The 
bishop's  secretary.  Rev.  W.  H.  Brooks,  a  man  of  large  expe- 
rience in  ecclesiastical  affairs,  seeing  no  signs  of  preparation, 
took  occasion  to  say  in  advance  that  an  address  to  the  con- 
vention was  an  important  function  to  be  borne  in  mind. 
Bishop  Brooks  said  that  he  would  bear  it  in  mind,  but  he 
must  have  smiled  inwardly  at  the  anxious  secretary.  The 
address  had  been  written  weeks  before.  Like  his  other  work, 
it  had  a  literary  quality,  so  that  to  one  with  no  knowledge  of 
the  occasion  it  would  read  like  an  interesting  essay  with  ar- 
tistic form.  It  deserves  an  important  place  among  his  "  Es- 
says and  Addresses,"  for  it  contains  his  wisdom  and  expe- 
rience brought  to  bear  upon  ecclesiastical  matters,  and  placed 
at  the  disposal  of  his  brethren.  It  more  than  fulfilled  the 
highest  expectations  of  the  episcopal  possibilities  that  were 
in  him.  It  was  comprehensive  and  statesmanlike,  with  sug- 
gestions of  practical  and  immediate,  but  also  of  far-reaching 
importance.  It  breathed  a  spirit  of  universal  charity,  kindly 
and  genial,  and  yet  incisive  to  the  last  degree.  Its  recom- 
mendations to  clergy  and  laity  are  still  remembered,  still 
acted  upon,  as  the  legacy  of  a  great  bishop  who  filled  out  the 
office  in  its  highest  ideal. 

There  was  the  usual  reticence  about  making  statements  of 
his  work,  and  there  was  no  comparative  estimate.     But  those 

VOL.  n 


898  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1891-92 

who  listened  saw  what  he  had  accomplished.  In  the  seven 
months  since  his  consecration  the  number  of  persons  con- 
firmed by  him  was  2127.  When  to  these  was  added  the 
number  confirmed  by  other  bishops  during  the  vacancy  of  the 
diocese,  the  total  was  2395.  In  1890  the  number  of  confir- 
mations was  1743,  and  in  1891,  1635,  —  figures  which  make 
apparent  the  modesty  of  his  remark,  "  The  number  of  confir- 
mations is  a  little  larger  than  ever  before  in  the  history  of  the 
diocese."  There  were  other  signs  of  vigorous  growth,  the 
number  of  Candidates  for  Orders  had  increased  from  25  to 
36,  the  number  of  clergy  from  192  to  205,  the  number  of  lay 
readers  from  16  to  70.  There  had  been  a  large  increase  in 
the  Episcopal  Fund,  and  the  new  Diocesan  House  had  been 
purchased  at  No.  1  Joy  Street,  in  Boston,  which  offered 
ample  accommodation  compared  with  the  "  dreary  hospital- 
ity "  of  the  Church  Rooms  in  Hamilton  Place. 

But  these  items  of  growth  showing  the  effect  of  the  new 
enthusiasm  are  not  so  interesting  as  the  suggestions  for  the 
future.  The  bishop  and  the  man  spoke  out  when  outlining 
the  policy  to  be  followed.  Space  must  be  found  for  a  few 
of  his  words,  which  will  at  least  demonstrate  his  interest  in, 
and  his  loyalty  to,  the  Episcopal  Church,  which  had  been  so 
cruelly  questioned. 

Is  it  then  true  that  our  Church  has  worthily  conceived  her 
whole  relation  to  the  whole  people  of  this  Commonwealth?  Our 
local  history  accounts  for  much  of  the  defect  of  such  conception. 
We  have  been  for  two  centuries  counted  an  exception,  almost  an 
exotic,  in  New  England.  It  has  seemed  to  those  around  us  as  if 
we  existed  for  the  sake  of  a  certain  class  of  people  of  peculiar 
character  and  antecedents.  To  others  it  has  seemed  as  if  we 
were  of  value  because  we  bore  witness  to  certain  elements  of 
Christian  life,  which  were  in  danger  of  being  forgotten  or  ne- 
glected. Probably  it  was  inevitable  that  we  should  come  to  take 
somewhat  the  same  view  of  ourselves  which  others  have  taken  of 
us.  Certainly  we  have  done  so  in  some  degree.  With  all  our 
self-appreciation  we  have  lived  in  a  limited  notion  of  what  it  is 
possible  for  us  to  do.  We  have  been  at  once  bold  and  timid. 
We  have  been  burdened  with  self -consciousness.  We  have  dwelt 
on  what  we  have  called  the  "mission  of  our  Church."     The  real 


^T.  55-56]      CORRESPONDENCE  899 

mission  of  our  Church  is  nothing  less  than  the  eternal,  universal 
mission  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  which  is  the  preaching  of  right- 
eousness, the  saving  of  souls,  the  building  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God.  All  mere  special  commissions  and  endowments  are  matters 
of  method,  and  ought  to  be  much  less  kept  before  our  conscious- 
ness and  much  less  set  before  the  world. 

And  we  are  too  much  in  the  habit  of  asking,  when  a  new  town 
or  city  is  offered  as  a  possible  field  for  an  Episcopal  Church, 
whether  there  are  any  "  Church  people  "  there,  as  if  that  name 
described  a  special  kind  or  order  of  humanity  to  whom  alone  we 
were  to  consider  ourselves  as  sent.  The  real  question  ought  to 
be  whether  there  are  human  creatures  in  that  town.  We  are  sent 
to  the  human  race.  That  larger  idea  of  our  mission  must  enlarge 
our  spirit  and  our  ways,  and  make  us  fit  to  bear  our  part  in  the 
broad  salvation  of  the  world. 

Everything  which  I  have  to  say  tends  to  the  strong  assertion 
of  the  truth  that  the  Church  is  bound  to  seek  men ;  not  merely 
to  stand  where  men  can  find  her  if  they  wish,  but  to  go  after 
them  and  claim  them.  One  application  of  this  truth  has  forced 
itself  upon  my  notice,  with  reference  to  the  situation  of  our 
churches  in  some  of  the  towns  and  villages  of  our  diocese.  The 
question  of  location  is  altogether  the  most  important  outward 
question  which  arises  in  connection  with  the  establishment  of  a 
new  parish.  It  is  far  more  important  than  the  question  of  archi- 
tecture, important  as  that  is.  Better  an  ugly  church  in  the  right 
place  than  a  gem  of  beauty  where  men  have  to  search  to  find  it. 
But,  once  more,  we  are  driven  to  no  such  alternative.  Rather, 
our  alternative  is  apt  to  be  this:  Whether  it  is  not  best  to  wait 
and  struggle  a  little  longer  and  a  little  harder,  to  set  our  church 
at  last  full  in  the  centre  of  the  town's  life,  on  the  town  square, 
where  men  cannot  help  seeing  it  every  day,  —  where  it  shall  per- 
petually claim  its  right  to  be  recognized  and  heard,  —  than  to 
take  the  pretty  and  retired  lot  down  some  side  street,  which  we 
can  have  at  once,  which  can  be  bought  cheaply,  or  which  some 
kind  friend  gives  us  for  nothing,  where  the  church  we  build  will 
always  seem  to  declare  itself  not  a  messenger  to  the  whole  people, 
but  the  confidant  and  friend  of  a  few  specially  initiated  people 
who  know  and  love  her  ways,  and  who  will  find  her,  however  she 
may  hide  herself.  Here  certainly  we  need  more  and  not  less 
boldness  and  assurance  of  what  we  are  and  what  we  have  to  do.^ 

Much  of  the  correspondence  of  Phillips  Brooks  at  this  time 

^  Cf.  Journal  of  the  lOlth  Convention  of  the  Diocese  of  Massachusetts,  pp.  119, 
123. 


900  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1891-92 

is  of  an  official  character.  From  the  many  personal  letters  he 
wrote  a  few  are  given  which  will  carry  on  the  story  of  his  life. 
To  a  Candidate  for  Orders,  Mr.  Henry  Ross,  then  in  Germany, 
who  had  asked  regarding  the  interpretation  of  the  Creed :  — 

233  CiiABENDOK  Street,  Bostok,  April  13,  1892. 

Dear  Mk.  Eoss,  —  I  am  very  glad  to  hear  from  you  and  to 
have  the  opportunity  of  sending  you  cordial  Easter  greeting, 
which  I  do  with  all  my  heart. 

As  to  the  question  of  your  letter,  I  wish  very  much  that  I 
could  have  the  privilege  of  talking  with  you,  for  writing  is  a 
most  imperfect  method  of  communication.  But  what  I  think  is 
this :  — 

The  creed  is  drawn  from  the  New  Testament,  and  the  New 
Testament  declares  and  emphasizes  the  peculiar  and  supreme 
nature  of  Christ  as  outgoing  while  it  fulfils  the  nature  of  human- 
ity. It  asserts  that  this,  His  higher  nature,  involved  relations 
with  the  outer  world  more  perfect  and  complete  than  those  which 
belono-  to  ordinary  human  lives.  This  assertion  makes  the  story 
of  what  we  call  the  supernatural.  And  both  the  entrance  on  and 
the  departure  from  our  human  life  are  declared  to  have  been  in 
some  way  marked  by  circumstances  which  indicated  his  superior 
nature. 

In  neither  case  is  the  exact  character  of  the  circumstances 
made  clear,  but  in  both  there  is  the  indication  of  something  ex- 
ceptional, and  therefore  wonderful,  or,  as  we  say,  miraculous. 

Now  this  is  what  our  creed  expresses,  and  the  ability  to  repeat 
the  creed  implies,  therefore,  the  belief  in  the  higher  life  of  Jesus. 
That  higher  life  is  closely  associated  with  the  higher  life  of  man. 
The  divinity  of  Christ  is  not  separate  from  His  humanity.  It  is 
His  total  nature,  which  the  Church  tries  to  express  in  the  large 
statements  of  His  birth  and  death,  which  it  takes  from  the  New 
Testament. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  results  of  modern  scholarship  which 
conflicts  with  the  statements  in  the  Apostles'  and  Nicene  Creeds 
concerning  the  birth  of  Jesus.  Those  statements  are  variously 
understood  by  various  believers,  but  they  have  this  meaning  al- 
ways in  them,  that  Christ  bore  a  higher  life  than  ours,  and  that 
that  higher  life  manifested  itself  in  the  circumstances  of  His 
experience. 

I  hope  that  you  are  well  and  happy,  and  I  am  thankful  for 
this  chance  to  say  God  bless  you. 

May  all  good  be  with  you  always. 

Your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 


JET.  55-56]       CORRESPONDENCE  901 

The  following  letter  indicates  how  his  time  was  occupied 
with  engagements,  and  how  he  was  carrying  the  burden :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  May  2,  1892. 

Dear  Arthur,  —  So  far  I  find  the  bishop  life  a  very  comfort- 
able and  pleasant  one,  with  none  of  the  carking  cares  and  con- 
suming quarrels  with  which  I  supposed  it  to  abound. 

But  I  want  advice  about  many  points  which  are  looming  in 
the  distance,  and  therefore  I  am  coming  to  you  next  week.  On 
Friday  morning  I  leave  Boston,  and  shall  be  with  you  at  dinner 
on  that  day.  On  Sunday  you  are  here  and  I  am  there,  which  I 
don't  like,  but  there  seems  to  be  no  help  and  no  way  in  which  we 
can  spend  the  blessed  day  together. 

On  Monday  I  make  a  visit  to  New  Haven,  leaving  New  York 
at  two  p.  M.,  preaching  at  the  College  in  the  evening,  and  return- 
ing to  New  York  that  night,  reaching  your  hospitable  door  bell 
about  midnight. 

Tuesday  is  devoted  entirely  to  rest  and  brotherhood.  "Wednes- 
day is  given  to  the  same  until  the  evening  comes,  when  I  go  to 
a  meeting  in  Chickering  Hall,  or  somewhere,  about  the  Bible 
Society,  and  then  take  the  late  train  for  Boston  in  order  to  be 
here  for  a  wedding  on  Friday  morning.      Do  you  see? 

It  all  looks  bright  and  interesting,  and  he  who  means  to  do 
it  all  is 

Your  affectionate  brother,  P. 

The  Rev.  Reuen  Thomas,  pastor  of  the  Congregational 
Church  in  Brookline,  where  Phillips  Brooks  had  often  gone 
to  preach,  sent  him  a  request  to  reopen  the  enlarged  and 
beautified  church.  Aware  that  it  was  a  new  thing  in  the 
ecclesiastical  world  for  a  Congregational  minister  to  prefer 
such  a  request  to  a  bishop  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  Phillips 
Brooks  replied :  — 

May  21,  1892. 

Dear  Dr.  Thomas,  —  Your  note  gives  me  great  pleasure,  and 
I  thank  you  for  it  with  all  my  heart.  I  would  gladly  do,  if  I 
could,  the  pleasant  duty  which  you  ask  of  me,  but  I  am  sorry 
to  say  that  I  cannot.  I  am  going  abroad,  and  shall  not  return 
until  September,  just  when,  I  cannot  say.  But  I  am  so  bound  by 
appointments  which  must  be  met  instantly  on  my  return  that  I 
must  not  allow  myself  to  add  an  appointment  which  I  should  find 
it  difficult  and  perhaps  impossible  to  fulfil. 

Therefore  I  must  not  come.      But  I  want  you  to  know  how 


902  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

truly  I  rejoice  with  you  in  all  your  good  work,  and  in  all  the 
enlarged  opportunity  which  will  make  it  larger  and  richer. 

And  for  Christian  unity,  such  messages  as  this  of  yours  prove 
not  merely  that  it  is  to  he,  but  that  it  is. 

Ever  your  friend  and  brother,  Phillips  Brooks. 

To  the  Rev.  W.  R.  Huntington :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  May  31, 1892. 

Dear  Huntington,  —  They  are  very  good  indeed  to  want  me, 
and  if  I  were  a  different  sort  of  man  from  what  I  am  I  certainly 
would  come,  —  that  is,  if  I  were  a  man  who  shed  orations  like 
raindrops,  and  never  minded  them ;  but  I  am  not.  It  would  spoil 
my  summer  to  have  to  think  of  it,  and  when  the  day  came.  East 
Billerica  or  West  Weymouth  would  be  sure  to  be  wanting  a  visi- 
tation, and  I  should  have  to  turn  my  back  on  duty  to  go  and 
pursue  the  Phantom  Pleasure  in  New  York.  That  is  not  always 
disagreeable,  but  it  never  is  commendable,  and  so,  for  once,  I 
resist  the  temptation. 

You  will  tell  them  how  grateful  I  am,  and  you  will  know  that 
I  thank  you  for  your  kind  words. 

It  was  good  to  get  sight  of  you  the  other  day.      It  always  is. 

Affectionately  yours,  P.  B. 

Mr.  Cooper  had  promised  a  clergyman  that  he  would  write 
to  the  Bishop  of  Massachusetts  with  reference  to  any  vacancy 
in  the  diocese,  and  Bishop  Brooks  replied :  — 

283  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  May  31, 1892. 

Dear  Cooper,  — It  is  good  to  see  your  blessed  handwriting. 

There  is  nothing  here  for  Mr.  now.      The  only  vacancies 

are  a  few  little  country  missions,  generally  without  church  build- 
ings,   where    the   salaries   are   very   small   and   the   prospects   of 

growth  are  of  the  slightest,  —  places  like ,  and  that  sort  of 

thing.  Trinity  Church,  Boston,  indeed,  is  vacant,  but  I  do  not 
believe  he  would  like  that.  I  was  there  myself  for  a  while,  and 
know  what  a  queer  sort  of  place  it  is.      He  would  not  like  it. 

So  all  I  can  do  is  to  keep  my  eye  open  for  a  place  for  Mr. 

.      Our  ministers  here  never  die,  and  seldom  resign,  so  that 

no  man  can  tell  what  chances  will  occur. 

If  he  would  like  a  place  in  London  or  the  Tyrol,  perhaps  I 
could  serve  him  better,  for  I  am  going  there  this  summer.  The 
Etruria  takes  me  on  the  18th  of  June.  I  should  be  glad  indeed 
if  I  could  see  you  before  I  go,  but  there  is  no  chance  that  I  can 
get  down  to  dear  Philadelphia.  Something  is  to  be  done  here 
every  day  until  I  leave. 


^T.  55-56]      CORRESPONDENCE  903 

The  tone  of  his  letters  is  genial  and  cheerful  as  ever,  but 
there  were  moments  when  he  was  weary  even  to  exhaustion, 
and  hardly  seemed  like  himself.  The  effects  of  the  grippe 
had  not  been  overcome.  It  may  be  that  he  had  overtaxed 
his  strength  in  fulfilling  his  episcopal  duties.  He  made  no 
effort  to  reduce  them,  but  went  willingly  everywhere,  at  the 
beck  and  call  of  all  who  wanted  him.  He  had  not  followed 
the  wise  advice,  given  him  by  those  who  had  experience, 
Bishop  Williams  and  others,  to  take  up  the  work  in  modera- 
tion as  he  began.  That  he  may  have  been  worried  about  his 
health  might  be  inferred  from  the  circumstance  that  before 
leaving  home  he  sent  for  the  plumbers  to  make  a  thorough 
examination  of  his  house.  The  report  sent  in  to  him  was  to 
the  effect  that  everything  was  in  proper  order.  He  sailed  in 
the  steamer  Majestic,  and  the  captain  (Purcell)  gave  him  the 
use  of  his  deck-room  during  the  day.  The  voyage  was  a 
pleasant  one.     On  board  the  steamer  he  writes :  — 

The  Majestic  is  a  magnificent  great  thing,  and  could  put  our 
dear  little  Cephalonia  into  her  waistcoat  pocket.  Her  equipment 
is  sumptuous  and  her  speed  something  tremendous.  .  .  .  Yester- 
day [June  26]  we  had  service,  and  I  preached  in  the  great 
saloon  in  the  morning,  and  in  the  evening  I  held  a  service  for  the 
second-class  passengers,  of  whom  there  is  a  multitude.  ...  I 
should  not  have  been  disappointed  if  the  Majestic  could  not  have 
taken  me,  and  if  I  had  been  left  in  North  Andover,  as  I  expected 
when  I  saw  you  last. 

Yours  affectionately,  and  Majestically,  P. 

The  month  of  July  was  spent  in  London.  He  was  wel- 
comed on  his  arrival  by  a  telegram  from  Lord  Aberdeen, 
asking  him  for  a  visit  at  Haddo  House  in  Scotland.  He 
preached  in  the  Abbey  as  usual,  and  for  Archdeacon  Farrar 
at  St.  Margaret's  ;  "  there  were  a  good  many  people  in  both 
churches."  He  preached  also  for  Mr.  Haweis,  in  his  church 
at  Marylebone,  in  return,  as  he  said,  for  a  fine  sermon  given 
by  Mr.  Haweis  at  Trinity  years  before.  Other  invitations, 
and  they  were  many,  he  felt  obliged  to  decline,  with  the 
exception  of  St.  Peter's,  Eaton  Square.  "  South  London," 
wrote  the  vicar  of  St.  Mark's,  Kennington,  "has  a  most  vivid 


904  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

and  abiding  remembrance  of  you  which  it  is  longing  to  re- 
new." "A  speech  from  you,"  wrote  the  head  master  of 
Chigwell  School,  "would  be  something  for  the  boys  to  re- 
member. We  are  very  proud  of  the  link  which  binds  us  to 
America,  as  the  school  where  William  Penn  was  educated." 
"  You  do  us  much  good  by  coming  and  preaching  in  Eng- 
land," writes  Rev.  J.  Llewelyn  Davies.  And  another  dear 
friend  writes  to  him,  speaking  of  his  sermon  in  the  Abbey  on 
July  3,  "  It  was  such  a  blessing  to  hear  your  voice  once  more 
in  that  glorious  place,  and  every  heart  was  very  full  when  you 
once  more  touched  on  the  high  thoughts  and  aspirations  in 
which  all  can  unite  when  recalling  the  birthday  of  your 
national  life.  Your  visits  to  England  are  among  the  bright- 
est gifts  that  come  to  cheer  and  encourage  us." 

Many  and  most  attractive  were  the  invitations  that  came 
to  him,  from  Dr.  Temple,  the  Bishop  of  London,  from  the 
Dean  of  Westminster,  the  Dean  of  Salisbury,  the  Dean  of 
Southampton,  from  Canon  Duckworth,  at  St.  Mark's,  Hamil- 
ton Terrace,  Rev.  Gerald  Blunt,  at  Chelsea,  the  rector  of 
Bishopsgate,  Professor  Stanley  Leathes,  the  Rev.  Henry 
White,  of  the  Chapel  Royal,  Savoy,  Rev.  Mr.  Kitto,  vicar  of 
St.  Martin's,  Charing  Cross.  He  was  invited  to  revisit  the 
English  Lakes  by  Canon  Rawnsley,  vicar  of  Keswick 
Church ;  to  Brighton,  where  he  went  to  review  under  the  best 
guidance  the  scene  of  Robertson's  ministry  ;  to  Winchester, 
in  order  that  he  get  the  best  impression  of  the  Saxon  metrop- 
olis ;  to  visit  art  galleries  with  Mr.  Edward  Clifford.  His 
friends  pressed  him  with  invitations  to  dinner  or  lunch, — 
the  Baroness  Burdett-Coutts,  Lady  Frances  Baillie,  the  Sew- 
ells,  the  Buchanans,  with  whom  he  was  at  home  at  Univer- 
sity House,  Bethnal  Green.  A  few  days  were  given  to  the 
Bishop  of  Winchester  at  Farnham  Castle.  In  company  with 
Archdeacon  Farrar  he  made  a  visit  to  Lord  Tennyson,  whom 
he  found  "  gentle,  gracious,  and  talkative."  That  he  greatly 
enjoyed  his  stay  in  London  is  evident,  but  he  was  not  as 
well  as  he  should  have  been.  Archdeacon  Farrar  perceived 
some  change :  — 


^T.  55-56]  IN  ENGLAND  905 

Every  one  noticed,  during  his  last  visit  to  England,  that  he 
looked  much  thinner  than  he  had  done  two  years  hefore,  but  he 
always  spoke  of  himself  as  perfectly  well,  and  his  great  boyish 
heart  seemed  as  full  as  ever  of  love  and  hope  and  joy.  I  noticed 
in  him  a  just  perceptible  deepening  of  gravity  in  tone,  but  no 
diminution  of  his  usually  bright  spirits.  ...  I  attributed  the 
slightly  less  buoyant  temperament  of  last  summer  —  the  sort  of 
half-sadness  which  sometimes  seemed  to  flit  over  his  mind  like 
the  shadow  of  a  summer  cloud  —  to  the  exigencies  and  responsi- 
bilities of  his  recent  dignity.^ 

Phillips  Brooks  sat  for  his  photograph  while  in  London. 
Li  none  of  his  portraits  does  the  greatness  of  the  man,  the 
majesty  o£  his  personal  appearance,  stand  forth  more  dis- 
tinctly ;  but  these  photographs  reveal  illness  as  well ;  there  is 
sternness  in  the  countenance,  the  inherited  Puritan  sadness. 

A  volume  of  his  sermons  had  been  published  in  England 
with  the  title,  "The  Spiritual  Man  and  other  Sermons." 
Published,  as  it  was,  without  his  knowledge,  he  was  provoked 
when  his  attention  was  called  to  it  and  sent  his  protest  to  the 
publishers,  with  the  result  that  a  promise  came  to  him  that 
this  note  should  be  inserted  in  all  the  remaining  copies  : 
"  Bishop  Phillips  Brooks  requests  the  publishers  to  state  that 
the  contents  of  this  volume  are  printed  from  stenographic 
reports,  gathered  from  various  sources,  and  issued  without 
his  knowledge."  Notwithstanding  his  protest,  the  book  has  a 
singular  charm.  It  contains  many  sermons  not  to  be  found 
elsewhere,  those  which  had  most  strongly  touched  the  popu- 
lar mind.  And  a  certain  pathos  is  the  tie  that  unites  them 
in  homogeneousness  and  unity,  —  the  pathos,  as  it  were,  of  a 
last  will  and  testament. 

The  month  of  August  was  spent  in  travel  on  the  Continent, 
most  of  the  time  in  company  with  McVickar.  We  need  not 
dwell  on  these  days,  for  it  was  the  same  familiar  story  as  in 
other  visits,  —  he  hastened  to  the  Tyrol,  full  of  memories  and 
the  richest  associations  of  his  years,  and  from  the  Tyrol  he 
passed  into  Switzerland.  From  St.  Moritz  he  writes  to  Mr. 
Robert  Treat  Paine :  — 

1  Cf .  Review  of  Reviews,  March,  1893. 


9o6  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1891-92 

August  8, 1892. 
My  dear  Bob,  —  How  terrible  it  is,  all  of  this  Homestead 
business !  And  yet  how  hopeful,  for  it  would  all  have  been  im- 
possible a  hundred  years  ago,  when  men  did  not  question  the 
ownership  of  human  creatures  by  human  creatures  in  a  hundred 
forms.  It  is  the  old  battle  of  man  for  his  true  place  which  has 
always  been  going  on.  Darwin  and  his  folks  find  it  even  before 
man  was  at  all,  and  nobody  has  yet  begun  to  know  where  the  end 
will  be.  But  one  of  the  most  puzzling  and  interesting  and  dis- 
tressing of  the  episodes  of  the  great  battle  has  been  given  to  our 
age  to  fight,  and,  with  countless  blunders  and  cruelties  such  as 
war  always  brings,  I  think  that  we  are  fighting  it  pretty  well. 

To  his  friend  the  Bishop  of  Khode  Island,  keeping  the 
eightieth  birthday,  he  wrote  as  follows  :  — 

St.  Mobitz,  Switzebland,  August  10,  1892. 

Dear  Bishop  Clark,  —  When  a  man  can  write  a  letter  such 
as  this  of  yours,  to  tell  the  story  of  his  eightieth  birthday  past 
and  over,  he  is  indeed  snapping  his  venerable  fingers  in  the  face 
of  Time.  I  am  afraid  it  is  not  wholly  right,  and  that  you  will 
have  to  be  punished  for  it.  There  is  a  mossy  quietude  which 
people  associate  with  your  time  of  life,  and  whose  absence  they 
resent  if  it  does  not  appear.  If,  indeed,  you  are  eighty  after 
all,  and  it  is  not  a  mistake,  or  a  fraud.      Are  you  quite  sure  ? 

As  to  your  legs,  you  must  not  worry  yourself  about  them ;  they 
are  not  what  interests  your  friends.  It  is  not  your  walk,  but 
your  conversation,  that  we  value.  We  will  carry  you  in  our  arms 
so  that  your  feet  shall  not  touch  the  rough,  coarse  earth,  if  you 
will  only  stay  with  us,  and  brighten,  and  enlighten,  and  console, 
and  strengthen,  and  amuse  us.  You  will,  won't  you?  I  wish 
that  you  were  here  this  morning.  It  is  more  bright  and  splendid 
than  I  know  how  to  describe.  I  will  not  try,  but  your  ever 
young  imagination  will  tell  you  all  about  it,  and  I  will  tell  you 
by  and  by. 

Need  I  say  that  I  shall  rejoice  to  be  presented  in  the  queer  old 
House  by  you  ?  It  will  crown  your  deeds  and  kindnesses  in  all 
this  business. 

Good-by.      God  bless  you.      Keep  well.     Be  good. 

Your  grateful  friend,  P.  B. 

To  Rev.  W.  N.  McVickar,  who  had  now  left  him :  — 

Chamo0»i,  August  27,  1892. 
Dear  William,  —  It  is  a  superb  day  here.     The  great  moun- 
tain was  never  clearer  nor  more  beautiful.     The  sky  is  cloudless, 


^T.  55-56]        CORRESPONDENCE  907 

and  the  snow  reaches  up  to  heaven,  and  they  are  bringing  down 
over  the  tremendous  white  slope  the  dead  body  of  a  poor  fellow 
who  died  up  there  in  the  storm  day  before  yesterday.  You  can 
see  them  through  the  telescope  in  the  hotel  yard.  It  is  a  won- 
derful funeral  procession.  It  is  as  if  he  had  gone  up  there  to 
dispatch  his  soul  to  heaven,  and  they  were  bringing  the  poor, 
done-with  body  down.  He  is  an  Oxford  man,  they  say,  named 
Nettleship. 

On  Thursday,  September  8,  Phillips  Brooks  sailed  for 
America,  on  the  steamship  Pavonia.  The  Rev.  John  C. 
Brooks  recalls  him,  on  that  day  in  the  Adelphi  Hotel  at  Liv- 
erpool, where  all  was  confusion  and  excitement  around  him, 
sitting  on  the  lower  steps  of  the  stairway,  with  his  arms  rest- 
ing on  his  walking  stick  and  his  head  bowed  low,  remaining 
in  that  position  there  for  an  hour  or  more,  paying  no  atten- 
tion to  the  scene  before  him.  He  seemed  to  be  taking  his 
last  leave  of  the  Old  World,  as  if  he  knew  that  he  should 
come  again  no  more.  Among  the  letters  which  he  wrote  on 
board  ship  is  one  to  Mr.  Kobert  Maconachie  in  India :  — 

S.  S.  Pavonia,  September  10,  1892. 

Mt  dear  Friend,  —  It  must  seem  to  you  as  if  I  never  had 
received  your  letter,  or  as  if  I  did  not  care  about  it.  The  truth 
is,  that  I  did  receive  it,  and  that  I  did  care  about  it  a  great 
deal.  I  have  read  it  often,  and  it  lies  before  me  now  as,  after 
all  these  months,  I  sit  down  on  the  steamship  which  is  carrying 
me  home,  to  send  you  a  word  of  greeting  and  most  grateful  ac- 
knowledgment of  your  remembrance. 

I  never  forget  the  days  we  spent  together.  How  can  I? 
When  one  meets  a  fellow  man  and  finds  him  simply  and  devoutly 
interested  in  the  dear  Master  whom  one  loves  and  in  the  human 
creatures  for  whom  the  Master  lived  and  died,  there  is  no  possi- 
bility of  forgetting. 

All  that  you  tell  me  of  yourself  and  of  the  work  which  has 
been  put  into  your  hands  is  of  the  deepest  interest  to  me.  I 
know  almost  nothing  of  what  the  details  of  your  daily  life  must 
be.  It  is  enough  that  you  are  where  your  duty  brings  you  into 
continual  and  intimate  association  with  men  and  all  their  myste- 
rious capacity.  That  cannot  be  without  the  Word  of  God  finding 
expression,  and  the  power  of  God  coming  into  influence  through 
you  on  them. 

It  is  all  one  constant  Incarnation.     All  the  spiritual  meanings 


9o8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

of  the  Gospel  and  the  Church  are  renewed  with  every  such  active 
love  and  power  of  a  Christian  soul.  The  accident  of  formal 
ordination  is  a  trifle.  "As  my  Father  hath  sent  me,  so  send  I 
you,"  is  the  unmistakable  commission. 

I  have  been  spending  a  summer  abroad,  much  of  it  in  your 
beautiful,  delightful  England.  Would  that  I  might  have  seen 
you  there !  I  should  not  again  have  driven  "you  to  camp  out  in 
the  yard  while  I  took  possession  of  your  quarters,  as  I  did  in 
Delhi.  But  I  have  a  strong  feeling  that,  while  we  should  have 
begun  where  we  left  off  in  sympathy  and  friendship,  all  these 
years  which  have  come  since  would  have  opened  a  multitude  of 
new  subjects  of  thought  and  talk  which  would  not  easily  have 
been  exhausted. 

The  new  work  which  has  fallen  to  me  as  Bishop  of  Massachu- 
setts is  all  in  the  old  lines  and  makes  me  more  I  hope,  but  still 
the  same.  Certainly  it  makes  me  rejoice  more  than  ever  in  such 
words  as  yours.  May  the  time  come  when  I  shall  hear  them 
from  your  own  mouth!  I  hope  you  can  give  my  love  to  the  dear 
Delhi  men,  Lefroy  and  Allnut  and  Carlyon.  You  will  remember 
me  most  kindly  to  your  wife,  and  you  will  be  sure  that  I  always 
delight  to  hear  from  you. 

God  bless  you  bountifully. 

Your  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 


THE   HOUSE    IN   BOSTON 

A  pleasant  house  stands  in  a  Boston  street, 

"With  wide-arched  entrance  opening  to  the  west; 

Of  all  earth's  houses  that  to  me  is  best. 
There  come  and  go  my  thoughts  with  restless  feet ; 
There  the  quick  years  like  hovering  clouds  have  passed, 

Catching  the  sunlight  on  their  calm  white  breasts; 

There  Duty  entered  with  her  grave  behests. 
And  there  the  shadow  of  my  sin  was  cast. 
Through  this  broad  door  my  friends  have  brought  their  love, 

Here  need  has  sought  what  help  I  could  bestow. 
Here  happy  study  finds  its  place  below. 
And  peaceful  slumber  fills  the  room  above. 
Down  these  wide  steps,  all  still  from  feet  to  head, 
I  shall  be  carried  after  I  am  dead. 
S.  S.  Pavonia,  September,  1892.1 

^  Another  sonnet,  called  "  The  Waitings  City,"  written  at  the  same  time,  may 
be  found  in  Sermons,  voL  viii.,  published  after  his  death. 


^T.  SSS^l     ANNIVERSARY   SERVICES        909 

Bishop  Brooks  readied  Boston  on  September  19.  There 
had  been  a  cholera  scare  during  the  summer  which  necessi- 
tated precautions  before  landing.  A  tug  came  up  to  take  the 
cabin  passengers,  and  as  they  set  off  Phillips  Brooks  raised 
his  hat  to  the  steerage  gathered  on  deck  to  watch  the  depar- 
ture, and  bade  them  good-by.  "  He  looked,"  said  one  who 
observed  him,  "  the  picture  of  perfect  health,"  and  in  answer 
to  an  inquiry  said  that  he  was  well,  and  never  better  in  his 
life.  That  undoubtedly  was  the  feeling  of  the  moment,  but  a 
few  weeks  later  he  said  to  his  friend  Learoyd  that  he  was  no 
better  than  when  he  went  away. 

After  his  return  he  resumed  his  work  with  great  vigor. 
How  his  time  was  filled  with  engagements  is  evident  from  a 
letter  written  September  29,  in  answer  to  a  request  from  Mr. 
Samuel  B.  Capen,  chairman  of  the  Boston  School  Committee, 
asking  him  to  make  an  address  at  the  dedication  in  Novem- 
ber of  the  Robert  G.  Shaw  Schoolhouse :  — 

I  have  studied  my  calendar  and  find  that  the  only  two  days  in 
November  which  are  at  all  in  my  power  are  Thursday,  November 
3,  and  Friday,  November  4.  On  both  of  these  days  I  must  leave 
Boston  by  a  5.30  train,  but  earlier  in  each  day  I  shall  be  at  lib- 
erty. During  the  rest  of  the  month  my  duties  call  me  to  other 
parts  of  the  State. 

Sunday,  October  2,  was  hardly  an  exceptional  day  when 
four  times  he  spoke  from  the  pulpit  of  Trinity  Church.  At 
nine  o'clock  he  gave  the  anniversary  sermon  before  the  St.  An- 
drew's Brotherhood.  He  preached  at  the  usual  morning 
service  at  ten  o'clock,  and  again  in  the  afternoon  before  the 
congregation  of  Trinity  Church.  Then  at  nine  o'clock  in  the 
evening  he  spoke  at  the  farewell  meeting  of  the  Brotherhood. 
The  church  was  filled  with  the  stalwart,  fine-looking  ranks 
of  young  men  eager  to  hear  the  great  preacher  at  both  the 
services  when  he  addressed  them.  This  was  the  comment  on 
his  appearance :  — 

Bishop  Brooks  looks  rather  improved  since  his  summer  in  Eng- 
land. Although  his  face  is  still  thinner  than  it  used  to  be,  and 
there  is  something  lacking  in  his  manner  of  the  old  fire,  he  ap- 
pears as  strong  as  ever,  and  showed  not  the  least  trace  of  weari- 


9IO  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

ness  at  the  end  of  his  extraordinary  day's  work.  He  spoke  with 
all  the  old-time  brilliancy  and  power,  and  never  was  more  impres- 
sive than  in  his  parting  exhortation  in  the  evening.  ...  In  the 
early  morning  sermon,  as  he  drew  near  the  close  of  his  sermon, 
he  spoke  more  slowly  than  was  his  wont,  and  his  voice  trembled 
a  little  in  places  as  he  finished  his  glowing  and  earnest  exhorta- 
tion to  his  great  audience  of  young  men.  As  his  voice  sank, 
deathly  stillness  fell  on  the  church,  and  the  congregation  hung  on 
the  last  words  as  if  listening  to  a  celestial  messenger.  The 
solemnity  of  the  awe  amid  which  he  concluded  was  supremely 
impressive. 

At  the  evening  service,  when  he  said  farewell  to  the  young 
men  before  him,  these  were  some  of  his  words :  — 

This  gathering  has  been  a  good  thing.  Carry  now  its  lessons 
into  your  daily  lives.  One  of  the  most  impressive  ways  in  which 
God  brings  things  to  pass  is  the  simplicity  of  the  elements  of 
power.  It  does  not  take  great  men  to  do  great  things,  it  only 
takes  consecrated"  men.  The  earnest,  resolute  man,  whom  God 
works  through,  is  the  medium  by  which  His  greatest  work  is 
often  done. 

Go,  then,  my  brethren,  to  your  blessed  work.  Be  absolutely 
simple.  Be  absolutely  genuine.  Never  say  to  any  one  what  you 
do  not  feel  and  believe  with  your  whole  heart.  Be  simple,  be 
consecrated,  and  above  all  things,  be  pure.  No  man  who  is  not 
himself  pure  can  carry  the  message  of  God. 

And  never  dare  to  hurt  any  soul.  The  most  awful  conscious- 
ness a  man  can  have  is  that  he  has  hurt  a  human  soul  years  ago, 
and  now  has  no  power  to  repair  the  damage.  He  may  have  re- 
covered from  the  injury  to  his  own  being,  but  the  knowledge  that 
he  has  ever  injured  the  soul  of  another  man  or  woman,  who  has 
gone  out  of  his  sight  now,  so  that  he  cannot  know  how  serious 
the  injury  may  have  been,  is  a  terrible  thing  for  any  one  to  know. 

From  the  anniversary  of  the  St.  Andrew's  Brotherhood 
Bishop  Brooks  went  to  Baltimore  to  remain  for  the  greater 
part  of  the  month  in  attendance  on  the  sessions  of  the  General 
Convention,  also  to  take  his  seat  for  the  first  time  in  the 
House  of  Bishops.    To  Mrs.  William  G.  Brooks  he  writes :  — 

House  of  Bishops,  Baltimore,  October  8,  1892. 
You  never  got  a  note  from  the  Bishops'  House  before,  I  think. 
But  while  they  are  receiving  memorials  and  petitions  and  refer- 
ring them  to  committees,  I  take  up  my  pen  to  thank  you  for  your 


^T.  55-56]      THE  NEW  RECTOR  911 

kind  remembrances  of  me,  and  for  the  telegram  and  letter  which 
you  have  sent  me. 

I  have  just  had  a  letter  from  Donald,  which  I  wish  that  I 
could  show  to  all  the  parish  of  Trinity.  It  would  convince  even 
the  most  hesitating  that  they  have  called  the  right  man,  and 
would  make  them  all  most  enthusiastically  desirous  that  he  should 
accept  their  call. 

I  think  he  will  accept,  though  he  will  be  most  conscientiously 
faithful  in  considering  it  before  he  gives  his  decision. 

And  so  dear  old  Tennyson  is  gone!  Nobody  who  has  been 
writing  for  the  last  fifty  years  has  won  such  deep  affection  of  the 
best  men  and  influenced  so  many  lives.  What  days  they  were 
when  we  used  to  go  spouting  "Locksley  Hall"  and  the  "Two 
Voices  "  to  the  winds!  And  what  has  not  "In  Memoriam  "  been 
to  all  of  us !  If  I  had  never  seen  him,  it  would  make  me  sad  to 
know  that  he  was  no  longer  living  on  the  earth.  And  to  have 
seen  him  under  his  own  roof,  and  to  have  had  his  personal  kind- 
ness, will  always  seem  to  me  to  have  been  a  great  and  precious 
privilege. 

Nothing  is  yet  done  here.      I  am  quietly  settled  among   the 
bishops,  and  no  one  has  yet  slapped  my  face. 
With  love  to  all  of  you. 

Affectionately,  P. 

To  Rev.  E.  W.  Donald,  he  writes  regarding  the  call  to 
Trinity  Church,  Boston :  — 

House  of  Bishops,  Baltemorb,  October  8,  1892. 

Dear  Donald,  —  I  sent  you  yesterday  a  hurried  telegram 
when  I  received  a  message  from  Boston  to  tell  me  of  your  unani- 
mous election  to  be  rector  of  Trinity  Church,  Boston.  I  wish 
you  were  here.  Then  I  would  tell  you  how  very  thankful  I  am. 
Ever  since  the  parish  ceased  to  be  mine  I  have  hoped  that  it 
might  be  yours.  Tlie  people  have  been  steadily  drawn  to  the 
same  wish,  and  now  that  they  have  been  led  to  give  expression 
to  that  desire,  I  want  to  tell  you  how  sure  I  am  that  the  vestry 
and  congregation  are  prepared  to  give  you  the  most  cordial  wel- 
come and  the  heartiest  cooperation  in  your  work  if  you  will  come 
to  them. 

I  think  we  know  how  much  we  are  asking  of  you  in  suggesting 
that  you  should  leave  New  York  and  the  Ascension  to  come  to  us. 
But  we  want  you  very  much  indeed.  You  can  enlarge  and  fulfil 
the  work  that  the  parish  has  been  trying  to  do.  You  understand, 
and  we  believe  you  like,  our  New  England.  You  have  clear  ideas 
of  how  our  church   is  working   in   Massachusetts,    and  what   its 


912  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

hopes  and  chances  of  usefulness  in  that  region  are ;  and  we  need 
your  ability  and  spirit  to  appeal  to  a  good,  intelligent,  reasonable, 
true-hearted  folk  such  as  we  have  in  Boston. 

Your  clerical  brethren  will  be  very  glad  if  you  come.  They 
know  and  value  you.  They  think  of  you  as  one  of  themselves 
in  all  your  sympathies  and  feelings.  You  will  make  our  little 
company  richer  and  stronger.  And  I  am  sure  you  will  feel  as 
we  feel,  that,  however  few  and  feeble  we  may  be  in  Massachu- 
setts, there  is  much  that  is  interesting  in  the  constitution  of  the 
clerical  company  in  Massachusetts,  and  of  the  way  in  which  it 
sets  itself  to  do  the  particular  work  that  we  are  set  to  do. 

So  the  parish  and  the  Church  and  the  clergy  want  you.  May 
I  say  how  earnestly  /  want  you  ?  I  have  been  very  anxious  about 
Trinity,  and  it  will  make  me  very  happy  if  I  see  you  take  up  the 
work  there,  and  as  bishop  I  shall  feel  the  diocese  strengthened 
in  a  way  which  will  give  me  great  strength  if  you  will  come. 

Shall  you  not  possibly  be  here  during  Convention?  Will  you 
ask  me  any  questions  most  freely  ? 

But  as  the  result  of  everything,  will  you  accept  ?  I  do  hope 
and  pray  that  you  may. 

Affectionately  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

When  lie  learned  that  Dr.  Donald  had  accepted  the  call  to 
the  vacant  rectorship  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Nathaniel  Thayer :  — 

Dear  Mrs.  Thayer,  —  I  thank  you  very  heartily  for  your 
kind  letter.  Yes,  I  am  very  glad  indeed  that  Dr.  Donald  has 
been  chosen  and  has  decided  to  come  to  Trinity.  He  has  been 
my  choice  from  the  beginning,  and  the  whole  movement  towards 
him  has  been  so  steady  and  serious  and  slow  that  I  feel  that  his 
election  has  come  about  in  the  best  possible  way.  I  hope  great 
things  will  come  of  it.  Already  I  hear  what  a  good  impression 
he  made  upon  the  vestry  when  he  met  them  the  other  day,  and 
his  letters  to  me,  first,  on  his  election,  and  then  on  his  determi- 
nation to  accept,  were  beautiful  and  noble  expressions  of  the 
spirit  in  which  he  received  and  accepted  the  call.  I  bid  him 
welcome  with  all  my  heart,  and  I  know  that  he  will  have  as  de- 
lightful a  ministry  as  I  have  had  all  these  years.  But  it  makes 
me  sad  all  the  same  to  have  this  new  token  of  the  fact  that  my 
ministry  at  Trinity  is  over.  How  good  it  all  has  been!  And 
what  kind  friends  rise  up  before  me  as  I  think  over  the  happy 
years !  I  do  not  think  that  I  enjoy  the  remembrance  of  it  any 
the  less  because  I  am  perfectly  aware  how  little  I  have  deserved 
it.  All  the  more  I  feel  the  goodness  of  my  friends,  and  of  them 
all  none  has  been  more  good  to  me,  and  to  none  is  my  heart  more 


^T.  ssS^l       CORRESPONDENCE  913 

full  of  gratitude  than  to  you,  dear  friend.  It  is  good,  indeed, 
that  that  friendship  does  not  go  with  the  rectorship,  but  it  is 
mine  until  I  die,  and  long  afterwards,  I  hope.  I  shall  see  you 
soon,  and  then  I  will  tell  you  how  very  glad  I  was  to  see  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Robb  and  their  children  in  the  Engadine  this  summer. 
How  strange  it  will  be  that  Mrs.  Winthrop  will  not  be  with  us, 
with  her  strong  thoughts  and  kindly  words !  But  more  and  more 
one  feels  that  nothing  which  has  ever  really  been  a  true  part  of 
life  is  lost.  I  remember  my  visit  to  you  with  sincere  delight. 
May  God  bless  you  always. 

Yours  affectionately,  Phillips  Brooks. 

Bishop  Brooks  spent  Sunday,  October  9,  in  Philadelphia, 
preaching  in  the  morning  at  the  Chvircli  of  the  Holy  Trinity 
from  the  text,  "Before  Abraham  was  I  am."  There  were 
some  few  of  his  sermons  at  this  time  In  which  he  concentrated 
the  essence  of  his  thought  and  experience,  and  this  was  one  of 
them, — the  eternal  consciousness  of  humanity  as  embodied 
in  Christ.  He  took  the  occasion,  also,  to  speak  of  the  death 
of  Tennyson,  quoting  the  lines  "  Crossing  the  Bar."  In  the 
evening  of  the  same  day  he  preached  for  Mr.  Cooper  at  the 
Church  of  the  Holy  Apostles,  and  then  he  took  the  same 
text  on  which  he  had  written  his  first  sermon  while  in  the 
seminary  at  Alexandria,  "  The  Simplicity  that  is  in  Jesus." 
A  strange  impressiveness  hung  about  both  these  services. 
One  who  listened  to  the  evening  sermon  saw  in  it  a  vindica- 
tion of  his  own  career,  as  he  set  forth  the  Christian  faith  in 
its  simplicity  compared  with  the  difficulty  and  complexity  in 
which  others  sought  to  envelop  it.  "  But  he  looked  tired  " 
was  the  comment  on  his  appearance. 

Philadelphia,  October  9,  1892. 
Dear  Arthur,  — ...  This  morning  I  go  back  to  the  House 
of  Bishops.  It  is  a  queer  place.  There  is  an  air  about  it  which 
comes  distinctly  from  their  seclusion.  They  ought  to  open  their 
doors.  They  have  a  lot  of  good  men  among  them,  and  there  is  a 
great  deal  of  good  work  done,  but  there  is  every  now  and  then  a 
silliness  which  would  not  be  possible  if  the  world  were  listening. 

Ever  affectionately,  P. 

In  a  letter  to  Lady  Frances  BailHe  he  alludes  again  to 
Tennyson :  — 
VOL.  n 


914  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

283  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  October  12,  1892, 

Dear  Lady  Frances,  —  I  cannot  tell  you  how  much  my 
thoughts  have  been  with  you  since  that  day  in  September  when  I 
left  you  in  your  bed,  and  carried  away  the  strange  and  sad  re- 
membrance of  your  illness.  I  hope  you  have  felt  my  anxious 
thought  flying  about  your  head.  It  seems  so  strange  to  think 
that  you  were  not  upon  your  feet  holding  open  your  hospitable 
house  and  heart  to  friends  from  all  the  world !  I  have  heard 
nothing  since,  but  I  most  sincerely  trust  that  those  days  are  over, 
and  that  you  are  well  again. 

One  dares  less  and  less  to  offer  commiseration  to  a  friend  for 
any  calamity  of  outward  life.  So  many  times  it  is  out  of  the  heart 
of  these  calamities  that  the  richest  and  sweetest  mercies  of  God 
have  come,  that  I  grow  afraid  lest  I  shall  be  found  pitying  my 
friend  for  the  very  best  blessing  which  God  has  ever  sent  him. 
I  can  only  hope  that  what  the  good  God  had  to  give  you  out  of 
His  hand  of  suffering  may  have  been  so  completely  given  and 
received,  that  that  hand  may  have  been  withdrawn  leaving  you 
some  way  richer  and  happier  for  its  touch.  I  long  to  hear  from 
you.  Would  that  I  could  climb  your  quaint  doorstep  and  face 
your  quaint  old  man,  who  would  smile  on  me  and  tell  me  how 
you  are ! 

And  the  great  poet  has  gone !  I  shall  thank  you  all  my  life, 
as  for  many  other  goodnesses,  so  especially  for  securing  me  the 
privilege  of  seeing  Tennyson  and  hearing  him  talk  and  read,  and 
catching  sight  of  the  beauty  of  his  household  life.  How  different 
life  would  have  been  for  us  if  he  had  not  lived !  And  how  his 
personal  look  and  life  blend  with  his  poetry,  and  all  together 
make  one  great  gift  of  God  to  the  world ! 

God  bless  you  and  be  with  you,  my  dear  friend.  May  every 
day  bring  you  new  strength  and  comfort.  Think  of  me  some- 
times, and  be  sure  that  I  am  always, 

Affectionately  and  gratefully  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

What  the  relationship  of  Tennyson  had  been  to  Phillips 
Brooks  is  indicated  in  this  extract  from  a  letter  to  him  by 
Lord  Tennyson,  the  poet's  son  :  "  My  Father  had  a  great  de- 
light in  your  companionship.  One  of  the  last  things  which 
I  read  to  him  was  a  sermon  of  yours." 

To  his  niece,  Miss  Gertrude  Brooks,  he  wrote  :  — 

House  of  Bishops,  Baltimore,  October  20, 1892. 
Mr  dear  Gert,  —  I  thank  you  for  your  pretty  letter,   and 
while    the    stupid    bishops    are    making    stupid    speeches    I    will 


^T.  55-56]      CORRESPONDENCE  915 

answer  it.  It  is  very  sad  indeed  to  think  that  dear  old  Tennyson 
is  dead.  What  a  dark  day  it  must  have  been  down  at  their  beau- 
tiful home  while  he  lay  dying ;  and  how  solemn  the  Abbey  must 
have  seemed  while  they  were  carrying  him  down  the  long  nave 
to  his  grave  in  the  Poet's  Corner! 

Baltimore  is  a  very  pretty  city,  with  a  distinctly  Southern 
character,  and  no  end  of  colored  boys  and  girls  about  the  street. 
Everybody  has  been  very  hospitable ;  plenty  of  terrapin  and  crabs, 
and  all  the  lower  luxuries  of  life.  We  meet  every  morning  at 
ten  o'clock,  and  sit  till  one.  (It  wants  twenty  minutes  of  one 
now.)  Then  we  go  down  into  the  basement  and  have  a  luncheon; 
and  then  we  go  out  into  a  tent  in  the  yard  and  have  a  smoke. 
At  half  past  two  we  meet  again  and  sit  till  five.  At  six  we  are 
apt  to  have  an  invitation  to  dine  with  somebody.  If  nobody  has 
asked  us,  we  dine  at  the  Albion,  and  then  have  two  hours  of 
evening  sitting,  and  then  go  home  and  have  a  smoke  and  go  to 
bed.  And  then  we  do  the  same  thing  over  again  the  next  day. 
The  bishops  are  not  very  wise,  but  they  think  they  are,  and  they 
very  much  enjoy  being  bishops. 

You  were  very  good  to  remember  my  anniversary  [of  his  conse- 
cration]. You  were  with  me  when  they  came  to  tell  me  I  had 
been  elected,  and  so  you  were  the  first  person  who  heard  of  it 
outside  of  the  Convention  that  did  it. 

You  must  come  to  see  me  when  I  get  home  next  week,  and 
then  I  '11  tell  you  all  about  it.  Till  then  I  send  my  love  to  all 
your  good  folks,  and  am 

Yours  affectionately,  P. 

Of  Bishop  Brooks  at  the  convention  Mr.  Sowdon  writes :  — 

In  the  Convention  of  1892  in  Baltimore  he  often  came  into 
the  Lower  House,  and  to  the  pews  of  the  Massachusetts  deputies, 
and  seemed  to  find  the  debates  of  the  house  in  which  he  had  so 
often  sat  far  more  interesting  than  those  of  the  House  of  Bishops. 
There  he  was  sure  of  a  warm  welcome  from  us  and  all  the  dele- 
gates near  us. 

In  the  discussions  in  the  House  of  Bishops  he  took  but 
little  part,  yet  that  little  was  significant.  He  opposed  a 
proposition  to  make  the  Sixty-ninth  Psalm  a  part  of  the 
Evening  Prayer  on  Good  Friday.  The  words  of  Christ  upon 
the  cross,  "  Father,  forgive  them  for  they  know  not  what  they 
do,"  were  incompatible  with  the  imprecation  of  the  Psalm, 
"  Pour  out  thine  indignation  upon  them ;  and  let  thy  wrath- 
ful displeasure  take  hold  of  them." 


9i6  PHILLIPS  BROOKS  [1891-92 

The  most  impressive  event  during  Bishop  Brooks's  sojourn 
in  Baltimore  was  an  address  to  the  students  of  Johns  Hop- 
kins University.  Many  had  been  the  invitations  he  had 
received  to  address  its  students,  but  for  some  good  reason 
he  had  hitherto  been  prevented  from  accepting  them.  When 
he  was  now  invited,  he  wrote,  "I  find  it  very  difficult  to  say 
Yes,  but  I  find  it  quite  impossible  to  say  No."  He  wished 
to  know  in  advance  what  kind  of  a  meeting  it  would  be  pro- 
posed to  hold.  So  many  persons  had  expressed  a  desire  to 
hear  him  that  a  neighboring  church  had  been  suggested  as 
a  suitable  place.  But  his  preference  was  "to  speak  to  the 
students  by  themselves,  in  one  of  their  own  halls,  and  at  an 
hour  when  they  are  wonted  to  come  together."  His  wishes 
were  respected,  and  but  few  were  present  except  members  of 
the  University.  The  time  was  Thursday,  the  13th  of  Octo- 
ber, at  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  From  the  account  writ- 
ten at  the  time  these  other  particulars  are  taken :  — 

Many  who  were  present  found  the  scene  unusually  impressive. 
The  eager  attention  of  the  crowded  audience  of  students  and  pro- 
fessors; the  intense  earnestness  of  the  speaker,  expressing  itself 
in  an  utterance  even  more  rapid  and  impetuous  than  was  his 
wont;  the  peculiar  sympathy  with  students  which  was  so  charac- 
teristic of  Bishop  Brooks  (and  of  which  one  was  conscious  from 
his  first  word  to  his  last) ;  his  attitude  and  movements,  walking 
back  and  forth  behind  the  lecture-desk,  leaning  forward  over  it 
as  though  to  come  into  closer  relation  with  his  audience;  the 
gathering  darkness  of  the  autumn  afternoon,  —  all  was  singularly 
inspiring  and  afPecting.  Three  gentlemen  among  the  older  per- 
sons in  the  audience,  who  happened  to  leave  the  room  in  com- 
pany, agreed  in  remarking  upon  a  certain  unearthliness  in  the 
address,  such  as  might  be  expected  in  the  case  of  a  man  who  had 
not  long  to  live. 

No  report  of  the  address  was  taken  at  the  time,  but  the 
students  jotted  down  sentences  which  struck  them,  and  when 
these  were  put  together,  some  idea  was  given  of  what  seemed 
like  farewell  words.    He  quoted  from  "  The  Two  Voices : "  — 

'T  is  life,  whereof  our  nerves  are  scant, 
O  life,  not  death,  for  which  we  pant ; 
More  life,  and  fuller,  that  I  want. 


^T.  SSS^}     AN   IMPRESSIVE  ADDRESS     917 

The  address  was  the  summary  of  convictions  then  and  for 
the  last  few  years  prominent  in  his  mind.  And  among  them 
none  was  more  prominent  than  this,  that  the  next  twenty -five 
years  were  to  be  full  of  a  larger  revelation  of  God  than  the 
world  had  yet  seen.  Everything  that  came  under  his  obser- 
vation pointed  in  this  direction.  "In  every  direction  activity 
is  pushing  further  than  it  ever  has  before.  Under  these 
conditions  Christianity  will  mean  more  in  the  coming  gener- 
ation than  it  ever  has,  or  it  will  mean  less." 

The  great  question  underlying  all  the  controversies  between 
science  and  religion  is  whether  Christianity  proposes  to  restrain, 
prohibit,  destroy,  and  then  build  up  something  new  upon  the  old 
foundation;  or  whether  it  proposes  to  take  humanity  as  it  is,  and 
by  opening  up  to  it  new  and  unthought-of  possibilities,  develop 
it  into  the  measure  of  the  fulness  of  Christ.  What,  then,  is 
Christianity  ?  It  is  not  something  added  to  us  from  without ;  it 
is  not  a  foreign  element  in  our  souls ;  the  Christian  is  not  some 
strange  creature,  but  a  man  developed  to  his  normal  condition. 

Christianity  is  not  the  intruder,  but  sin.  "Christianity  seeks 
not  to  cramp  man's  nature,  saying  to  him  constantly,  '  Thou  shalt 
not ;  '  but  it  leads  on,  up  to  freer  air  and  wider  space,  wherein 
the  soul  may  disport  itself."  It  is  God  we  follow.  Obeying 
God  is  freedom.  "Our  souls  are  like  closed  rooms,  and  God  is 
the  sunlight.  Every  new  way  we  find  in  which  to  obey  Him  we 
throw  open  a  shutter.  Our  souls  are  as  enclosed  bays,  and  God 
is  the  ocean.  The  only  barrier  that  can  hinder  free  communi- 
cation is  disobedience.  Remember  that  each  duty  performed  is 
the  breaking  down  of  a  reef  of  hindrance  between  our  souls  and 
God,  permitting  the  fulness  of  His  being  to  flow  in  upon  our 
souls."  And  so  "we,  who  in  a  peculiar  sense  are  consecrated 
to  Truth,  are  better  students  because  we  are  Christians,  and  bet- 
ter Christians  because  we  are  students."  It  is  when  we  remem- 
ber the  greatness  of  the  nature  which  God  has  given  us  that  we 
come  into  a  full  understanding  of  our  relations  to  God.  At  some 
time  every  man  comes  to  realize  the  meaning  of  the  life  he  is 
living;  the  secret  sins  hidden  in  his  heart  rise  against  him. 
Then  we  would  hide  ourselves  from  God  if  we  could.  "But  the 
only  way  to  run  from  God  is  to  run  to  Him.  The  Infinite  Know- 
ledge is  also  the  Infinite  Pity."  "God  is  not  an  enemy  seeking 
to  catch  us  with  cunningly  devised  schemes,"  but  our  sympathizer 
and  friend.  "God  wants  to  save  us  if  we  will  let  Him."  "I 
came  not  to  judge  the  world,  but  to  save  the  world."     And  how 


9i8  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

shall  we  gain  nearness  to  God  and  power?  "We  never  become 
truly  spiritual  by  sitting  down  and  wishing  to  become  so.  You 
must  undertake  something  so  great  that  you  cannot  accomplish  it 
unaided.  Begin  doing  something  for  your  fellow  men,  and  if  you 
do  it  with  all  your  power,  it  will  almost  immediately  bring  you 
face  to  face  with  problems  you  cannot  solve ;  you  need  God,  and 
you  go  to  God."  You  may  meet  difficulties  and  trials;  they  call 
for  no  less  devotion,  but  more.  "Hindrances  are  like  the  ob- 
structions in  a  river's  bed.  Do  not  dam  up  the  flow,  but  turn 
on  a  fuller  flood  till  the  current  sweeps  away  the  rubbish  and 
runs  under  and  around  and  over  the  stones,  and  flows  smooth 
above  them."  Think  of  the  fulness.  "I  am  come  that  men 
might  have  life,  and  that  they  might  have  it  more  abundantly." 
So,  in  trying  to  win  a  man  to  a  better  life,  "show  him,  not  the 
evil,  but  the  nobleness  of  his  nature. "  Lead  him  to  enthusiastic 
contemplations  of  humanity  in  its  perfection,  and  when  he  asks, 
"  Why,  if  this  is  so,  do  not  I  have  this  life  ?  "  then  project  on 
the  background  of  his  enthusiasm  his  own  life.  Say  to  him, 
"Because  you  are  a  liar,  because  you  blind  your  soul  with  licen- 
tiousness." Shame  is  born,  but  not  a  shame  of  despair.  It  is 
*soon  changed  to  joy.  Christianity  becomes  an  opportunity,  a 
high  privilege,  the  means  of  attaining  to  the  most  exalted  ideal, 
—  and  the  only  means.  Herein  must  lie  all  real  power;  herein 
lay  Christ's  power,  that  He  appreciated  the  beauty  and  richness 
of  humanity,  that  it  is  very  near  the  Infinite,  very  near  to  God. 
These  two  facts  —  we  are  the  children  of  God,  and  God  is  our 
Father  —  make  us  look  very  differently  at  ourselves,  very  differ- 
ently at  our  neighbors,  very  differently  at  God.  "We  should  be 
surprised,  not  at  our  good  deeds,  but  at  our  bad  ones."  We 
should  expect  good  as  more  likely  to  occur  than  evil;  "we  should 
believe  that  our  best  moments  are  our  truest." 

There  are  three  conditions  of  human  nature:  first,  the  satisfac- 
tion of  utter  ignorance ;  second,  the  conflict,  even  misery,  of  the 
first  stages  of  intelligence ;  third,  the  full  fruition  of  a  complete 
knowledge.  To  these  conditions  Christian  experience  is  parallel. 
Therefore,  when  you  encounter  doubt,  difficulties,  push  on ;  they 
will  soon  issue  in  the  higher  and  more  perfect  understanding. 
"Whatever  happens,  always  remember  the  mysterious  richness  of 
human  nature,  and  the  nearness  of  God  to  each  one  of  us." 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Episcopalian  Club  in  Boston,  October 
31,  to  welcome  the  delegates  to  the  General  Convention, 
Bishop  Brooks  was  present  and  spoke.  Referring  to  the  prac- 
tice of  the  bishops  sitting  with  closed  doors,  he  said  it  was 


^T.  55-56]  THE  BURDEN  919 

un-American,  and  sure  to  be  amended  some  day  or  other. 
He  reviewed  the  work  of  the  convention,  —  the  completion  of 
the  revision  of  the  Prayer  Book,  the  new  Hymnal,  the  in- 
crease in  the  number  of  the  missionary  bishops.  "  One  thing 
which  we  in  Massachusetts,"  he  humorously  remarked,  "  are 
especially  to  be  congratulated  on,  is  that  every  proposition 
offered  by  the  Massachusetts  delegates  was  negatived  almost 
without  a  division."  November  opened  with  an  interesting 
event,  the  formal  dedication  of  the  Diocesan  House  on  Joy 
Street.  He  had  selected  the  building,  given  cheerfully  to  it, 
and  had  offered  to  give  more  if  it  were  needed.  He  wanted 
it  made  attractive,  and  for  this  purpose  had  sent  many  en- 
gravings for  its  walls.  In  his  speech  at  the  dedication,  he 
expressed  the  hope  that  it  would  be  "  a  place  of  friendly 
meetings,  the  cultivation  of  brotherly  friendship  and  good 
will."  He  referred  to  its  having  formerly  been  a  private 
residence  and  as  possessing  "a  homelike  atmosphere,  sancti- 
fied by  all  the  sweet  and  tender  I'elations  of  family  life." 

And  now  the  work  of  the  diocese  claimed  the  services  of 
the  bishop  ;  the  visitation  of  the  parishes  began ;  every  day, 
every  hour  almost,  had  its  fixed  appointment.  Henceforth 
there  was  hardly  an  opportunity  for  rest.  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell 
had  been  hopeful  that  the  change  to  a  bishop's  life  would  call 
for  physical  activity  which  would  be  beneficial.  It  might 
have  been,  but  the  pace  which  Bishop  Brooks  had  set,  or  was 
set  for  him,  was  too  rapid,  too  much  for  any  man  to  assume 
with  impunity.  He  not  only  made  the  regular  visitation  of 
the  parishes,  but  he  was  asked  to  grace  with  his  presence 
and  words  occasions  of  parochial  interest  of  various  kinds. 
He  made  no  effort  to  spare  himself,  and  indeed  had  he  done 
so  escape  would  now  have  been  impossible.  Once,  for  exam- 
ple, when  he  had  already  preached  in  the  morning  and  after- 
noon extemporaneously,  he  proposed  to  himself  to  lighten  the 
burden  by  preaching  a  written  sermon  in  the  evening.  But 
the  pulpit  board  was  too  low  for  his  height,  and  after  strug- 
gling with  a  few  pages,  he  broke  away  from  his  manuscript 
into  extemporaneous  utterance.  "  Then  we  had  it,"  said  one 
who  gave  an  account  of  the  circumstance. 


920  PHILLIPS  BROOKS         [1891-92 

Not  until  it  was  too  late  did  the  realization  come  that  he 
was  carrying  a  burden  of  his  own  creating  too  heavy  for  him, 
or  for  any  man,  to  bear. 

He  had  struck  [says  Bishop  Lawrence]  a  high  key  of  emotion 
and  of  consecration  upon  his  entrance  into  the  episcopate.  This 
led  him  also  to  set  a  killing  pace  of  work.  Whether  he  had  the 
seeds  of  disease  in  him  at  the  time  of  his  consecration  I  do  not 
know.  It  was  clear  to  all  that  he  was  not  physically  what  he 
had  been,  but,  even  if  he  had  had  the  physique  of  fifteen  years 
before,  he  could  not  have  stood  the  strain  many  years,  for  it  was 
one  that  was  bound  to  increase,  unless  he  should  change  his  whole 
manner  of  life,  and  such  a  change  was  to  him  out  of  the  question. 
When  one  thinks  that  at  the  time  he  became  bishop  he  still  car- 
ried many  of  the  cares  incident  to  the  rector  of  Trinity  Church; 
was  called  for  by  those  sick  or  in  affliction ;  that  his  house,  which 
was  always  open  to  the  people  of  Trinity  Church  and  others,  was 
more  than  ever  tlie  refuge  of  every  citizen  who  was  in  trouble,  — 
one  sees  how  the  drain  on  his  time  and  sympathies  went  on.  In 
addition  to  this,  clergymen  now  turned  to  him  as  never  before, 
pouring  into  his  ears  their  cares  and  difficulties.  Candidates  for 
Orders  souglit  him  for  advice  in  greater  as  well  as  smaller  things. 
Tlie  fact  that  he  had  become  bishop  must  have  brought  him  invi- 
tations many  times  more  frequent  than  before.  With  all  these 
things  he  made  in  the  eight  months  after  his  consecration  a  larger 
number  of  visitations  than  any  other  bishop  in  the  American 
Church,  or  I  believe  in  Christian  history,  ever  did  in  the  same 
length  of  time.  Through  the  pressure  of  friends  he  had  a  steno- 
grapher, but  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  close  his  door  from  early 
morning  to  late  at  night  to  anybody,  and  the  stream  continued 
throughout  the  day.  We  know  how  dependent  he  was  upon  re- 
laxation, —  the  free,  uninterrupted  talk  with  friends,  his  smoking 
and  reading;  these  were  broken  in  upon,  and  the  strain  began  to 
show  itself.  Thei-e  came  a  shrinking  from  adding  to  his  engage- 
ments. I  remember  standing  beside  him  when  a  clergyman  asked 
him  to  make  an  engagement  for  some  evening,  and  he  looked 
over  his  little  book,  which,  you  remember,  he  carried  in  his  vest 
pocket,  and  said,  with  something  of  irritation  and  something  of 
a  sigh,  "I  have  not  a  free  evening  for  five  months."  Candidates 
who  went  to  him  sometimes  found  him  impatient.  I  remember 
his  making  this  remark  to  me,  "Lawrence,  why  can't  you  teach 
your  young  men  when  they  come  to  see  me  to  come  to  the  point 
immediately,  and  state  their  business  and  be  off?  They  should 
not  waste  my  time."      "Strange,"  he  said,   as  he  jotted  down 


^T.  55-56]  IMPRESSIONS  921 

a  duty  which  ought  never  to  have  been  pressed  on  him,  "how 
selfish  some  people  are."  I  mention  these  because,  as  we  well 
know,  they  were  so  different  from  his  usual  temper.  There  was 
never  a  man  so  free  with  his  time,  never  one  so  ready  to  yield 
to  the  convenience  of  others,  and  never  one  so  glad  to  have  young 
men  come  and  talk  to  him,  but  he  was  being  killed  by  the  pres- 
sure, and  no  urgency  of  friends  could  prevent  it.  No  one  ever 
heard  any  complaint  of  this  kind  from  him  until  he  got  well  into 
the  episcopate   and  his   nervous   system   began  to  give  way.      I 

think  it  was who  told  me  he  happened  to  meet  him  just  as 

he  was  getting  into  his  carriage  to  go  to  the  supper  of  the  choir 
of  Grace  Church,  Newton,  where  he  made  his  last  address.      He 

was  very  sick  and  tired,  and  his  last  words  to  were,    "It  is 

this  sort  of  thing  that  is  killing  me."  He  was  ready  to  do  the 
preaching  and  make  the  visitations,  but  the  social  pressure,  and 
the  pressure  of  unnecessary  duties  and  unreasonable  people,  wore 
him  out. 

I  had  no  idea  that  he  showed  his  exhaustion  to  others  until  I 
went  to  Framingham  for  the  first  time,  and  as  I  sat  down  in 
a  chair  among  persons  who  were  strangers  to  me,  and  must  have 
been  strangers  to  Brooks,  they  said,  "Last  year  Bishop  Brooks 
came  into  this  room  looking  sick  and  haggard.  He  dropped  into 
that  chair  and  asked  to  be  let  alone,  and  he  remained  there  per- 
fectly silent  and  apparently  exhausted  for  an  hour  or  two."  One 
might  say  that  he  did  so  in  order  to  escape  being  bored  by  strangers. 
It  was  that  partly;   but  more  than  that,  complete  exhaustion. 

Perhaps  I  have  emphasized  this  too  much,  but  we  all  know  the 
joy  with  which  he  undertook  the  work,  and  the  undertone  of  joy 
that  there  was  in  it  to  the  end.  With  all  this,  the  physique  was 
giving  way.  I  am  confident  that,  if  he  had  had  full  strength 
and  had  lived  a  few  years  longer,  it  would  have  been  impossible 
for  him  to  keep  up  the  pace.  When  a  man  is  doing  his  work 
well,  responsibilities  always  increase,  and  there  would  not  have 
been  hours  enough  in  the  day  for  him  to  get  through  what  he  had 
to  do.  I  have  said,  and  I  believe,  that  it  would  have  been 
almost  impossible  for  him  radically  to  change  his  methods  and 
system.  It  was  part  of  his  nature  to  see  everybody  who  wanted 
to  see  him  and  to  help  everybody  who  wanted  help.  Without 
that  radical  change,  he  must  have  gone  under  in  a  few  years,  as 
he  did  at  the  end  of  fifteen  months. 

Many  were  watching  Phillips  Brooks  with  a  sense  of  awe 
as  he  was  now  fulfilling  the  purpose  of  his  life,  "  abasing  " 
himseK  in  order  to  "  abound :  "  — 


922  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

The  very  lavishness  of  his  giving  stimulated  unconscious  ex- 
travagance in  demanding,  so  that  all  this  community  and  all  this 
people  laid  their  claims  upon  him,  and  he  honored  them  till  the 
tension  grew  so  strong  that  at  last  the  strong  man  broke  and  he 
was  laid  low,  a  sacrifice  to  service,  his  life  as  truly  given  for  his 
fellow  men  as  any  life  that  was  ever  laid  on  the  altar  of  sacrifice, 
from  the  day  of  Calvary  to  now. 

There  were  two  sermons  often  repeated  in  these  last 
months,  expressing  the  convictions  uppermost  in  his  soul,  — 
one  of  them  on  the  words,  "  I  follow  after  if  that  I  may 
apprehend  that  for  which  also  I  am  apprehended  of  Christ 
Jesus,"  where  he  spoke  of  living  more  deeply  in  the  past  as 
an  essential  condition  of  human  progress ;  the  other  on  the 
eternal  consciousness  of  humanity  embodied  in  Christ,  "  Be- 
fore Abraham  was,  I  am."  Whatever  he  now  did  seemed  to 
be  great  and  solemn  beyond  expression.  That  indefinable 
something  in  the  man  was  never  more  apparent  than  when 
he  was  administering  the  rite  of  confirmation,  even  in  some 
small  and  obscure  mission. 

I  have  seen  [says  one  describing  such  an  occasion]  the  cere- 
mony of  confirmation  hundreds  of  times,  but  never  in  its  com- 
pleteness before.  ...  I  asked  those  in  my  company  as  we  walked 
away  if  they  had  been  similarly  influenced,  and  I  found  the  four 
of  us  were  of  one  mind.  It  was  a  never-to-be-forgotten  sight. 
I  have  seen  great  sights  in  my  life.  I  have  seen  all  England 
welcoming  the  young  Danish  princess  to  her  English  home;  the 
return  of  the  guards  from  the  Crimea.  The  great  heart  of  the 
people  throbbed  on  these  occasions  as  I  have  never  seen  it  since. 
I  saw  Napoleon  and  Paris  welcome  the  African  troops  on  their 
return  from  the  desert  fields  of  battle ;  I  have  seen  Grant  and 
Sherman  welcomed ;  I  have  witnessed  the  thrilling  effect  of  war 
standards,  with  strips  of  the  national  colors  still  clinging  to  them, 
carried  in  the  streets  crowded  with  people.  But  what  are  these  in 
memory  compared  to  the  touch  of  the  divine  I  witnessed  in  the 
little  church  that  Sunday  evening,  .  .  .  which  made  this  man 
seem  something  more  than  human  in  the  eyes  of  many ! 

He  was  lonely  in  these  days  and  hungered  for  human  com- 
panionship. People,  many  there  were,  who  would  gladly  have 
gone  to  him,  but  kept  away  for  fear  they  would  intrude  on 
his  time  or  interfere  with  important  work.     To  Mr.  Deland, 


MT.  ss-S^']      CORRESPONDENCE  923 

who  was  often  with  him  after  the  day's  work  was  over,  he 
said,  when  entreating  him  to  stay  longer,  "  I  need  you  more 
than  any  one  else  can  need  you."  In  conversation  he  talked 
more  freely.  He  spoke  of  his  mother,  what  she  was  and  what 
she  had  been  to  him.  He  wished  that  he  might  hear  again 
the  sound  of  her  voice  speaking  to  him.  He  went  whenever 
he  could  get  the  opportunity  to  his  brother's  house,  or  to  the 
house  of  Rev.  Leighton  Parks,  where  he  had  been  for  years 
in  the  habit  of  going  for  relief  and  recreation.  His  short 
notes  to  Rev  Charles  H.  Learoyd  show  how  he  was  turning 
to  his  friends :  — 

Boston,  September  17,  1892. 
Dear  Charles,  —  I  'm  awfully  sorry  that  I  cannot  be  with 
you  to-morrow.     I  make  a  visitation  at  North  Andover.     I  am 
hungry  for  the  sight  of  you. 

Again,  October  28,  he  writes  him :  "  I  want  to  see  you 
frightfully.  You  '11  come  next  Monday,  won't  you,  and  spend 
the  night?"  On  November  29,  he  writes  :  "  You  won't  fail 
me  next  Monday,  will  you  ?  The  last  Club  was  no  Club  with- 
out you.    And  you  '11  stay  here,  won't  you  ?  "    And  again :  — 

Boston,  December  1,  1892. 
My  dear  Charles,  —  Be  sure  that  I  shall  count  on  seeing 
you  on  Monday  at  six  o'clock.     You  must  stay  over  here  Tuesday 
and  Wednesday,  and  as  much  longer  as  you  will.      You  cannot 
come  too  early  or  too  often,  or  remain  too  long. 

Affectionately  yours,  Phillips  Brooks. 

To  Lady  Frances  Baillie  he  wrote:  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  November  8,  1892. 

Dear  Friend,  —  When  I  came  home  last  night  from  a  week's 
wandering  about  my  diocese,  I  found  a  letter  from  your  son 
Albert  on  my  table,  for  which  I  was  very  grateful.  It  told  me 
about  you,  and  almost  seemed  for  the  moment  to  set  me  in  your 
room  again  and  let  me  take  your  hand. 

At  least  it  made  me  want  to  say,  even  across  the  stormy  ocean, 
how  much  I  am  thinking  about  you,  and  how  sorry  I  am  that  you 
are  weak  and  ill,  and  how  glad  I  am  that  you  are  yourself,  full  of  the 
faith  and  strength  of  God,  which  no  feebleness  of  body  can  subdue. 

People  talk  about  how  sadness  and  happiness  pursue  and  give 
place  to  one  another  all  through  our  lives.    The  real  truth  which  we 


924  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

grow  to  see  clearly  is  that  they  exist  at  the  same  time,  and  do  not 
contradict  each  other.  They  really  minister  to  one  another.  Christ 
was  the  saddest  and  happiest  man  that  ever  lived.  And  so  I  am 
thanking  God  for  you  while  I  am  praying  for  you  with  all  my  heart. 

How  beautiful  the  death  at  Hazlemere  has  been!  I  owe  it  to 
you  that  I  ever  had  the  privilege  of  seeing  Tennyson.  For  that, 
as  for  a  thousand  other  goodnesses,  I  can  never  thank  you.  But 
it  will  be  a  treasure  to  me  all  my  life.  And  what  has  he  not 
been  to  all  of  us  who  began  to  hear  him  sing  when  we  were  boys ! 
And  what  must  life  mean  to  him  now  when  he  is  with  God! 

Albert  tells  me  that  you  have  not  forgotten  about  the  picture, 
and  that  he  wants  one  too.  Here  they  both  are,  and  I  wish  that 
he  would  send  me  his.  Yours  I  have  had  for  years  among  my 
treasures.      May  the  peace  of  God  be  with  you  always. 

Your  sincere  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

The  following  letter  was  written  by  Phillips  Brooks  after 
reading  a  statement  of  the  religious  belief  of  a  young  man 
wishing  to  enter  the  ministry,  and  desiring  to  know  whether 
in  the  bishop's  opinion  he  were  eligible  for  the  sacred  ofBce. 
Without  the  original  document  the  reply  may  not  be  in  every 
respect  intelligible,  but  its  general  meaning  is  clear. 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  November  10,  1892. 

My  dear  Mr.  C ,  I  have  read  your  friend's   paper  with 

much  interest.  It  is  very  strange  how  men's  thoughts  at  any 
one  time  run  in  the  same  direction,  are  perplexed  by  the  same 
difficulties,  and  tend  to  the  same  results. 

I  do  not  know  how  much  your  friend  has  read  of  certain  recent 
writings  which  discuss  the  relation  between  the  formal  and  essen- 
tial, the  historical  and  spiritual  in  the  Christian  faith.  But  evi- 
dently the  necessity  for  some  adjustment  and  proportion  between 
the  two  has  pressed  upon  his  mind  as  it  has  pressed  upon  so  many 
others.  The  unquestioning  acceptance  of  all  that  is  written  con- 
cerning the  historic  Christ  and  the  almost  exclusive  value  set 
upon  the  facts  of  His  earthly  life  have  given  way  to  a  larger  esti- 
mate of  what  He  eternally  is,  and  of  the  spiritual  meaning  which 
the  recorded  facts  enshrine. 

That  the  value  of  the  historic  fact  may  be  depreciated,  as  it 
has  in  some  other  days  been  exaggerated,  there  can  be  no  doubt ; 
but  that  the  disposition  which  your  friend  exhibits,  to  seek  and 
dwell  upon  the  spiritual  meaning  of  the  redeeming  life,  is  good 
and  true,  I  also  thoroughly  believe. 

As  to  his  right  to  be  a  Christian  minister  I  cannot  hesitate. 


^T.  55-56]  CORRESPONDENCE  925 

Our  Church  puts  into  the  hands  of  her  ministers  the  Apostles* 
and  the  Nicene  Creeds,  and  asks  them  to  repeat  these  symbols 
with  the  people.  Of  course  there  are  various  interpretations  of 
many  of  the  articles.  But  he  who  says  them  in  good  faith  as  an 
expression  of  his  own  religious  thinking  and  believing  has  an  un- 
questioned right  within  our  ministry.  Is  not  the  same  thing  true 
substantially  of  yours,  and  would  not  your  friend  thus  find  that 
he  really  belongs  where  he  very  much  wants  to  be  ? 

I  must  rejoice  with  him  and  for  him  in  the  spiritual  earnest- 
ness which  is  evidently  his.  That  is  the  great  thing  after  all. 
He  has  life,  which  is  what  Christ  came  that  we  might  have. 

Will  you  assure  him  of  my  heartiest  good  wishes  ? 
And  will  you  believe  me. 

Yours  most  sincerely,  Phillips  Brooks. 

He  preached  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  November  24,  at  Trin- 
ity Church.  His  text  was,  "  God  saw  everything  that  He 
had  made,  and,  behold,  it  was  very  good."  His  subject  was 
"  Optimism."  He  defined  it :  "  It  is  not  merely  a  matter  of 
temperament,  nor  does  it  mean  that  this  is  a  thoroughly  good 
world  in  which  we  live,  nor  is  it  simply  a  careless  passing 
over  of  the  evils  of  life,  nor  is  it  a  way  of  seeing  how  every- 
thing is  going  to  come  out  for  good.  But  it  is  a  great  belief 
in  a  great  purpose,  underlying  the  world  for  good,  abso- 
lutely certain  to  fulfil  itself  somewhere,  somehow.  That 
must  have  been  what  God  saw  when  He  looked  upon  the 
world  and  called  it  good." 

Our  optimism  is  no  silly  thing;  and  its  justification  is  by  its 
own  hope.  Oh,  my  friends,  never  be  ashamed,  in  your  college 
room  or  in  the  club,  of  optimism.  With  endless  difficulties 
around  us,  let  us  not  let  our  arms  drop  and  be  idle.  We  think 
that  this  end  of  the  century  is  leading  into  something  beyond. 
It  is  not  that  we  see  some  bright  light ;  but  there  is  something  in 
the  air  that  makes  las  hope.  Christ  made  the  world  better  for 
those  who  were  to  come  after  Him.  Let  us  go  our  way,  saying 
to  our  own  souls,   "Christ  has  overcome." 

To  Rev.  Lyman  Abbott :  — 

Boston,  November  25,  1892. 

Dear  Dr.  Abbott,  —  In  a  moment  of  what  I  fear  is  folly  I 
have  allowed  myself  to  accept  the  invitation  of  the  New  England 
Society  of  Brooklyn  to  speak  at  their  annual  dinner.   ...  I  have 


^26  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

no  gift  for  such  occasions,  nor,  I  confess,  any  very  great  enjoyment 
of  them ;  certainly  not  of  such  a  part  as  I  have  now  promised  to 
take.  I  take  it  for  granted  that  my  address  will  be  one  of  many, 
and  that  it  need  not  be  considered  too  serious  an  affair. 

To  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell :  — 

233  Clabendon  Street,  Boston,  December  10,  1892. 

Dear  Weir,  — Yes,  the  verses  are  certainly  fine.  Some  of 
them  are  exquisite  and  delightful.  Of  course  they  are  fantastic 
and  unhealthy.  Everybody  is  that,  nowadays,  and  they  are 
affected,  and  haunted  always  by  recollections  of  somebody  else's 
poetry,  and  wilfully  and  unnecessarily  obscure,  and  awfully  afraid 
of  being  commonplace.  Some  time  somebody  will  just  dare  to 
sing  the  first  great  simple  things  as  all  the  great  poets  have  sung 
them,  and  then,  how  the  world  will  listen !  and  instead  of  a  few 
distorted  connoisseurs  of  poetry  like  you  and  me,  praising  it  to 
one  another,  all  men  will  be  delighting  in  it  as  they  delight  in 
nobody  to-day. 

But  no  matter  about  the  verses.  When  they  came  I  was  just 
going  to  write  you  about  "Characteristics,"  and  how  I  had  been 
keeping  company  with  you  in  it  during  two  or  three  happy  days. 
It  is  a  beautiful  book,  —  so  true,  and  wise,  and  human.  All  the 
world  which  reads  it  must  enjoy  it,  but  to  me  who  feel  and  hear 
you  in  it  everywhere,  it  is  very  precious.  You  must  be  very  glad 
to  have  written  it,  and  I  rejoice  with  you. 

There  was  your  pamphlet,  too,  about  precise  instruments,  for 
which  I  never  thanked  you.  But  I  read  it  all  the  same,  indeed 
I  did !  and  thought  it  all  the  more  wonderful  because  I  knew  so 
little  of  it  all. 

So  long  since  I  had  sight  of  you!  The  last  time  I  was  in 
Philadelphia  you  were  not  there.  And,  as  you  said,  so  many  of 
the  old  friends  have  gone!  Let  us  at  least  send  one  another 
greeting  when  we  may,  for  indeed  the  old  affection  does  not  die 
nor  change. 

It  was  good  to  see  Lanny  and  his  wife  last  summer.  They  are 
at  home  now,  I  suppose.  I  send  my  love  to  them,  and  to  Jack 
and  his  wife,  and  to  your  own  household.  And  I  need  not  tell 
you  how  deeply  and  truly 

I  am  always  yours,  P.  B. 

To  Rev.  W.  N.  McVickar  he  wrote  :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  December  14,  1892. 
Yes,  my  dear  William,  I  am  fifty-seven,  and  you  will  be  glad 
to  know  that  your  kind  telegram  made  the  day  easier  to  bear. 


^T.  SSS^I  CORRESPONDENCE  927 

I  celebrated  the  melancholy  occasion  by  burying  old  Mrs. 


who  died  last  Sunday  at  the  ripe  age  of  ninety-nine.  It  made 
one  feel  young  for  a  few  minutes.  But  one  cannot  keep  vener- 
able folk  of  that  kind  on  hand  indefinitely  to  freshen  his  fading 
consciousness  of  youth. 

Jimmy  and  Sallie  and  Margaret  came  up  from  Salem  and 
dined  with  me  at  William's,  which  gave  the  old  man  (that 's  me) 
pleasure,  and  on  the  whole  I  am  as  well  this  morning  as  could  be 
expected,  and  good  yet  for  a  score  of  happy  years. 

To  a  young  woman  who  was  carrying  a  heavy  burden  he 
wrote :  — 

233  CiiAKENDON  Street,  Boston,  December  16,  1892. 

My  dear  Miss ,  Indeed  I  would  send  you  a  letter  full  of 

courage  if  I  could. 

What  can  I  do  but  ask,  as  I  do  most  earnestly,  that  God  will 
make  you  brave  and  strong  and  happy  ?  I  think  that  He  is  mak- 
ing you  all  of  these. 

Life  is  not  easy  for  any  earnest  spirit;  but  true  life  is  possi- 
ble, and  that  is  all  we  ask. 

May  every  best  Christmas  blessing  come  to  you  abundantly. 
Your  sincere  friend,  Phillips  Brooks. 

To  Lady  Frances  Baillie :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  December  17,  1892. 

Dear  Lady  Frances,  — This  will  not  quite  reach  you  by 
Christmas  Day,  but  it  will  serve  to  tell  you  when  it  comes,  what 
I  hope  you  know  full  well  already,  that  I  am  thinking  of  you  as 
the  Christmas  days  draw  near,  and  wishing  you  every  best  and 
happiest  blessing.  I  wish  that  I  could  spend  my  Christmas  Day 
in  London,  and  come  and  sit  and  talk  with  you  a  little  some  time 
between  morning  and  night.  If  I  could  go  thither  in  a  day  you 
should  not  fail  to  see  me,  for  I  have  no  duties  here.  Nobody 
wants  a  bishop,  I  find,  on  Christmas  Day,  and  I  am  going  to 
New  York  to  spend  it  with  my  brother,  whom  you  know. 

I  am  thankful  to  hear  from  your  son  Albert  (whose  picture  I 
value  very  much  indeed)  that  you  are  stronger  and  better.  I 
cannot  learn  to  think  of  you  as  ill,  though  I  cannot  forget  the 
last  time  that  I  saw  you.  But  I  know  how  well  and  strong  your 
heart  is.  I  am  sure  that  if  I  could  come  to  your  door  and  have 
the  greeting  of  the  venerable  and  delightful  butler  (who  ought  to 
be  a  bishop,  he  looks  it  far  more  than  I  do)  and  pass  on  to  your 
chamber,  I  should  find  the  same  bright  welcome  and  the  same 
joyful  trust  in  God  and  love  for  man  that  have  always  made  my 


928  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1891-92 

coming  to  you  a  delight.      Therefore  I  dare  to  wish  you  a  happy 
Christmas,  and  a  bright  New  Year.      Why  should  I  not? 

How  sure  one  grows  of  a  few  things  as  he  grows  older,  —  of 
God  and  Christ  and  his  best  friends,  and  the  great  end  of  all  in 
good!  Everything  else  may  grow  uncertain,  but  these  things  are 
surer  every  day. 

"Tennyson's  Grave  "  has  not  come  yet,  but  I  thank  you  for  it 
beforehand,  and  shall  value  it  truly,  both  for  itself  and  for  your 
kindness.      How  great  and  dear  he  seems! 

May  God  be  very  good  to  you,  dear  friend ;  may  every  day  be 
full  of  His  mercy. 

Yours  affectionately,  Phillips  Bkooks. 

He  went,  on  the  21st  of  December,  to  the  dinner  of  the  New 
England  Society  in  Brooklyn,  and  made  a  speech,  character- 
istic of  him  in  every  respect,  noting  with  kindly  satire  their 
faults,  yet  praising  greatly  New  England  and  the  Puritans. 
He  stayed  with  his  brother  while  in  New  York,  and  in  a  let- 
ter describing  Christmas  Day  be  says :  "  We  played  childish 
games  till  midnight,  and  it  was  all  very  simple,  and  silly, 
and  delightful."  There  were  things  which  tried  him  greatly 
at  this  time,  but  he  dismissed  them  on  principle :  "  On 
Christmas  Day  one  must  be  glad. "  That  his  thoughts  were 
dwelling  on  Tennyson  is  evident  from  this  letter  to  Lady 
Frances  Baillie :  — 

233  Clarendon  Street,  Boston,  December  30,  1892. 

Dear  Lady  Frances,  —  The  etching  has  arrived,  after  what 
I  doubt  not  was  a  stormy  and  distressing  experience  on  the  Atlan- 
tic, for  it  seems  as  if  the  great  ocean  never  had  been  so  restless 
and  uneasy-minded  as  in  these  last  few  weeks.  But  it  has  come, 
and  brings  its  blessing  to  the  end  of  the  departing  year.  Surely 
the  most  touching  and  sacred  thing  to  many  of  us  during  the 
year  which  goes  out  to-morrow  will  be  that  it  opened  the  grave 
for  Tennyson,  and  one  of  the  first  thoughts  about  1893  as  we  bid 
it  welcome  will  be  that  in  it  we  shall  not  hear  his  voice. 

This  picture  of  his  grave  is  very  good  to  have,  especially  from 
your  kind  hands.  I  do  not  think  that  my  friends'  graves  mean 
very  much  to  me.  I  do  not  find  myself  often  going  to  them.  I 
should  not  mind  it  if  I  did  not  know  where  my  friend  was  buried, 
if  only  I  knew  that  no  dishonor  had  been  done  to  his  body.  Death 
is  so  great  and  splendid ;  the  wonderful  emancipation  which  must 
come  to  the  spirit  is  so  exacting  and  inspiring  that  it  carries  one's 


^T.  SSS^I      THE  FUTURE  LIFE  929 

thoughts  away  from  the  body  after  we  have  once  done  to  it  the 
affectionate  reverence  which  everything  which  has  belonged  to  our 
friend  suggests  to  us. 

It  is  only  when  a  life  has  been  monumental,  like  the  great 
Poet's,  and  his  memory  is  part  of  the  life  of  the  earth,  which  he 
has  richened,  that  his  grave  becomes  a  treasure  for  mankind.  I 
am  glad  his  body  lies  in  the  Abbey.  The  dear  old  place  seems 
even  dearer  from  this  new  association. 

And  every  token  of  your  kind  remembrance  is  very  precious  to 
me,  as  I  am  sure  you  know. 

And  when  you  turn  the  page  of  the  New  Year,  may  you  find 
some  message  of  strength  and  good  cheer  written  on  the  other 
side.  You  surely  will,  whether  it  be  of  sickness  or  of  health. 
How  one  grows  almost  afraid  to  choose,  or  at  least  thankful  that 
he  has  not  to  decide !  The  great  simple  truths,  that  God  lives, 
that  God  loves,  that  Christ  is  our  salvation,  grow  greater  and 
simpler  and  dearer  every  year.  May  they  flood  this  New  Year 
with  their  light  for  you. 

I  wish  that  I  could  see  you.  You  will  know,  I  am  sure,  that 
my  thought  and  prayer  are  with  you,  and  that  I  am  always, 

Yours  most  affectionately,  Phillips  Brooks. 

Among  the  last  things  Phillips  Brooks  wrote  in  his  note- 
book is  the  following  :  — 

THE    FUTURE    LIFE 

How  far  we  may  get  at  a  real  conception  of  its  essential  nature 
by  carefully  observing  the  most  spiritual  moments  of  this  life,  in 
such  particulars,  for  instance,  as  the  following :  — 

1.  Relation  to  the  bodily  life,  preserving  it,  but  keeping  it 
subordinate  and  servile. 

2.  Relation  to  our  friends,  getting  at  their  true  spiritual  es- 
sence, not  minding,  i.  e.,  keeping  in  mind,  their  circumstances, 
poverty,  wealth,  etc. 

3.  Relation  to  God  —  true  worship.  Communion  more  than 
petition. 

4.  Relation  to  time.  Essential  timelessness,  free  drawing 
upon  past  and  future. 

5.  Relation  to  ourselves.  Consciousness  of  our  deepest  ideal- 
ity. Fullest  companionship  with  others,  and  proportionately  deep 
sense  of  self. 

All  these  things  we  know  in  the  highest  moments  of  our  lives; 
shall  they  not,  clothed  in  fit  scenery,  make  our  Heaven? 

VOL.   U 


1893 

CONCLUSION 

Watch  night  was  kept  as  usual  at  Trinity  Church. 
Among  the  clergy  in  the  chancel  was  the  new  rector  of 
Trinity,  Rev.  E.  W.  Donald.  The  sermon  was  given  by  Rev. 
Percy  Browne.  After  the  hymn,  "  How  firm  a  foundation, 
ye  saints  of  the  Lord,"  Bishop  Brooks  remarked  that  only 
a  few  moments  of  the  old  year  remained,  and  asked  the 
congregation  to  kneel  in  silent  prayer  as  the  knell  of  the 
dying  year  was  tolled. 

Amid  a  silence  so  profound  that  it  could  almost  be  felt,  the 
great  audience  knelt  and  waited  in  silence  and  prayer  the  striking 
of  the  twelve  strokes  which  told  the  death  of  the  old  and  the 
birth  of  the  new  year. 

A  fervent  prayer  by  Bishop  Brooks  followed,  full  of  thankful- 
ness for  past  mercies  and  of  joy  in  the  hope  and  promise  of  the 
blessings  to  come.  Then  rising  and  addressing  the  great  congre- 
gation, he  added,  "I  wish  you  all  a  happy,  a  very  happy  new 
year. " 

A  lady  who  called  upon  him  in  his  study  during  the  day 
found  him  in  depression,  but  rousing  himself,  he  said,  "  It 
must  be,  it  shall  be,  a  happy  new  year."  On  the  Sunday 
morning  with  which  the  new  year  opened  he  was  at  the  Old 
North  Church  on  Salem  Street.  He  ate  his  New  Year's 
dinner  with  the  members  of  the  Christian  Union,  as  had  been 
his  custom  for  twenty  years,  and  spoke  to  the  young  men  as  he 
had  spoken  during  all  those  years.  It  was  an  organization  that 
he  carried  close  to  his  heart.  On  its  president,  Mr.  W.  H. 
Baldwin,  he  had  long  been  in  the  habit  of  depending  to  assist 
him  in  the  responsibility  for  the  many  young  men  recom- 
mended to  his  care.  These  were  the  words  he  spoke,  as  they 
were  reported  in  the  Boston  "  Herald :  "  — 

New  Year  comes  to  us  with  the  presentation  of  the  great  things 


^T.  57]  THE   LAST   DAYS  931 

of  life.  Greatness  and  littleness  are  terms  not  of  the  quantity, 
but  of  the  quality,  of  human  life.  If  a  man  has  a  great  concep- 
tion of  life,  and  is  putting  all  of  the  little  things  which  he  is 
doing  into  that  conception,  he  is  a  great  man.  There  always  is 
some  great  conception  which  makes  for  a  man  the  interpretation 
of  his  life. 

Everything  craves  for  manifestation.  I  believe  that  when 
Jesus  Christ  came  and  touched  the  earth  that  the  earth  had  some 
response  to  make,  which  it  does  not  make  to  you  and  me.  Even 
now,  Nature  is  saying  something  which  she  did  not  say  to  men 
that  groped  about  five  centuries  ago.  She  says  it  in  the  lights 
which  burn  in  our  hall  and  in  the  cars  that  run  by  the  door. 

The  biggest  truth  that  man  knows  is  the  most  practical  truth. 
Mankind  only  progresses  as  it  progresses  with  the  development  of 
man's  own  personal  character.  Increased  skill  will  come  with 
increased  goodness.  Man  is  what  man  expects  himself  to  be. 
Look  at  yourself  and  say,  "  Am  I  a  child  of  God  ?  "  Do  that 
under  any  circumstances,  and  the  circumstances  immediately  be- 
come sublime. 

Character,  and  character  only,  is  the  thing  that  is  eternally 
powerful  in  this  world.  Character  is  the  divinest  thing  on  earth. 
It  is  the  one  thing  that  you  can  put  into  the  shop  or  into  the 
study  and  be  sure  that  the  fire  is  going  to  burn.  Character  now, 
and  character  forever! 

On  Monday  evening,  January  2,  he  was  at  the  Clericus 
Club  for  the  last  time.  He  began  the  next  day  the  visitation 
of  the  churches  in  accordance  with  a  list  made  out  for  six 
months  in  advance.  Tuesday,  January  3,  he  was  at  Wake- 
field ;  Wednesday,  January  4,  at  Middleborough  ;  Thursday, 
January  5,  at  Framingham ;  Friday,  January  6,  at  Water- 
town  ;  Sunday,  January  8,  he  visited  the  three  churches  in 
Dorchester ;  Tuesday,  January  10,  he  was  at  Belmont ; 
Thursday,  January  12,  at  Wellesley  :  Friday,  January  13,  at 
Canton.  Many  minor  appointments,  committee  meetings, 
etc.,  filled  up  the  intervening  spaces  of  time.  One  of  his 
evenings,  January  4,  he  had  given  up  to  a  student  from  Yale 
University,  whom  he  had  invited  to  spend  the  night.  They 
talked  on  the  ministry,  on  Robertson,  Maurice,  Stanley,  and 
Tennyson,  on  the  Incarnation  and  the  Atonement.  In  the 
morning,  after  breakfast,  as  he  was  bidding  his  young  friend 


932  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1893 

good-by,  he  spoke  on  the  subject  that  seemed  to  haunt  his 
mind  as  if  with  a  mystic  prevision :  — 

These  are  great  days  you  are  entering  upon ;  days  which  will 
witness  great  changes  in  all  things.  They  will  be  better  days 
than  any  yet  seen.  Life  will  have  fuller  and  richer  meaning  to 
the  coming  generation  than  it  has  ever  had  before,  greater  works 
will  be  done.^ 

And  another  event  there  was  that  gave  him  a  new  pleasure, 
into  which  he  entered  with  the  zest  of  youthful  happiness,  — 
a  reception  at  his  residence  on  January  11,  in  honor  of  Miss 
Gertrude  Brooks,  when  for  the  first  time  he  threw  open  his 
house.  It  had  been  a  promise  made  long  before  that  such  a 
reception  should  be  given  when  the  time  came.  He  shared 
in  the  anticipation  of  the  event  and  still  more  in  its  fulfil- 
ment ;  and  as  he  stood  by  the  side  of  his  niece  to  receive 
the  guests,  with  the  sense  of  joy  in  kinship  and  proprietor- 
ship in  her  gladness,  he  seemed  to  be  in  the  happiest,  even 
the  gayest  of  moods. 

On  Saturday  morning,  January  14,  he  preached  at  the  con- 
secration of  St.  Mary's  Church  for  Sailors,  East  Boston.  A 
window  was  open  in  the  roof,  which  could  not  be  shut,  and 
the  cold  winter  air  blew  in  on  the  heads  of  those  present. 
Coming  back  on  the  ferry,  he  complained  of  feeling  cold. 

On  Sunday  he  should  have  kept  at  home,  for  he  was  ill ; 
but  he  went  to  Hyde  Park,  officiating  there  in  the  morning, 
and  then  in  an  open  sleigh  he  drove  to  Dedham.  A  lady 
who  was  present  has  furnished  this  account  of  the  morning  of 
that  day :  — 

The  little  church  in  Hyde  Park  was  crowded  with  people.  It 
seems  so  significant  that  his  text  was  "Life!"  "Thou  shalt 
satisfy  the  king  with  long  life."  "Life  forever  and  ever;  "  over 
and  over  again  that  was  the  burden  of  it.  And  he  read  those 
words  from  "  Saul, "  — 

How  good  is  man's  life !     The  mere  living 

How  fit  to  employ 
All  the  heart  and  the  soul  and  the  senses 

Forever  in  joy ! 

1  Cf.  "A  Visit  with  Phillips  Brooks,"  hy  F.  H.  Lynch,  in  The  Christian 
Union,  February  11, 1893. 


^T.  57]  THE  LAST   DAYS  ^^2 

And  even  as  he  spoke,  with  Life  upon  his  lips,  I  saw  written 
plainly  upon  his  face  that  other  word,  Death.  I  grew  numb  and 
faint,  and  thought  that  I  would  have  to  leave  the  church. 

After  the  confirmation  he  stayed  and  stayed.  I  have  never 
seen  him  happier  or  gentler,  never  more  childlike  and  lovable 
than  he  was  that  Sunday  morning.  He  addressed  the  Sunday- 
school.  When  that  was  done  he  went  about  among  the  children. 
Women  brought  him  their  babies  and  their  boys  that  he  might 
look  into  their  faces.  He  had  a  word  for  every  one.  When  he 
sat  down,  a  group  of  boys  circled  around  him.  One  boy  back  of 
him  noticed  a  speck  upon  his  coat  and  went  to  brush  it  off.  In 
a  moment  there  were  three  boys  brushing  him  all  together.  He 
looked  about  and  colored,  his  modesty  overcome  at  being  the 
object  of  so  much  attention.  .  .  .  He  continued  to  talk  with  the 
children.  It  seemed  even  then  that  he  was  already  entering 
God's  kingdom  as  a  little  child. 

And  still  he  did  not  go.  He  did  not  seem  to  want  to  go. 
Long  after  he  had  gone  I  stood  in  the  church.  Only  a  few  were 
left.  An  old  woman  came  to  me  and  began  talking.  I  had 
never  seen  her  before,  but  she  seemed  to  know  me  somehow,  and 
began  to  talk  about  him.  She  remembered  him  as  a  boy,  and 
began  to  tell  about  the  old  days  at  St.  Paul's  when  the  Brooks 
boys,  as  she  said,  used  to  spill  over  into  another  pew.  I  let  her 
talk  on  and  on.  In  the  middle  of  it  I  looked  up,  —  and  there 
he  was!  Back  again!  I  wondered  what  brought  him.  I  was 
startled  and  could  not  speak.  He  looked  at  us  a  second  and 
then  he  said,  "  Good-by, "  and  the  smile  that  grew  upon  his  face, 
the  bright  look  in  the  eyes,  I  shall  never  forget.  I  did  not  say 
good-by,  —  I  could  not.  He  looked  so  happy  that  I  was  glad  too, 
and  yet  there  was  a  sadness  mingled  with  it  deeper  than  words 
could  say. 

On  Monday  morning,  January  16,  a  friend  who  called,  not 
expecting  to  find  him  at  leisure,  was  painfully  struck  with 
the  alteration  in  his  looks.  He  came  forth  as  usual  from  his 
study  with  his  arms  extended  in  greeting  in  the  old  familiar 
way,  but  he  was  changed.  During  the  hour  which  followed 
he  was  restless  and  nervous  in  his  manner,  walking  the  room, 
talking  incessantly ;  it  was  hardly  possible,  so  rapid  and  con- 
tinuous was  the  talk,  to  put  him  a  question  without  inter- 
rupting him.  When  he  was  asked  if  he  found  any  difficulty 
in  conversation  in  making  his  episcopal  visits,  he  said,  "  Oh 


934  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1893 

no ;  you  only  pull  the  spigot,  and  it  comes."  He  was  full  of 
reminiscences ;  referring  to  his  early  years  and  the  absurd 
way  he  then  had  of  selecting  texts  which  no  one  had  heard  of. 
He  spoke  of  one  sermon  which  he  got  by  asking  a  clerical 
brother  what  text  he  was  going  to  preach  on.  The  text  was 
so  striking  that  only  one  sermon  could  be  preached  from  it, 
and  as  he  wrote  on  the  text  at  once,  he  made  it  impossible 
for  the  original  suggester  to  use  it.  He  talked  of  Watson's 
Poems  then  just  out,  which  he  greatly  admired,  especially  the 
lines  on  Tennyson.  Then  he  turned  to  the  New  England 
dinner,  commenting  on  the  difference  between  New  York  and 
Boston,  how  the  exaggerated  estimate  of  money  was  affecting 
even  the  clergy  in  New  York.  This  incident  he  told  of  the 
New  England  dinner:  A  gentleman  who  sat  beside  him 
complained  that  he  could  not  enjoy  the  dinner  because  of  the 
speech  he  had  to  make.  "  That,"  said  Phillips  Brooks,  "  is 
also  my  trouble."  "  Why,"  said  the  gentleman,  "  I  did  not 
suppose  you  ever  gave  a  thought  to  any  speech  you  had  to 
make."  "  And  is  that  your  impression  of  the  way  in  which  I 
have  done  all  my  work?"  "It  is,"  said  the  gentleman;  "I 
have  thought  it  was  all  spontaneous,  costing  you  no  effort  of 
preparation."  This  was  one  of  the  last  interviews,  and  it 
closed  with  his  agreement  to  preach  the  sermon  at  West 
Point  at  the  Commencement  in  the  ensuing  June. 

The  following  narrative  by  Mr.  William  G.  Brooks  takes 
up  the  story  and  carries  it  to  the  end  :  — 

On  Tuesday,  Januaiy  17,  1893,  in  the  evening,  Bishop  Brooks 
made  a  visitation  to  the  Church  of  the  Good  Shepherd  in  Boston, 
—  his  last  visitation.  I  saw  the  notice  in  the  evening  paper, 
and  went  to  hear  him.  He  had  a  written  sermon  ready,  but  the 
pulpit  desk  was  low  and  his  glasses  troubled  him,  and  he  laid  it 
aside  and  preached  an  extemporaneous  sermon  on  Christ  feeding 
the  multitude  in  the  desert.  He  had  a  severe  cold  and  was 
troubled  with  his  throat.  I  went  home  with  him,  and  sat  and 
talked  till  eleven  o'clock.  He  was  in  good  spirits  and  bright 
and  interesting,  and  spoke  lightly  of  the  soreness  in  his  throat. 
When  I  bade  him  good-night  he  said  he  would  come  in  and  spend 
an  evening  with  us  soon. 

The  next  day,  Wednesday,  January  18,  he  walked  out,  and  in 


^T.  57]  THE  LAST  DAYS  935 

the  evening  went  to  Newton  to  a  choir  festival  and  a  dinner  at 
the  Woodland  Park  Hotel.  There  he  made  his  last  speech,  with 
great  difficulty,  as  Dr.  Shinn  tells  me,  on  account  of  his  throat. 
He  was  driven  in  a  close  carriage  to  the  station  in  Newton,  and 
also  from  the  Huntington  Avenue  station  in  Boston  to  his  home. 
During  the  night  his  throat  grew  worse,  and  in  the  morning  was 
very  much  swollen.  He  sent  for  Dr.  Beach,  who  told  him  he 
must  keep  his  bed  to  prevent  more  cold  and  avoid  a  chill,  but 
that  he  had  only  an  "old-fashioned  sore  throat." 

I  saw  him  in  the  evening.  Dr.  Beach  was  there,  who  stated 
the  case  the  same  as  he  did  in  the  morning.  He  gave  him  a 
gargle  and  a  Dover's  powder  to  sleep  on.  But  he  had  a  poor 
night,  and  was  very  restless  in  the  morning,  I  saw  him  in  the 
morning,  afternoon,  and  evening.  This  I  did  each  of  the  days  he 
was  sick,  and  Mrs.  Brooks  and  Gertrude  saw  him  each  forenoon. 
Dr.  Beach  each  day  told  me  of  his  condition,  and  constantly 
spoke  favorably  and  hopefully  of  it.  He  objected  to  a  nurse, 
though  the  doctor  suggested  it,  and  as  Katie  and  the  other  ser- 
vants knew  his  wishes  and  could  prepare  what  he  needed,  there 
seemed  to  be  no  occasion  for  one. 

His  throat  was  so  swollen  that  he  could  say  but  little,  and 
could  take  only  liquid  food.  He  read  his  letters  and  papers  and 
dictated  some  of  his  correspondence. 

So  it  went  on  till  Sunday,  when  he  did  not  appear  so  well. 
He  seemed  to  be  weaker  and  slept  more.  Still  Dr.  Beach  said 
there  was  no  cause  for  alarm.  At  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening 
he  saw  him  and  sent  me  word  that  he  looked  for  a  good  night, 
and  he  hoped  to  find  him  better  in  the  morning.  So  we  went  to 
bed  feeling  easy  and  hoping  for  good  results. 

But  about  one  o'clock  one  of  the  servants  came  to  our  house  and 
said  he  was  not  so  well.  It  appears  that  he  woke  from  a  light 
sleep  about  eleven  o'clock,  a  little  weak  in  his  head,  and  went  out 
of  his  room  and  up  the  stairs  a  few  steps,  when  the  servants  heard 
him  and  gently  took  him  to  his  room  and  bed  again.  He  seemed 
to  imagine  he  was  in  a  strange  house,  perhaps  on  an  episcopal 
visitation,  and  said  he  was  "going  home." 

Dr.  Beach  was  sent  for  and  came  at  once.  He  sent  for  me 
and  also  for  Dr.  Fitz.  I  was  at  the  house  before  Dr.  Fitz,  and 
Dr.  Beach  sent  me  at  once  to  the  Registry  of  Nurses  for  a  nurse. 
I  got  a  man  who  was  there  in  an  hour  or  so,  and  on  my  return  I 
found  Dr.  Fitz  at  the  house. 

The  doctors  had  just  examined  his  lungs.  They  found  them 
sound  and  said  they  found  nothing  that  was  dangerous.  It  seems 
they  suspected  there  might  be  a  diphtheritic  trouble  below  the 


936  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1893 

throat  swelling,  and  had  arranged  to  make  an  examination  at  nine 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  with  possibly  Dr.  Knight  also  present. 

While  the  doctors  were  consulting  together  after  their  exami- 
nation in  the  hall  in  the  second  story,  I  was  alone  with  Phillips. 
He  knew  me.  He  looked  up  from  his  pillow  with  the  sweetest 
smile  and  held  out  his  hand.  He  pressed  mine  warmly  and 
strongly.  Smiled  again  and  again,  and  once  or  twice  said, 
"Good-night."  Then  he  lay  back  on  the  pillow,  put  his  great 
left  hand  on  his  heart,  and  smiled  and  nodded  his  head  with  his 
eyes  full  on  mine.  Then  he  raised  his  right  hand  with  the  fore- 
finger extended,  and  waved  it  round  and  round  for  several  mo- 
ments, as  he  used  to  do  when  hearing  music,  or  humming  some 
tune  himself.  It  was  all  clear  and  bright  and  happy.  Full  of  the 
joy  that  was  in  his  heart,  —  in  harmony  with  the  love  that  filled 
it,  and  with  the  heavenly  melodies  that  he  heard  calling  him  to  his 
eternal  home,  full  of  rest  and  life.     This  was  about  three  o'clock. 

These  were  his  last  clear  moments.  After  it  he  slept  lightly, 
taking  nourishment  from  time  to  time,  and  restless  and  uncom- 
fortable when  awake. 

About  six  o'clock  he  rose  and  insisted  on  getting  out  of  bed, 
and  as  he  was  very  decided.  Dr.  Beach  said,  as  the  room  was 
warm,  he  might  be  wrapped  in  blankets  and  sit  in  a  chair  a  little 
while.  The  doctor  and  the  nurse  covered  him,  and  he  stepped 
between  them  towards  the  door  that  opened  into  the  hall  as  if  he 
wished  to  go  out  of  the  room.  Dr.  Beach  restrained  him,  saying 
a  few  words,  when  he  said  quite  impatiently,  "Both  you  men 
cannot  keep  me  from  going  through  that  door."  His  attention 
was,  however,  diverted,  and  he  was  led  to  a  large  rocking-chair 
in  the  room,  into  which  he  was  seated,  the  nurse  in  a  chair  by 
his  side,  and  Dr.  Beach  and  I  in  chairs  near  by. 

In  a  few  moments  the  nurse  called  Dr.  Beach,  who  went  at 
once.  His  head  had  drooped,  and  he  was  breathing  hard.  We 
lifted  him  upon  the  bed.  He  still  breathed,  and  Dr.  Beach  at 
once  injected  a  strong  dose  of  brandy  into  his  arm.  But  it  had 
no  effect,  and  in  two  or  three  minutes  the  breathing  grew  fainter 
and  then  stopped.      He  had  gone. 

The  physician  who  attended  Phillips  Brooks  furnishes  the 
following  statement :  — 

The  Bishop  for  several  days  had  been  suffering  from  a  severe 
sore  throat,  which  gave  rise  to  no  serious  or  alarming  symptoms 
until  late  in  the  night  before  his  death,  when  they  assumed  a 
diphtheritic  character.  He  then  became  delirious,  his  breathing 
rapidly  increased  in  frequency,  and  early  in  the  morning  of  Mon- 


.-^*fe^?  .60' 


^T.  57]  THE  LAST  DAYS  937 

day,  January  23,  he  was  seized  with  a  slight  spasm,  soon  after 
which  his  heart  suddenly  ceased  to  beat.  His  throat  was  at  no 
time  seriously  obstructed,  -nor  was  any  membrane  visible. 

These  accounts  may  be  supplemented  from  a  few  other 
sources.  To  Mr.  Deland,  who  called  upon  him  early  in  his 
illness,  he  talked  much  about  death,  the  awfulness  of  the 
mystery,  what  the  mystery  was,  how  certain  persons  whom  he 
mentioned,  recently  departed,  had  solved  it.  He  complained 
also  of  his  loneliness,  and  besought  Mr.  Deland  as  he  rose  to 
go,  to  remain. 

The  Eev.  James  P.  Franks  called  at  noon  on  Thursday, 
January  19.  While  he  was  there  the  bishop  sent  for  his 
secretary  and  requested  him  to  write  to  the  clergy  in  Lowell, 
where  he  had  appointments  for  the  following  Sunday,  to  say 
he  would  not  be  able  to  keep  them.  He  said  to  Franks, 
"  This  is  no  great  fun ;  my  throat  is  awfully  sore." 

The  Rev.  Leighton  Parks,  who  called  on  Saturday,  January 
21,  gives  this  account  of  a  last  interview :  — 

It  was  only  on  the  Saturday,  two  days  before  his  death,  that 
I  heard  that  Brooks  was  sick.  And  even  then  the  report  was 
only  that  he  had  a  bad  throat ;  so  that  I  was  not  alarmed,  and 
hesitated  a  moment  whether  to  call  before  lunch  or  wait  till  the 
afternoon  to  sit  and  have  a  long  chat.  Fortunately  I  decided  to 
go  at  once  and  learn  how  he  was.  When  I  reached  his  house 
the  door  was  opened  by  Katie,  who  said,  "He  's  been  asking  for 
you.  The  doctor  says  no  one  is  to  see  him,  but  you  must  go  up, 
for  he  said  so."  "But  is  he  really  ill?"  I  asked.  "Oh  yes, 
sir,  very  ill;  but  the  doctor  has  just  been  here  and  he  says  he  's 
better,  and  that  he  thinks  he  will  get  well."  Still  I  could  not 
feel  alarmed.  It  could  not  be  that  Brooks  was  to  die !  When 
I  entered  the  bedroom,  which  was  over  the  study  and  the  same 
size,  I  saw  Brooks  in  bed  propped  up  with  pillows,  his  cheeks 
flushed  with  fever,  indeed,  but  with  no  sign  of  disease ;  he  looked 
much  as  a  child  does  that  has  a  cold.  There  was  no  wasting  and 
no  evidence  of  weakness,  only  the  voice  was  husky  and  it  was 
evident  that  he  spoke  with  difficulty. 

"  My  dear  Brooks, "  I  said,  "  it  does  not  seem  natural  to  see 
you  here."  "Oh,  Parks,  I  am  so  glad  you  've  come!  I  wanted 
to  see  you."  I  told  him  how  that  I  had  only  that  moment  heard 
of  his  sickness,    and  begged  him  to  tell  me   just  how  he  was. 


938  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1893 

Then  he  looked  at  me  with  a  half-startled,  half-questioning  look 
in  his  eyes,  and  said,  "I  think  I  am  going  to  die."  "Oh  no," 
I  cried,  "you  must  not  think  of  such  a  thing.  The  doctor  says 
you  are  better,  and  in  a  few  days  you  will  be  up. "  "  But, "  he 
said,  and  this  was  almost  like  a  child  that  did  not  know  how  to 
measure  pain,  "you  don't  know  how  my  throat  hurts.  I  can't 
eat.  I  tried  to  eat  an  egg,  and  the  old  thing  was  as  hot  as  fire ; 
and  if  I  can't  eat  I  must  die."  As  this  last  was  said  half  laugh- 
ingly, I  laughed  and  said,  "Now,  you  must  not  talk,  but  I  will 
stay  a  moment  and  tell  you  the  news."  So  I  sat  down  and 
looked  at  him.  The  gi'eat  bed  was  covered  over  with  books,  — 
books  new  and  old.  I  picked  up  one  and  glanced  at  the  title. 
I  do  not  know  what  it  was.  The  pathos  of  it  all  swept  over  me. 
The  whole  city  ready  to  serve  him,  a  host  of  friends  longing  to 
be  with  him,  and  he  was  alone,  and  had  turned  at  the  last,  as 
he  had  done  through  all  the  lonely  years,  to  books,  his  best 
friends.  They  covered  him  like  leaves.  The  book  I  picked  up 
was,  I  am  sure,  a  volume  of  poems,  —  a  new  book,  but,  as  I  said, 
I  cannot  recall  the  name.  There  were  letters  on  the  bed,  and  he 
read  me  one  of  them,  and  laughed  in  an  impatient  way  he  had, 
and  said,  "Isn't  he  preposterous."  Then  he  groaned  as  he 
thought  of  the  engagements  broken,  and  of  the  disappointment  of 
a  clergyman  in  whose  church  he  was  to  have  confirmed  the  next 
day.  Then  I  told  him  that  he  must  not  have  his  letters  brought 
to  him,  but  let  everything  wait  till  he  could  get  out,  and  "Then," 
said  I,  "you  had  better  get  on  a  steamer  and  go  abroad  for  a 
while."  Then  he  said,  half  seriously  and  half  laughingly,  "I 
came  near  doing  a  dreadful  thing  the  other  day.  I  was  in  East 
Boston,  and  I  suddenly  felt  as  if  I  must  get  away  from  every- 
thing for  a  little  while,  and  I  went  to  the  Cunard  dock  and  asked 
if  the  steamer  had  sailed.  She  had  been  gone  about  an  hour.  I 
believe  if  she  had  still  been  there  I  should  have  absconded." 

At  this  I  said  I  must  go,  for  it  was  not  good  that  he  should 
talk  so  much,  but  he  took  my  hand  and  said  most  pitiably, 
"Don't  go,  Parks,  don't  go.  I  won't  talk,  and  you  could  talk 
to  me  so  beautifully."  I  stayed  a  little  longer,  and  I  took  his 
hand  in  both  of  mine  and  said,  "Brooks,  you  know  what  you  are 
to  us,  — more  than  we  can  tell.  We  never  needed  you  more 
than  we  need  you  now.  I  believe  that  you  will  get  well,  but  you 
must  make  an  effort.  Try  to  eat,  no  matter  how  much  it  hurts. 
For  our  sakes  try  to  get  well."  He  smiled  and  pressed  my  hand 
and  said,  "I'll  try."  I  told  him  I  would  come  again  in  the 
morning.  So  we  parted.  As  I  reached  the  door  he  called  after 
me,   "Give  my  love  to  Ellen."     This  had  been  his  farewell  for 


^T.  57]  THE  FUNERAL  939 

many  years,  ever  since  my  daughter,  then  about  two  years  old, 
frightened  at  his  great  size,  said,  "I  don't  like  you."  At  which 
he  was  charmed,  and  said,  "O  Ellen,  many  feel  as  you  do,  but 
don't  say  it;  "  and  after  that  he  always  left  me  with  the  farewell, 
"Give  my  love  to  Ellen."  Ellen,  he  once  explained,  being  used 
generically  for  the  three  children. 

So  we  parted,  after  a  friendship  of  fifteen  years,  —  friendship 
made  possible  only  because  of  his  deep  sense  of  the  value  of  the 
individual  soul,  which  made  him  very  careful  not  to  dominate  a 
younger  and  less  gifted  life.  As  I  look  back  over  the  delightful 
years  of  communion  with  him,  nothing  seems  to  me  more  striking 
than  the  unity  of  his  character.  He  died  just  as  he  had  lived, 
—  the  keen  sense  of  humor,  the  scorn  of  pretentiousness,  the  love 
of  literature,  the  ignorance  of  pain,  the  shrinking  from  death, 
the  love  of  life,  the  humility  that  counted  others  better  than  him- 
self, the  loving  heart  that  loved  to  the  end.  All  these  were 
shown  in  the  long  years  I  had  known  him ;  they  were  shown  in 
that  last  half  hour  when  we  talked  together.  He  died  as  simply, 
as  naturally,  as  lovingly,  as  he  had  lived.  It  is  that  same  man 
whom  we  hope  to  see. 

The  following  account  of  Phillips  Brooks's  last  night  on 
earth  gives  the  scene  as  it  appeared  to  his  faithful  ser- 
vant :  — 

On  the  evening  of  the  day  on  which  Bishop  Brooks  died  [says 
Rev.  Percy  Browne],  I  went  to  his  house  and  was  received  by 
the  faithful  servant  who,  for  so  many  years,  had  opened  to  me 
the  hospitable  door.  She  led  me  to  the  familiar  study,  darkened 
now  by  the  absence  of  the  welcoming  smile  and  outstretched 
hands,  which  used  to  draw  his  friends  to  his  very  heart.  Every- 
thing else  was  as  it  used  to  be,  —  the  books  he  had  been  reading 
lying  open  here  and  there,  the  study  table  covered  with  the  let- 
ters which  he  was  never  to  answer,  the  works  of  art  and  other 
things  of  beauty  which  he  had  gathered  in  his  travels,  —  all  as 
usual,  like  a  familiar  landscape  under  a  darkened  sky.  "Tell 
me  about  him  as  he  was  last  night,  Katie,"  I  said.  She  an- 
swered in  tones  broken  by  her  honest  sorrow.  "Last  night  Mr. 
William  and  the  doctor  came,  and  the  doctor  said  Mr,  Brooks 
would  be  better  in  the  morning ;  but  by  the  looks  of  him  I  thought 
he  wouldn't.  After  they  left  him,  I  went  to  his  room  at  about 
eleven  o'clock,  to  see  if  he  wanted  anything.  He  told  me  to 
leave  some  lemonade  near  him  and  go  to  bed.  I  told  him  I 
meant  to  sit  up.  He  looked  at  his  watch  on  the  table  by  his  bed 
and  said,    '  No,  Katie,   I  won't  need  you.      It 's  late,   and  you 


940  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1893 

must  go  to  bed.'  But  it  wasn't  to  bed  I  was  going,  and  he 
looking  like  that.  So  I  sat  in  a  chair  outside  his  door.  Some 
time  after  I  heard  him  walking  about  and  talking  to  himself.  I 
opened  the  door,  and  there  he  was,  walking  about  in  his  room 
and  saying  over  and  over,  *  Take  me  home,  I  must  go  home!  ' 
I  was  that  frightened  that  I  sent  a  messenger  for  Mr.  William. 
In  a  little  while  he  came  with  the  doctor  and  a  nurse,  and  they 
stayed  with  him  till  he  died  in  the  morning." 

The  funeral  services  for  Phillips  Brooks  were  held  at 
Trinity  Church  on  Thursday,  January  26.  At  eight  o'clock 
in  the  morning  of  that  day  the  body,  accompanied  by  a  guard 
of  members  of  the  Loyal  Legion,  was  borne  to  the  church 
and  placed  in  the  vestibule,  where  it  was  viewed  by  a  contin- 
uous procession  of  all  classes  of  people,  numbering  many 
thousands,  and  there  were  thousands  still  waiting  for  the 
privilege  when  the  hour  of  service,  eleven  o'clock,  arrived.  In 
the  city  were  the  evidences  of  mourning.  The  traffic  seemed 
to  cease  in  the  streets,  the  Stock  Exchange  and  places  of 
business  were  closed,  the  flags  were  at  half-mast.  Within 
the  church  the  scene  resembled  the  day  of  his  consecration 
to  the  episcopate.  The  services  were  under  the  direction  of 
Mr.  A.  J.  C.  Sowdon.  The  governor  of  the  Commonwealth 
of  Massachusetts,  the  mayor  of  the  city  of  Boston,  and  a  dele- 
gation from  the  legislature,  were  there;  representatives  of 
many  societies  also,  and  of  the  congregation  of  Trinity 
Church.  There  were  present  many  clergymen  of  other 
denominations.  The  white-robed  procession  of  the  clergy  of 
the  diocese  and  of  visiting  clergy  in  large  numbers  met  the 
body  at  the  great  west  door  of  the  church  and  passed  up  the 
aisle.  The  presiding  bishop  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  Dr. 
Williams,  who  read  the  sentences,  was  followed  by  Bishop 
Clark  and  Bishop  Potter,  Bishop  Randolph,  of  Western 
Virginia,  Bishops  Niles,  Neely,  and  Talbot.  At  the  sugges- 
tion of  Rev.  William  Lawrence,  eight  young  men,  under- 
graduates of  Harvard,  bore  the  body  aloft  on  their  shoulders, 
as  if  in  triumph,  and  in  the  full  view  of  all.  The  honorary 
pall-bearers,  among  them  the  friends  of  many  years,  were 
Dr.  S.  Weir  Mitchell,  Rev.  C.  A.  L.  Richards,  Mr.  Robert 


^T.  57]  THE   TRIBUTES  941 

C.  Winthrop,  Mr.  Robert  Treat  Paine,  Eev.  Percy  Browne, 
Rev.  W.  N.  McVickar,  Rev.  Leigliton  Parks,  Professor 
A.  V.  G.  Allen,  Colonel  Charles  R.  Codman,  Mr.  C.  J.  Mor- 
rill, President  Eliot,  of  Harvard,  Justice  Horace  Gray,  of 
the  United  States  Supreme  Court.  Bishop  Potter  stood  at 
the  lecturn  to  read  the  lesson.  Bishop  Clark  led  in  the 
recital  of  the  Nicene  Creed.  The  hymns  were  announced  by 
Rev.  E.  W.  Donald,  "Jesus,  lover  of  my  soul"  and  "For  all 
the  saints  who  from  their  labors  rest." 

When  the  service  was  over  within  the  church,  another 
service  was  held  without,  for  the  larger  congregation  waiting 
in  Copley  Square,  —  some  said  ten  thousand,  others  twenty 
thousand,  but  no  one  knew,  —  a  vast  concourse  of  people 
under  the  open  heaven.  The  body  was  borne  from  the 
church  as  it  had  been  carried  in,  on  the  shoulders  of  Harvard 
students,  placed  upon  a  catafalque  in  sight  of  the  multitude, 
when  prayers  were  said  and  the  hymn  was  sung,  "O  God, 
our  help  in  ages  past."  Then  the  long  procession  moved, 
and  when  it  reached  Harvard  Square  at  two  o'clock,  the 
familiar  college  bell  began  to  toll,  announcing  that  the  pro- 
cession was  entering  the  college  grounds.  "  In  a  marvellously 
short  time  the  steps  of  University  and  Harvard  halls  were 
crowded,  men  poured  from  the  domitories  and  recitation  halls 
in  the  quadrangle,  and  lined  up  two  or  three  deep  on  both 
sides  of  the  driveway  from  University  to  the  entrance  gate 
between  Harvard  and  Massachusetts.  There,  with  bared 
heads,  they  stood  in  silence  while  the  carriages  passed  one  by 
one  out  of  the  yard."  Then  they  disappeared  as  silently  and 
as  quickly  as  they  had  gathered,  while  the  procession  moved 
on  to  Mount  Auburn  to  meet  another  large  assemblage  of 
people  about  tlie  open  grave.  Here  the  committal  was  said 
by  Rev.  John  C.  Brooks,  and  the  prayers  by  Rev.  Arthur 
Brooks,  who  gave  the  benediction.  So  the  body  of  Phillips 
Brooks  was  laid  to  rest,  in  the  same  lot  with  the  father  and 
mother  and  the  two  brothers,  George  and  Frederick.  And 
the  people  went  away  again  to  their  own  homes. 

These  were  among  the  tributes  to  Phillips  Brooks.  First 
the  funeral,  with  its  demonstration  of  a  people's  grief.     "In 


942  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1893 

my  long  life,"  said  Dr.  A.  P.  Peabody,  of  Harvard,  "I 
have  not  known  an  instance  in  which  the  public  loss  has 
seemed  so  great,  still  less  in  which  so  many  men  and  women 
have  had  the  sense  of  severe  public  bereavement." 

The  popular  sentiment  at  once  demanded  that  the  imposing 
figure  of  Phillips  Brooks  should  be  perpetuated  in  a  bronze 
statue,  to  be  placed  in  the  square  in  front  of  Trinity  Church. 
The  eminent  sculptor,  St.  Gaudens,  consented  to  undertake 
the  work.  In  a  few  weeks,  so  rapidly  did  the  contributions 
pour  in  to  the  treasurer  of  the  fund,  Mr.  Henry  L.  Higgin- 
son,  from  rich  and  from  poor,  that  the  announcement  was 
made  that  the  large  sum  of  $95,000  had  been  received,  and 
no  more  would  be  required. 

The  Phillips  Brooks  House,  at  Harvard,  was  the  form 
which  another  tribute  took.  To  this  fund  the  class  of  1855 
contributed  most  generously,  and  at  a  meeting,  held  in  Lon- 
don, of  the  friends  of  Phillips  Brooks,  it  was  decided  that 
to  this  fund  the  English  contributions  should  be  given. 
The  house  has  been  built  and  dedicated  to  his  memory,  and 
to  Piety,  Charity,  and  Hospitality.  On  the  tablet  in  the 
central  hall  the  inscription  reads :  — 

A    PREACHER 

OF    RIGHTEOUSNESS    AND    HOPE 

MAJESTIC    IN   STATURE    IMPETUOUS    IN    UTTERANCE 

REJOICING    IN    THE    TRUTH 

UNHAMPERED    BY    BONDS    OF    CHURCH    OR    STATION 

HE    BROUGHT    BY    HIS    LIFE    AND    DOCTRINE 

FRESH    FAITH    TO    A    PEOPLE 

FRESH    MEANING   TO    ANCIENT    CREEDS 

TO    THIS    UNIVERSITY 

HE    GAVE 

CONSTANT    LOVE,    LARGE    SERVICE,    HIGH    EXAMPLE 

Additional  endowment  has  provided  for  the  expenses 
of  the  Phillips  Brooks  House,  making  it  an  attractive  centre 
for  the  religious  and  philanthropic  work  of  the  University. 
A  special  endowment  connected  with  it  is  the  William  Belden 
Noble  Lectures,  —  a  foundation  for  perpetuating  the  influence 
of  Jesus,  as  Phillips  Brooks  proclaimed  it  in  all  the  com- 
prehensiveness of  its  scope. 


^T.  57]  THE   TRIBUTES  943 

When  the  diocesan  convention  met  in  May,  1893,  they 
chose  Rev.  William  Lawrence,  as  one  who  had  been  brought 
up  in  the  friendship  and  discipleship  of  Phillips  Brooks,  to 
be  his  successor  as  Bishop  of  Massachusetts. 

In  England  a  window  was  placed  in  St.  Margaret's,  West- 
minster, whose  inscription  was  written  at  the  request  of  Arch- 
deacon Farrar  by  the  late  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  Dr. 
Benson :  — 

Fervidus  eloqulo,  sacra  doctissimus  arte, 

Suadendi  gravibus  vera  Deumque  viris, 
Quaereris  ab  sedem  populari  voce  regendam, 

Qusereris  —  ab  sedem  rapte  domumque  Dei.^ 

There  were  other  tributes  greater  than  these,  which  cannot 
be  described,  whose  mention  is  insufficient  to  reveal  what 
they  implied.  "You  will  see,"  said  one  who  was  present  at 
the  funeral  obsequies,  "such  a  demonstration  of  Christian 
unity  as  was  never  seen  in  the  world  before."  The  prophecy 
was  realized  in  many  ways.  These  two  may  be  mentioned : 
the  United  Service  of  the  churches  of  Boston  at  the  Old 
South  Meeting-House,  on  January  30,  when  representative 
ministers  of  every  denomination  were  present  and  spoke  in 
praise  of  Phillips  Brooks;  and  another  service  "in  loving 
memory  of  Phillips  Brooks,"  held  in  Music  Hall,  New  York, 
February  16,  where  the  same  universal  range  of  Christian 
appreciation  was  manifest.  The  city  of  Boston,  also,  held 
memorial  services  to  honor  Phillips  Brooks,  in  its  municipal 
capacity,  in  Music  Hall,  April  11,  when  an  oration,  pre- 
pared by  Dr.  Samuel  Eliot,  was  read  by  Colonel  Charles  R. 
Codman. 

These  were  representative  and  formal  occasions,  and  very 
significant  they  were ;  but  even  these  yield  in  importance  to 
the  outpouring  of  the  people's  mingled  grief  and  praise,  as 
it  went  on  for  days  and  weeks  and  months,  —  the  wonderful 
afterglow  of  the  great  life.     When  the  awful   intelligence 

*  These  lines  were  rendered  by  his  son,  Mr.  Arthur  Benson  :  — 
Fervent  with  speech,  most  strong  with  sacred  art, 
To  light,  to  lift  the  struggling  human  heart ; 
To  feed  the  flock  :  Thy  people's  choice  was  given  —        . 
Required  on  earth,  but  ah  !  preferred  to  Heaven. 


944  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1893 

that  Phillips  Brooks  was  dead  fell  upon  the  city  of  Boston 
and  the  country  at  large,  it  came  with  "the  crushing  and 
stunning  effect  of  unspeakable  calamity,"  —  a  sorrow  which 
at  first  could  find  no  words.  When  the  silence  was  broken 
and  utterance  began,  it  seemed  as  though  the  resources  of 
the  English  language  were  exhausted  to  find  fitting  terms 
wherein  to  express  the  admiration  and  love  for  Phillips 
Brooks.    The  words  spoken  by  the  Rev.  George  A.  Gordon, 

Never  to  the  mansions  where  the  mighty  rest, 
Since  their  foundation  came  a  nobler  guest,  — 

seemed  like  the  Sursum  Corda  of  the  Divine  Liturgy :  — 

Lift  up  your  hearts. 

We  lift  them  up  unto  the  Lord. 

The  sorrow  and  the  mourning  were  exchanged  for  a  song 
of  triumph  and  spiritual  exultation,  —  to  the  praise  of  God 
for  Phillips  Brooks.  So  it  went  on,  as  if  it  could  have  no 
ending,  during  the  memorable  months  which  all  remember 
and  still  recall  as  something  unwonted  in  human  experi- 
ence. The  "resolutions"  adopted  by  countless  societies  and 
organizations,  by  the  clergy  in  their  associations,  —  clergy  of 
every  name  ;  the  thousands  of  private  letters,  the  memorial 
sermons  preached  in  churches  everywhere,  in  this  country  and 
in  England,  and,  indeed,  wherever  the  English  language  is 
spoken  the  world  over ;  the  articles  in  every  newspaper,  edito- 
rial and  contributed,  —  in  this  mass  of  expression,  which  no 
one  can  adequately  measure,  was  the  highest  tribute  to  Phil- 
lips Brooks.  Exaggerated,  indeed,  it  was,  for  those  who 
wrote  seemed  to  vie  with  each  other  in  the  effort  to  say  the 
strongest  things  in  his  praise,  —  exaggerated,  for  it  went  to 
the  very  verge,  and  sometimes  beyond  it,  of  what  it  is  lawful 
to  say  of  mortal  man  in  this  world,  and  yet  significant, 
not  to  be  ashamed  of,  characteristic,  in  that  it  revealed,  when 
taken  together,  what  Phillips  Brooks  had  been  to  his  age, 
and  also  made  known  the  age  itself  as  it  laid  its  inmost  being 
open  to  the  eye  of  God  and  man.  As  we  gaze  into  that  reve- 
lation of  humanity  we  discern  that  the  heart  of  man  is  reli- 
gious, made  for  God,  and  restless  till  it  finds  repose  in  Him. 


^T.  57]  THE   TRIBUTES  945 

These  are  some  of  tlie  texts  of  memorial  sermons :  — 

There  is  a  prince  and  a  great  man  fallen  this  day  in  Israel. 

And  Samuel  died ;  and  all  the  Israelites  were  gathered  together, 
and  lamented  him. 

Whatsoever  the  king  did  pleased  all  the  people. 

When  he  came  near,  the  whole  city  was  moved,  saying,  Who  is 
this? 

And  they  said  one  to  another,  Did  not  our  heart  hum  within 
us,  while  he  talked  with  us  by  the  way,  and  while  he  opened  to 
us  the  Scriptures? 

Behold,  I  have  given  him  for  a  witness  to  the  people,  a  leader 
and  commander  to  the  people. 

God  hath  anointed  thee  with  the  oil  of  gladness  above  thy 
fellows. 

At  a  service  in  Westminster  Abbey,  Canon  Duckworth 
spoke  these  words :  — 

I  think  of  the  great  American  bishop,  Phillips  Brooks,  tnat 
true  king  of  men,  whose  suddep  death  has  been  mourned  as  an 
irreparable  bereavement  in  the  churches  of  the  Old  World  as  in 
those  of  the  New.  No  more  signal  example  has  this  generation 
seen  of  that  deep,  comprehensive  work  which  the  Holy  Spirit 
accomplishes  when  He  takes  possession  of  the  whole  Vfian.  There 
was  splendid  natural  faculty,  transfigured,  raised  to  its  highest 
power,  and  dedicated  to  its  highest  use.  There  was  the  whole 
intellectual  and  moral  being  suffused  with  the  flame  of  divine 
love,  and  aglow  with  those  fervid  convictions  which  found  on  his 
lips  such  matchless  expression.  And  then  there  was  the  mag- 
netic charm  of  personal  intercourse,  the  pure  teachings  of  the 
daily  life,  filled  full  of  high  interests,  and  still  more  persuasive 
in  its  unconscious  humility,  and  self-forgetfulness,  and  sympathy, 
than  those  burning  words  which,  wherever  he  was  to  be  heard, 
drew  thousands  to  listen,  as  one  has  truly  said,  "with  an  inten- 
sity of  expectation  as  if  the  very  mystery  of  existence  were  at 
last  to  stand  revealed."  Who  could  know  him  and  remain  skep- 
tical as  to  the  reality  of  that  divine  life  which  it  is  man's  highest 
glory  to  receive  ? 

President  Warren,  of  Boston  University,  spoke  of  the 
students  for  the  Christian  ministry  whom  Phillips  Brooks 
had  influenced :  — 

They  have  gone  out  Into  all  the  world.  They  have  been  heard 
from  in  our  great  cities ;  they  are  scattered  over  the  great  valley 
J     VOL.  n 


946  PHILLIPS   BROOKS  [1893 

of  the  Mississippi;  they  are  on  the  Pacific  slope;  in  Japan, 
China,  India,  Mexico,  South  America.  They  toil  among  the 
most  varied  races  and  nationalities.  They  perpetuate  his  spirit 
and  widen  his  influence  in  the  great  human  family  beyond  any 
other  agency  whatsoever.  They  are  his  disciples  in  a  sense  and 
to  a  degree  ajjplicable  to  no  other  living  men.  They  are  the 
pupils  who,  more  than  any  others,  are  going  to  make  the  widen- 
ing progress  of  the  news  of  the  great  preacher's  death  a  widening 
progress  of  a  sense  of  personal  bereavement  until  it  encircles  the 
globe. 

Among  the  many  tributes  these  words,  in  which  the  Rt. 
Eev.  A.  W.  Thorold,  the  English  Bishop  of  Winchester, 
dedicates  a  volume  of  sermons  to  Phillips  Brooks,  will  find 
an  echo  in  the  hearts  of  all  who  knew  and  loved  him :  — 

TO   THE    DEAR    MEMORY    OF 

PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

BISHOP    OF    MASSACHUSETTS 

STRONG,    FEARLESS,    TENDER,    ELOQUENT 

INCAPABLE    OF    MEANNESS 

BLAZING    WITH    INDIGNATION    AT   ALL    KINDS    OF    WRONG 

HIS    HEART   AND    MIND    DEEP   AND    WIDE    AS 

THE    OCEAN    AT    HIS    DOOR 

SIMPLE    AND   TRANSPARENT    AS    A    CHILD 

KEEN    WITH    ALL    THE    KEENNESS    OF    HIS    RACE 

THIS   VOLUME    IS   INSCRIBED 

BY    A    BROTHER   ACROSS    THE    WATER 

WHO    CHERISHES    HIS    FRIENDSHIP   AS    A 

TREASURE    LAID    UP    IN    HEAVEN 

AT   THE    RESURRECTION    OF   THE    JUST 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abbott,  Rev.  Lyman,  ii.  724,  925. 

Adams,  Hon.  C.  F.,  i.  559. 

Adams,  C.  F.,  sketch  of  early  life  of 

Phillips  Brooks,  i.  102. 
Addison,  Rev.  C.  M.,  ii.  870. 
Advent,   Chnreh   of,    Philadelphia,    i. 

291, 293, 297, 330,  334,  346, 357,  375 ; 

ii.  761._ 
"  Advertiser,"  Boston,  ii.  830  ;  account 

of  consecration,  ii.  873. 
Agamemnon  The,  the  sonnet  on,  i.  220. 
Alexandria  Seminary,  i.  144  £P. 
Alexis,  Grand  Duke,  ii.  30. 
AUen,  Rev.  F.  B.,  ii.  384,  433,  434. 
American  Embassy,  Rome,  i.  572. 
Andover,  i.  6,  9,  10,  11,  14,  31, 48, 353, 

513;  ii.  .551,058. 
Andover  Theological  Seminary,  ii.  179. 
Antigone,  the  sonnet  on,  i.  222. 
Appleton,  W.  S.,  i.  564. 
Appleton  Chapel,  i.  247. 
Arthur,  President,  ii.  549. 
Atonement,  the,  ii.  350. 
Ayer,  M.  C,  ii.  681. 

Badger,  Rev.  H.  C,  ii.  187. 

Baillie,  Ladv  Frances,  ii.  311,  314,  325, 

335,  556,  793,  913,  923,  927. 
Bampton    Lectures,    Phillips  Brooks, 

invitation  to  deliver  them,  ii.  648. 
Bancroft,  Rev.  L.  W.,  i.  298. 
Barnes,  Rev.  Albert,  i.  453. 
Beecher,  H.  W.,  ii.  645. 
BeUows,  Rev.  H.  W.,  i.  488. 
Bible,  doctrine  of,  ii.  351,  510. 
Biddle,  James  S.,  i.  487. 
Biddle,  Mrs.  James  S.,  ii.  851. 
Bohlen,  John,   i.   525,   627,    629;    ii. 

242 
Bohlen  Lectures,  ii.  209  ff.,  242. 
Bolles,  Frank,  ii.  286. 
Boston,  England,  ii.  335. 
Boxford,  ii.  619. 
Bowen,  Professor  F.,  ii.  753. 
Bradford  Academy,  ii.  179. 
Bradley,  Dean,  ii.  325. 
Brimmer,  Martin,  ii.  7,  831. 


Brooke,  Rev.  Stopford,  ii.  271. 
Brooke,     Thomas,     founder     of     the 

Brooks  family,  i.  19. 
Brooks,  Miss  Agnes,  ii.  805. 
Brooks,  Arthur,  i.  32,  574,  579,  588, 
608 ;  ii.  56,  59,  74,  78,  94,  147,  157, 
159, 161, 162, 165,  252,  272,  310,  337, 
341,  385,  394, 418,  435, 460, 473,  549, 
562,  580, 586,  700,  703,  727,  849, 859, 
890,  901,  941. 
Brooks,  Caleb,  i.  20. 
Brooks,  Rev.  Edward,  i.  21,  23. 
Brooks,  Frederick,  i.  32,  428,  433, 455, 
460,  464,  527,  532,  588,  590,  624 ;  ii. 
41,56;  death,  ii.  98. 
Brooks,  George,  i.  31,  405,  418,  421, 

431,  432,  436,  438. 
Brooks,   Miss  Gertriide,   ii.   662,  805, 

914,  932. 
Brooks,  John,  Governor,  i.  20. 
Brooks,  John  Cotton,  i.  32,  588  ;  ii.  29, 

56,  274,  323,  756,  854,  907,  941. 
Brooks,  Mary  Anne    (Phillips),  i.   18, 
31,   35,   42,  46;  letters   to   Phillips 
Brooks,i.  207-214, 329,  422-424,  543, 
554,  590,  603,  606,  607  ;  ii.  169,  262, 
265  ;    letters  from  Phillips  Brooks, 
ii.   105,    168,    254 ;    character    and 
death,  ii.  252  ff. 
Brooks,  Peter  Chardon,  i.  25,  27  ff. 
Brooks,  Phillips,  birth,  i.  31. 
early  life,  i.  48. 
first  school,  i.  49. 
first  letter,  i.  49. 
Adams  School,  i.  51. 
indifference  to  games,  i.  51. 
Boston  Latin  School,  i.  52  ;  first  com- 
position, i.  .58. 
early  essays,  i.  58-65  ;  first  verses,  i. 

66. 
enters  Harvard  College,  i.  68 ;  college 

societies,  i.  70. 
reading,  i.  7.5-76. 
college  essays,  i.  77-87. 
relig^ious  attitude  in  college,  i.  89-90. 
Commencement  part,  i.  98. 
usher  in  Latin  School,  i.  100,  105. 


950 


INDEX 


letters  to  G.  C.  Sawyer,  i.  112-116. 

resigns  ushership,  i.  116. 

poem  "  Ruth,"  i.  127. 

enters  Alexandria  Seminary,  i.  148. 

note-books,  i.  178. 

his  reading,  first  year,  i.  179  £F. 

verse-writing,  i.  183. 

confirmation,  i.  196. 

summer  vacation,  i.  197  £f. 

returns  to  Alexandria,  i.  200. 

letters  home  describing  life  in   the 
seminary,  i.  200  ff. 

letters  from  home,  i.  205  ff. 

reading  in  second  year,  i.  218 ;  son- 
nets, i.  219  ff. 

philosophical  tendencies,  i,  223. 

summer  vacation,  1858,  i.  268. 

returns  to  Alexandria,  i.  273. 

takes  charge  of  preparatory  depart- 
ment, i.  274. 

first  sermon,  i.  280. 

call  to  Church  of  the  Advent,  Phila- 
delphia, i.  291. 

Commencement  part  and  Ordination, 
i.  299. 

verses  on  first  sermon,  i.  322. 

begins  ministry  in  Philadelphia,  i. 
330. 

preaches  for  Dr.  Vinton,  i.  334. 

comment  on  hanging  of  John  Brown, 
i.  337. 

call  to  Harrisburg,  i.  344. 

call  to  Cincinnati,  i.  344. 

ordination  to  the  priesthood,  i.  346. 

summer  vacation,  1860,  i.  353. 

calls  from  Providence,  Newport,  and 
San  Francisco,  i.  356. 

call  to  Holy  Trinity,  Philadelphia,  i. 
357. 

letters  to  members  of  his  family,  i. 
358-375. 

letter    declining    Holy    Trinity,    i. 
866. 

resigns  the  Advent,  i.  381. 

preaches  in  St.  Paul's  and  Trinity, 
Boston,  i.  384. 

visits  Niagara,  i.  403. 

first  journey  to  White  Mountains,  i. 
404. 

call  to  St.  Paul's,  Brookline,  i.  409. 

attracted    to   mission    life   in    Cali- 
fornia, i.  429. 

anxiety  about  progress  of  the  war,  i. 
434. 

letter  to  his  brother  George  in  camp, 

i.  436. 
the  Emancipation  Proclamation,   i. 

437. 
letter  to  his  mother  on  the  death  of 
his  brother  George,  i.  441. 


parish  work  and   preaching,  i.  444, 

445. 
acquaintance   with    Dr.    Washburn 

and  Bishop  Clark  begins,  i.  446. 
vigorous    advocacy    of    the    Union 

cause,  i.  448  ff. 
goes     to    Gettysburg    to    care    for 

wounded  and  prisoners,  i.  454, 
White  Mountains,  1863,  i.  456. 
protest   against    Bishop    Hopkins's 

tract  on  slavery,  i.  461. 
interest  in  colored  people,  i.  464. 
Thanksgiving  sermon,  1863,  i.  466. 
first  "  watch  meeting,"  1863,  i.  478. 
decides  to  resign  Holy  Trinity,  and 

accept   professorship   in    Divinity 

School,  i.  480. 
determines  to  remain  at   Holy  Trin- 
ity, i.  493. 
studies  in  Mohammedanism,  i.  497. 
sermon  on  the  Prayer  Book,  i.  510. 
work  among  soldiers,  i.  519. 
calls  from  San  Francisco,  i.  525. 
prayer  at  Independence  Hall  after 

fall  of  Richmond,  i.  530. 
sermon  on  death  of  Lincoln,  i.  534. 
estimate  of  Lincoln,  i.  539. 
Commencement  sermon  at  Divinity 

School,  i.  547. 
prayer    at    the  Commemoration    of 

Harvard  men  who  fell  in  the  war, 

i.  550. 
goes  abroad  for  a  year,  1865,  i.  556. 
meets  German  professors  at  Halle, 

i.  562. 
preaches  in  Rome,  i.  572. 
letter      to     Arthur      Brooks     from 

Athens,  i.  574. 
preaches  in  Athens,  i.  575. 
Holy  Week  at  Rome,  18G6,  i.  580. 
impressions  of  Browning,  i.  583. 
speech  in  behalf  of  freedmen,  i.  584. 
interest    in    Southern    churches,    i. 

585. 
completion  of  tower  of  Holy  Trinity, 

i.  587. 
invited  to  be   dean   of  Theological 

School,  Cambridge,  i.  587. 
study  of  Sibylline  Oracles,  i.  594. 
impression  of  Pan-Anglican  Synod, 

1867,  i.  595. 
letter    to  Dean    Stanley    regarding 

Bishop  Hopkins,  i.  596. 
begins   to   preach  in  non-Episcopal 

churches,  i.  .599. 
call  to  be  rector  of  Trinity  Church, 

Boston,  1868,  i.  601. 
call  declined,  i.  605. 
chaplain.  Memorial  Hall,  Harvard, 

i.  607. 


INDEX 


951 


letter  to  Hon.  R.  C.  Winthrop,  i.  616. 

convention  sermon,  i.  (519, 

Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration  at  Brown, 
i.  625. 

renewal  of  call  from  Trinity,  Bos- 
ton, i.  627. 

resigns  Holy  Trinity,  i.  628. 

preaches  at  West  Point,  i.  630. 

closes  ministry  at  Holy  Trinity,  i. 
6.30. 

begins  rectorship  of  Trinity,  Boston, 
ii.  1. 

speech  in  Music  Hall  on  behalf  of 
Fine  Arts  Museum,  ii.  29. 

Army  of  the  Potomac  reunion,  ii.  30. 

A.  and  H.  Artillery  Company  ser- 
mon, ii.  30. 

Peace  Jubilee,  ii.  31. 

Overseer  of  Harvard  College,  1870, 
ii.  33. 

Member  State  Board  of  Education, 
ii.  33. 

address  at  Vassar,  ii.  33. 

summer  in  Europe,  1870,  ii.  40. 

preaches  at  Yale,  ii.  48. 

summer  abroad,  1872,  ii.  51. 

meets  Prince  Oscar,  ii.  52. 

the  Great  Boston  Fire,  ii.  07. 

nominated  for  Bishop  of  Massachu- 
setts, 1873,  ii.  82. 

oration  at  Andover,  ii.  85. 

addresses  Andover  students,  ii.  91. 

Price  Lecture  in  King's  Chapel,  ii. 
93. 

summer  abroad,  1874,  ii.  94. 

preaches  in  Westminster  Abbey,  ii. 
94. 

services  in  Huntington  Hall,  ii.  101. 

addxess  on  "  Milton  "  at  Worcester, 
ii.  117. 

address  on  "  Courage,"  ii.  118. 

building  of  the  new  church,  ii.  122. 

consecration  of  the  new  church,  ii. 
136. 

Yale  lectures  on  Preaching,  ii.  146. 

summer  abroad,  1877,  ii.  151. 

preaches  in  \7estminster  a  second 
time,  ii.  152. 

receives  degree  of  D.  D.  from  Har- 
vard, ii.  153. 

attends  Church  Congress  in  N.  Y.,  ii. 
157. 

visits  Philadelphia,  ii.  158. 

summer  at  Hingham,  1878,  ii.  162. 

entertains  Dean  Stanley,  ii.  164. 

death  of  his  father,  ii.  165  ff. 

Lectures  on  Preaching,  ii.  179  ff. 

publishes  first  volume  of  sermons, 
ii.  188  ff. 


lectures  at  Yale  on  "  Teaching  of 

Eeligion,"  ii.  196  ff. 
Bohlen   Lectures  on  "Influence  of 

Jesus,"  ii.  209. 
visits  Philadelphia  for  Bohlen  Lec- 
tures, ii.  242. 
preaches  at  diocesan  convention,  ii. 

245. 
death  of  his  mother,  ii.  252  ff. 
preaches  at  Windsor  Castle  before 

the  Queen,  ii.  267. 
preaches  in  Westminster  Abbey,  ii. 

268. 
asked  to  be  provost  of  University  of 

Pennsylvania,  ii.  277. 
called  to  be   preacher   to   Harvard 

and  professor  of  Christian  Ethics, 

ii.  277  ff. 
memorial  sermon  on  Dr.  Vinton,  ii. 

305. 
article  on  Dean  Stanley,  ii.  312. 
speech  at  Church  Congress,  1881,  ii. 

315. 
second  volume  of  sermons,  ii.  319. 
collects    subscrijitions    for    Chapter 

House  of  Westminster,  ii.  324. 
a  year  abroad,  1882-83,  ii.  329. 
in  Germany,  ii.  3.38. 
religious  convictions,  ii.  346. 
in  India,  ii.  383. 
in  Spain,  U.  420. 
in  London,  ii.  424. 
returns  to  Boston,  ii.  441. 
sermon  in  Trinity  Church,  ii.  442. 
attends  General  Convention  in  Phila- 
delphia, ii.  459. 
address  on  Luther  in  New  York,  ii. 

461. 
Church  Congress  address,  1884,   ii. 

487. 
visits  Washington,  1884,  ii.  549. 
lectures   on    "  Tolerance "    in   New 

York,  1885,  ii.  560. 
oration  at  Latin  School  Anniversary, 

ii.  562. 
visits  England,  1885,  ii.  565. 
receives  D.  D.  at  Oxford,  ii.  568. 
visits  Cambridge,  ii.  571. 
elected  assistant  bishop  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, 1886,  ii.  602. 
visits  California,  ii.  612. 
elected  to  first  Board  of  Preachers, 

Harvard  College,  ii.  616. 
attends  General  Convention,  Chicago, 

1886,  ii.  629. 
preaches   in    Trinity    on    changing 

name  of  Episcopal  Church,  ii.  632. 
preaches   at  250th   Anniversary   of 

Harvard  College,  ii.  639. 


952 


INDEX 


takes  part  in  200th  anniversary  of 
King's  Chapel,  ii.  642. 

preaches  in  Faneuil  Hall,  ii.  6.52. 

raises  !p50,00l)  for  the  building  of 
St.  Andrew's,  ii.  657 

spends  summer  abroad,  1887,  ii.  662. 

attends  Queen's  Jubilee  in  West- 
minster Abbey,  ii.  663. 

ill  at  Geneva,  ii.  666. 

attends  Church  Congress  at  Louis- 
ville, ii.  667 

accident  in  Philadelphia,  ii.  670. 

preaches  at  National  Prison  Con- 
gress, ii.  689. 

opens  St.  Andrew's  Church,  ii.  691. 

is  urged  to  go  abroad  by  Proprietors 
of  Trinity,  ii.  709, 

visits  Japan,  1889,  ii.  711. 

addresses  students  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege, ii.  718. 

attends  General  Convention  in  New 
York,  ii.  719. 

addresses  Evangelical  Alliance,  ii. 
725. 

addresses  Chamber  of  Commerce,  ii. 
732. 

speaks  at  dinner  of  Leather  Trade, 
ii.  733. 

preaches  a  course  of  Lent  sermons 
at  St.  Paul's  Church,  ii.  736. 

preaches  a  course  of  Lent  sermons  at 
Trinity  Church,  New  York,  ii.  737. 

preaches  Baccalaureate  Sermon  at 
Harvard,  ii.  752. 

preaches  Baccalaureate  Sermon  at 
Institute  of  Technology,  ii.  752. 

goes  abroad,  1890,  ii.  755. 

attends  Church  Congress,  1890,  ii. 
758. 

addresses  Harvard  students  on  the 
Ininistry,  ii.  S()2. 

his  power  in  the  sick-room,  ii.  807. 

his  last  Lent  addresses  in  Trinity, 
Boston,  1891,  ii.  817. 

preaches  Lent  sermons  to  men  at 
St.  Paul's,  Boston,  ii.  819. 

preaches  sermon  on  Bishop  Paddock, 
ii.  823. 

elected  bishop,  ii.  827. 

resigns  preachership  at  Harvard,  ii. 
850. 

resigns  rectorship  of  Trinity,  ii.  861. 

attends  Alumni  dinner.  Episcopal 
Theological  School,  ii.  865. 

preaches  in  New  York,  ii.  866. 

preaches  in  Appleton  Chapel  for  the 
last  time,  ii.  866. 

consecrated  bishop,  ii.  873. 

asked  to  remain  in  rectory,  ii.  879. 


reception  by  Episcopalian  Club,  ii. 

881. 

presides    at    Church     Congress     in 
Washington,  ii.  883. 

visitation  of  his  diocese,  ii.  888. 

suffers  from  grippe,  ii.  890. 

visits  Philadelphia,  ii.  891. 

Lent  lectures  at  Trinity,  ii.  891. 

noon  addresses  to  men  at  St.  Paul's, 
ii.  892. 

goes  abroad,  1892,  ii.  903. 

preaches  in  Westminster  Abbey,  ii. 
903. 

returns  on  the  Pavonia,  ii.  908. 

visits  Philadelphia,  ii.  913. 

attends  General  Convention,  Balti- 
more, ii.  915. 

addresses  Johns  Hopkins   students, 
ii.  916. 

dedication   of   Diocesan    House,   ii. 
919. 

attends  dinner  of  New  England  So- 
ciety in  Brooklyn,  ii.  928. 

watch  night    service   at  Trinity,  ii. 
930. 

consecrates  St.  Mary's,  East  Boston, 
ii.  932. 
Brooks,  Samiiel,  son  of  Caleb  Brooks, 

married  Sarah  Boylstou,  i.  21. 
Brooks,  Miss  Susan,  ii.  805. 
Brooks,  William  Gray,  i.  29  ;  marriage 

to  Mary  Anne  PhUlips,  i.  31;  charac- 
ter, i.  34, 42  ;  confirmation,  i.  44, 117 ; 

letters  to  Phillips  Brooks,  i.  205-207, 

300,  435  ;  visit  to  Alexandria,  i.  298 ; 

to  Philadelphia,  i.  399  ;  letters  from 

Phillips  Brooks  to,  i.  157-167,  333, 

418, 477, 484,  496,  515, 520,  523, 589, 

597, 602, 623 ;  letter  to  Phillips  Brooks 

warning  him  against  radicalism,  i. 

522;   on  a  year  abroad,  i.  546,  622, 

624,  627  ;  death,  ii.  165. 
Brooks,  William  Gray,  Jr.,  i.  31,  278, 

337,342,  417, 428,  429,  442-443,  462, 

474, 475, 479, 485, 521, 523,  526,  542, 

625;  ii.  399,  421,671,936. 
Brooks,  Mrs.  W.  G.,  Jr.,  ii.  602, 910. 
Brooks,  Rev.  W.  H.,  ii.  897. 
Brown,  Abigail,  i.  23. 
Browne,  Elder,  controversy  with  Rev. 

George  Phillips,  i.  4. 
Browne,  Rev.  Percy,  i.  609 ;  ii.  52,  57, 

105,  300, 337,  403,  892,  930,939. 
Browning,  estimate  of,  i.  583. 
Bryce,  Professor   James,  ii.   669,  809, 

885. 
Buck,  Rev.  G.  H.,  letter  to,  ii.  708. 
Burne-Jones,  ii.  335. 
Bunsen,  Baron  George  von,  ii.  368,  392. 


INDEX 


9S3 


Capen,  Miss,  first  teacher  of  Phillips 

Brooks,  i.  49. 
Carols,  "  O  little  town  of  Bethlehem," 

and  others,  i.  581,  610;  ii.  713. 
Chase,  Thomas,  ii.  304. 
Chase,  Chief  Justice,  i.  584. 
Choate,  Joseph  H.,  ii.  864. 
Choephori,  The,  sonnet  on,  i.  220. 
Choirs,  surpliced  female,  ii.  755. 
Christology,  ii.  348. 
Chunder  Sen,  ii.  394. 
Church,  the,  ii.  354. 
Church  Congress,  ii.  81,  157,  758. 
Civil  Service  Reform,  ii.  721. 
Clark,  Rt.  Rev.  T.  M.,  i.  446  ;  ii.  4,  457, 

857,  884, 906, 940. 

Clarke,  Rev.  James  Freeman,  ii.  140, 
685,  693. 

Clericus  Cluh,  Boston,  ii.  57,  91,  196, 
,337,  488,  523,  762,  780,  867,  931. 

Clericus  Club,  PhUadelphia,  i.  609. 

Codman,  C.  R.,  i.  420 ;  ii.  7,  54,  297, 
327. 

Cofian,  Lemuel,  i.  389,  555,  628  ;  ii.  605. 

Columbia  College,  ii.  647. 

Communion  service,  at  Trinity,  ii.  797. 

Convention,  General,  1883,  ii.  4.59. 

Cooke,  Prof.  J.  P.,  ii.  282. 

Cooper,  Rev.  Charles  D.,  i.  340,  889, 
547,  608,  618,  624  ;  ii.  40,  75,  1.'55, 
1.58,  1.59, 161, 162,  166,  326,  .327, 328, 
401, 434,  459,  472, 577, 603, 638,  753, 

858,  803,  891,  902. 
Cornell  University,  ii.  799. 

Cotton,  Rev.   John,  address  upon,  by 

Phillips  Brooks,  i.  24. 
Cremation,  ii.  787. 
Cummins,  Bishop,  ii.  79. 

Dalton,  Edward,  ii.  .50. 
Deblois,  Stephen  G.,  ii.  1.39. 
Deland,  L.  F.,  ii.  652,  815,  922,  937. 
Derby,  Miss  Lucy,  ii.  5.53,  560. 
Dexter,  George  M.,  i.  460,  002,  605, 

627  ;  ii.  7,  70. 
Dillaway,  C.  H.,  ii.  563. 
Dillon,  Richard,  sexton  of  Trinity,  ii. 

68,  70. 
Divinity  School,  Philadelphia,  i.  480, 

32. 
Dix,  Rev.  Morgan,  ii.  737. 
Donald,  Rev.  E.  W.,  ii.  132,  674,  911, 

930. 
Drown,  Rev.  E.  L.,i.  196. 
Duckworth,  Canon,  ii.  945. 
Dyer,  Rev.  Heman,   i.  344,  387,  409  ; 

"ii.  668. 

Eastburn,  Rt.  Rev.  Manton,  i.  196,  295, 
458 ;  ii.  3,  16,  49,  56,  76. 


Eliot,  C.  W.,  i.  122  ;  ii.  30, 279,  831. 

Eliot,  Samuel,  ii.  391. 

Ellis,  Rev.  George  E.,  ii.  143, 284. 

Emmanuel  Church,  Boston,  i.  526,  618  ; 
ii.  150. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  ii.  29. 

Episcopal  Theological  School,  Cam- 
bridge, i.  587 ;  ii.  736,  865, 881. 

Eumenides,  The,  sonnet  on,  i.  221. 

Evangelical  Alliance,  ii.  725. 

Evangelical  Education  Society,  ii.  72, 
74,  75. 

Evangelical  theology,  Brooks's  diver- 
gence from,  ii.  668. 

Everett,  Edward,  i.  212,  472. 

Ewer,  Rev.  F.  C,  i.  647. 

Faneuil  Hall,  sermons  in,  ii.  651,  701, 

788. 
Farrar,  Rev.  F.  W.,  ii.  152,  554,  566, 

576,  581,  7.52,  903,  943. 
First  Church  in  Boston,  i.  24,  36,  38 ; 

ii.  274. 
Fisher,  Rev.  Professor  G.  P.,  i.  626. 
Foote,  Rev.  H.  W.,  ii.  93. 
Foxcroft,  Phoebe,  i.  12,  14  ;  ii.  778. 
Franks,  Rev.  James  P.,  i.  506,  514, 530, 

553,  588 ;  ii.  57,  153,  309,  334,  422, 

435,  865,  881,  937. 
Fremantle,  Canon,  ii.  95. 
Frothingham,  Rev.  N.  L.,  i.  36,  38; 

letter  on  Thanksgiving  sermon,  i.  472, 
Frothingham,  Rev^  O.  B.,  ii.  140. 
Furness,  Dr.,  i.  600. 

Galloupe,  C.  W.,  ii.  8. 

Gardner,  Francis,  i.  58, 107, 108 ;  eulogy 

on,  by  Phillips  Brooks,  i.  111. 
Garrison,  Rev.  J.  F.,  ii.  283. 
Gibson,  Rev.  Mr.,  i.  299. 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  ii.  572. 
Globe  Theatre,  ii.  701. 
God,  nature  of,  ii.  346. 
Goethe,  sonnet  on,  i.  272. 
Good  Friday  service  at  the  Old  South, 

ii.  821. 
Goodwin,  Rev.  D.  L.,  i.  511,  524. 
Gordon,  Rev.  George  A.,  ii.  781,  897, 

944. 
Gorham,  Lydia,  i.  17. 
Grafton,  Bishop  C  C,  ii.  700. 
Grant,    Gen.    U.    S.,  i.   547;    ii.  151, 

575. 
Griffis,  Rev.  W.  E.,  ii.  710. 
Grimm,  Professor  H.,  ii.  374. 
Groton  School,  ii.  790. 
Grove,  Sir  George,  ii.  314. 

Hale,  Rev.  Edward  E.,  ii.  29,  882. 
Hall,  Rt.  Rev.  A.  C.  A.,  ii.  862. 


954 


INDEX 


Hall,  Mrs.  R.  J.,  ii.  250. 

"  Happiness  and  Content,"  sonnet,  ii. 

756. 
Harlan,  Judge,  ii.  778. 
Harvard  Club,  N.  Y.,  ii.  804. 
Harvard  CoUege,  i.  68, 70, 71, 405,  513, 

548 ;  ii.  28,  153,  277,  460,  614,  752, 

802,  866. 
Harvard  College,  lines  on,  i.  348. 
Harvard  Commemoration  Day,  i.  548. 
Harvard  Memorial  Hall,  i.  607. 
Harwood,  Rev.  E.,  ii.  48,  49,  74. 
Hasty  Pudding  Club,  i.  76,  80,  393. 
Hedge,  Rev.  F.  H.,  i.  513 ;  ii.  30. 
Higginson,  Henry  L. ,  ii.  294. 
Hill,  Dr.,  of  Athens,  i.  323,  575,  577. 
Hingham,  ii.  162. 
Hoar,  Senator,  ii.  584. 
Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  ii.  338,  686. 
Holy  Trinity  Church,  Philadelphia,  i. 

334,  357,  366,  380,  533,  598  ;  ii.  274. 
Hooper,  E.  W.,  ii.  561. 
Hopkins,  Bishop  John  Henry,  tract  on 

slavery,  i.  460 ;  Pan- Anglican  Synod, 

i.  595. 
Hopkins,  Rev.  John  H.,  ii.  284,  838, 

858. 
Huntington,  Rt.  Rev.  F.  D.,  i.  298,526, 

618. 
Huntington,  Rev.  W.  R.,  i.  528,  551 ; 

ii.  82,  293,  315,  457,  558,  694,  782, 

853,  902. 

Ince,  Professor,  ii.  568. 

Indian  religion,  impressions  of,  ii.  407. 

Individualism,  ii.  226. 

"  Influence  of  Jesus,"  ii.  209. 

Ingersoll,  Robert,  ii.  647. 

Institute  of  Technology,  ii.  799. 

Ipswich,  ii.  248. 

Jerome,  sonnet  on,  i.  223. 

Johns  Hopkins  University,  ii.  790. 

Jowett,  Professor,  ii.  648. 

Keller,  Helen,  ii.  806. 

Kidner,  Rev.  R.,  u.  656,  665,  792. 

King's  Chapel,  i.  93. 

Kirk,  Rev.  E.  N.,  i.  298. 

Knowles,  Rev.  John,  i.  3. 

La  Farge,  John,  ii.  134. 

Latin  School,  Boston,  i.  52-54,  57, 100 ; 

ii.  562. 
Lawrence,  Rt.  Rev.  W..  ii.  28,  90,  800, 

887,  920. 
Learoyd,  Rev.  C.  H.,  ii.  452,  457,  923. 
Leat.hes,  Professor  Stanley,  ii.  95. 
"  Lectures  on  Preaching,' '  ii.  175. 
Lee,  Col.  Henry,  i.  551 ;  ii.  709. 


Lefroy,    Rev.   G.    A.,    ii.    390,    477, 

687 
Lincoln,  death  of,  i.  533. 
Long,  John  D.,  ii.  289. 
Loring,  Rev.  Bailey,  i.  39. 
Lotze,  ii.  .341,  534. 
Lovering,  Professor  J.,  ii.  702. 
Lowell,  J.  R.,  ii.  831. 
Lyman,  Dr.,  ii.  163. 
Lyman,  Theodore,  ii.  136. 
Leeds,  Rev.  George,  i.  564. 
"  Life,"  lines  on,  ii.  366. 

Maconachie,  Robert,  ii.  390,  688,  907. 
Marriage  and  Divorce,  ii.  719. 
Massachusetts    Historical   Society,    ii. 

244. 
Matlack,  Rev.  R.  C,  i.  158,  449;  ii. 

72,  75. 
Mcllvaine,  Bishop,  i.  426. 
McVickar,  Rt.  Rev.  W.  N.,  ii.  37,  49, 

156,  241,  274,  334, 400, 476, 575,  608, 

660,  694,  701,710,758,  891,905,906, 

926. 
Meade,  Bishop,  i.  299. 
Melville,  Rev.  Henry,  i.  559. 
Meredith,  Miss,  ii.  158,  692. 
Merrill,  Moses,  ii.  563. 
Messer,  Mrs.,  ii.  268,  272. 
Milman,  Dean,  i.  559. 
"  Mind  Cure,"  ii.  662,  787. 
Miracles,  ii.  735. 
Missionaries  in  India,  ii.  414. 
Missions,  foreign,  i.  322. 
''Missions,"  ii.  561. 
Mitchell,  Miss  Elizabeth  K.,  i.  632  ;  ii. 

37-40,  43-51,  66-69,  80,  83-89. 
MitcheU,  Dr.  S.  Weir,  i.  339,  389,  454 ; 

"  An      Appreciation     of       Phillips 

Brooks,"i.631;  ii.  41,  55, 99, 388,  438, 

555,  919,  926. 
Mohammedanism,  i.  497. 
Montgomery,  Rev.  H.  H.,  ii.  550,  708. 
Moody,  Dwight  L.,  ii.  148. 
MorrUl,  C.  J.,  ii.  794,  8J9. 
Morris,  William,  ii.  335. 
Mulford,  Rev.  Elisha,  ii.  309. 

"  Natnra  Naturans,"  ii.  457. 
Newton,  Rev.  R.  H.,  ii.  419,  559. 
Newton,  W.  W.,  i.  410,  609 ;  ii.  49,  57, 

473,  687,  754,  863. 
Nyegaard,  M.,  ii.  475,  576. 

Old  South  Church,  Boston,  i.  599,  617  ; 

ii.  821. 
Origen,  sonnet  on,  i.  222. 
Osgood,  Rev.  David,  i.  25, 26,  27. 

Packard,  Professor  Joseph,  i.  177. 


INDEX 


955 


Paddock,  Rt.  Rev.  B.  H.,  ii.  82,  93, 

458,  611,  822. 
Paddock,  Rev.  Wilbur  F.,  i.  339,  390; 

ii.  168,  248,  602. 
Paine,  Robt.  Treat,  ii.  7,  8, 47,  51,  57, 

96,  97,  137,  290,  336,  387, 390,  432, 

574,  612,  664,  714,  821,  851,888,  905. 
Paine,  Mrs.  R.  T.,  ii.  405,  586,  669, 698, 

881. 
Park,  Professor  E.  A.,  ii.  90. 
Parker,  Chas.  H.,  i.  602;  ii.  7,  8,  297, 

862. 
Parks,  Miss  Alice,  ii.  849. 
Parks,  Rev.  Leigliton,  ii.  160,  672, 855, 

860,  923,  937. 
Peabody,  Rev.  A.  P.,  ii.  897,  942. 
Peabody,  Rev.  F.  G.,  ii.  617,  757,  850, 

865. 
Phillips,  Rev.  George,  i.  1,  3,  4. 
PhUlips,  Hon.  John,  i.  17,  18. 
Phillips,  Judge  Samuel,  i.  10-13,  15. 
Phillips,  Hon.  Samuel,  i.  10. 
Phillips,  Rev.  Samuel,  i.  6,  8,  9. 
Phillips,  Samuel,  of  Salem,  i.  6. 
Phillips,  Rev.  Samuel,  pastor  of  church 

at  Rowley,  i.  5. 
PhiUips,  Susan,  i.  42,  50, 417, 523,  527 ; 

ii.  253,  383,  421. 
PhiUips,  Wendell,  i.  417 ;  ii.  547. 
Phillips  Academy,  Andover,  i.  13  ;  ii. 

161. 
Phillips  Academy,  Exeter,  ii.  161. 
Phillips  Brooks'  House,  Harvard  Col- 
lege, ii.  942. 
Philo,  sonnet  on,  i.  229. 
Plumptre,  Dean,  ii.  249,  314. 
Pomfret,  i.  513. 

Potter,  Rt.  Rev.  Alonzo,  i.  346,  461. 
Potter,  Rt.  Rev.  H.  C,  i.  578,  601 ;  ii. 

4,  82,  _6G9,_754,  850,  877,  880,  940. 
Prayer,  ii.  350. 
Prayer  meetings  at  Alexandria,  i.  318, 

319. 
Princeton,  ii.  790. 
Prison  Congress,  ii.  689. 
Pynchon,  Rev.  T.  R.,  ii.  563. 

Rabaut,  dissertation  upon,  by  Phillips 

Brooks,  i.  98. 
Randolph,  Rt.  Rev.  A.  M.,  student  life 

at  Alexandria,  i.  176,  299  ;  583,  585, 

611 ;  ii.  940. 
Redner,   Lewis  H.,  organist  of   Holy 

Trinity,  i.  476,  518,  .586,  610. 
Reed,  Benjamin  Tyler,  i.  588. 
Reed,  Rev.  James,  ii.  273. 
Remsen,  Mr.,  i.  298,  299,  338. 
Revelation,  ii.  347. 
Reynolds,  Dr.  Edward,  i.  614. 
Rice,  Alex.  H.,  ii.  638. 


Richards,  Rev.  C.  A.  L.,  student  life 
at  Alexandria,  i.  171,  406 ;  Phillips 
Brooks  and  the  Union,  i.  449, 453, 
460.  583,  587,  589,  608  ;  ii.  413,  755, 
760, 855. 

Richardson,  H.  H.,  ii.  7,  122,  132,  133, 
334,  621. 

"  Robert  Elsmere,"  ii.  692. 

Roberts,  Rev.  W.  D.,  ii.  692. 

Rome,  Holy  Week,  i.  580. 

Ropes,  John  C,  ii.  7,  57,  334,  795. 

Ross,  Rev.  H.,  ii.  900. 

Rowley,  ii.  619. 

St.  Andrew's  Church,  ii.  656,  6&1,669, 
691,  792,  869. 

St.  John's  Memorial,  Cambridge, 
monthly  sermon  by  PhUlips  Brooks, 
ii.  27. 

St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  sermon  in,  ii. 
471. 

St.  Paul's  Church,  Boston,  i.  41-43, 
384,  457  ;  ii.  557,  736,  819. 

St.  Paul's  School,  Concord,  i.  634. 

Sawyer,  George  C,  i.  70  ;  college  rem- 
iniscences, i.  70,  93,  95, 112,  119,  151, 
156,  161,  168,  215. 

Schopenhauer,  ii.  539. 

Seeley,  Professor  J.  R.,  ii.  213. 

Sermon,  first,  lines  on,  i.  322. 

Sharon  Mission,  Alexandria,  Va.,  i.  290, 
291. 

Shelley,  sonnet  on,  i.  138. 

Sibylline  Oracles,  Phillips  Brooks's  in- 
terest in  them,  i.  594. 

Smith,  Goldwin,  i.  506. 

Smith,  Rev.  John  Cotton,  u.  4,  80. 

Smith,  Rev.  R.  Cotton,  ii.  701. 

Sociology,  ii.  224. 

Sowdon,  A.  J.  C,  ii.  862,  879,  881,  889, 
915,  940. 

Sparrow,  Rev.  Dr.,  i.  274,  275,  285, 
298,  309 ;  ii.  81. 

Stanley,  Dean  A.  P.,  i.  596;  ii.  94, 
151,  152,  164,  311,  793. 

Stanley,  H.  M.,  ii.  864, 

Stepniak,  ii.  865. 

Stevens,  Bishop,  ii.  607. 

StiU^,  Professor  C.  J.,  i.  460,  488. 

Stone,  Rev.  A.  L.,  i.  439.  _ 

Stone,  Rev.  James  Kent,  i.  454. 

Stone,  Rev.  John  S.,  i.  41,  605 ;  n.  27, 
57,  187 ;  death  of,  ii.  326. 

Strong,  Rev.  G.  A.,  reminiscences  of 
life  at  Alexandria  Seminary,  i.  170, 
269,  339;  letters  from  PhUlips 
Brooks,  i.  427,  578,  608,  618,  625 ;  ii. 
69,  99,  164,  167,  251,  385,  404,  474. 
586,  691. 

Sumner,  Senator  Charles,  i.  552. 


956 


INDEX 


Temple  Church,  sermon  in,  ii.  470. 

Tennyson,  ii.  428,  765,  904. 

"The  House  in  Boston,"  sonnet,  ii. 
908. 

Thanksgiving  Day  Sermons,  ii.  695. 

Thayer,  Mrs.  N.,  ii.  912. 

Theological  Seminary,  Andover,  found- 
ing of,  i.  14. 

Thomas,  Rev.  Reuen,  ii.  901. 

Thorold,  Bishop,  ii.  314,  946. 

Tiffany,  Rev.  C.  C,  ii.  5,  293. 

"Tolerance,"  lectures  on,  ii.  498. 

Trinity  Church,  Boston,  i.  384,  457, 
459  ;  calls  Phillips  Brooks  to  rector- 
ship, i.  601,  605,  617  ;  renews  call, 
1869,  i.  627,  629  ;  ii.  1 ;  destroyed  by 
fire,  1872,  ii.  8 ;  building  of  the  new 
church,  ii.  124;  consecration,  ii.  136  ; 
Sunday  evening  services  in  Lent, 
ii.  159,  789 ;  last  sermon  as  rector,  ii. 
867. 

Trinity  Club,  ii.  651,  762. 

Trinity  Dispensary,  ii.  792. 

Truth,  sonnet  on,  ii.  356. 

TuUoch,  Principal,  ii.  121. 

Twenty  Club,  ii.  648. 

Tyng,  Rev.  S.  H.,  i.  298  ;  ii.  146, 149. 

Vail,  Bishop,  ii.  564. 
Vaughan,  Rev.  C.  J.,  ii.  573. 
Venice,  sonnet  on,  ii.  381. 
Verses  : 

"  A  Picture,"  ii.  364. 

"  A  Young  Face,"  i.  327. 

"  Madonna  and  Child,"  ii.  757. 

"  No  wonder,  if  'tis  thus  he  looks," 

ii.  854. 
"  Our  souls  are  tethered  round  and 

round,"  i.  253. 
"  Smile  on  old  Earth  and  dream  that 

now,"  i.  232. 
"  The  while  I  listened  came  a  word," 

ii.  872. 
"  Truth,"  i.  243. 

"  Upon  the  brow  God  lays  his  hand," 
i.  231. 


"  We  sit  together  in  our  soul's  high 
window,  dearest,"  i.  328. 

Victoria,  Queen,  ii.  267. 

Vincent  Hospital,  ii.  792. 

Vinton,  Rev.  A.  H.,  i.  43 ;  writes  to 
Phillips  Brooks  and  his  brothers,  ii. 
56 ;  142,  280 ;  estimate  of  early 
preaching  of  Phillips  Brooks,  i.  336 
493, 495,  513,  547, 587  ;  letter  on  the 
call  to  Trinity,  1868,  ii.  604,  629  ;  ii 
49,  57,59,136,  170,301 ;  death,ii.305, 

Walden,  Rev.  Treadwell,  i.  446,  514 

ii.  57. 
Walker,  President  James,  i.  121. 
Warren,  President,  ii.  832. 
Washburn,  Rev.  E.  A.,  i.  446  ;  ii.  74. 
"  Watch  Night "  at  Trinity,  ii.  699, 729, 

930. 
Waterson,  Rev.  Robert  C,  ii.  171. 
Watertown,  i.  2,  19. 
Wednesday  evening  lectures  at  Trinity, 

ii.  508. 
Wellesley  College,  ii.  800. 
Wendell,  Evart,  ii.  390. 
Westminster  Abbey,  ii.  94,  268,  471, 

566. 
Wharton,    Rev.   Dr.   Francis,  i.  606 ; 

ii.  27. 
White,  Hannah,  i.  7.  • 

Whitehouse,  Rt.  Rev.  H.  J.,  ii.  77. 
Whitman,  Mrs.  Henry,  ii.  596. 
Williams,  Bishop,  ii.  156, 839,857,  877, 

878. 
Williams,  Bishop,  of  Japan,  ii.  714. 
WiUiams  College,  ii.  799. 
Windsor  Castle,  ii.  267. 
Winthrop,  Hon.  Robert  C,  i.  473,  558, 

616 ;  ii.  7,  151,  171,  327,  673,  794, 

859. 
Wise,  Rev.  H.  A.,i.  335,  339. 
Woman  Suffrage,  ii.  787. 
Woodward,  Judge  G.  W.,  i.  378,  462. 

Yale,  ii.  175,  196,  798. 
Yocum,  Rev.  T.  S.,  i.  339. 


/^' 


DATE  DUE 


gr»^j 


dm  z 


GAYLORD 


'■^aKMws^iey.v. 


